Good Design is Healthy and Stress Free Design
Have you put more time into thinking about the design of your bedroom or your desk space?
Considering we spend up to 90,000 hours in our lifetime in the office, it’s funny that you would have automatically answered, “bedroom”. The space we work in is incredibly important to our productivity, mental health, job satisfaction & overall happiness. And it’s not just employees who should be focusing on this, studies show that if employers want to build a culture of high performance, they need to start by taking a look at the office environment. So where can you start in designing an optimal workplace for your employees and your business? Encourage your employees to mix up their own workspaces-can they face their desks in a different direction? Pop a new plant next to the monitor? What about a new chair to boost their productivity AND fix their posture?
Next look at establishing a connection to natural elements such as plants, natural light and optimal window views. Working in an environment with natural scenery and light is known to produce healthier employees who take fewer sick days. Interestingly, in hospital settings, patients who were exposed to natural elements recovered faster than those who weren’t. A study released in 2017 by the Lighting Research Centre found that office workers who receive a big dose of circadian-effective light in the morning, either from electric lighting or daylight, experience better sleep and lower levels of depression and stress, than those who spend their mornings in dim or low light levels. Goodbye partition boards and faux plants, hello greenery walls!
Going for something bigger might be to do as Facebook head office do and provide your employees with the ability to tailor the layout, height, and configuration of their desks based on their personal preference. Teams have the autonomy to create a workspace to best support their projects with the freedom to move their desks in a way that aligns with their creativity needs. It may seem like a lot of effort, but this additional layer of freedom assists employees in feeling like they dictate their own day and therefore feel more of a sense of alignment and loyalty to your company.
Workspaces over recent years have gone down the “shared workspace” route and focused on creating an environment far removed from the stagnant cubicle style of the 80’s and 90’s. In today’s office spaces you might find on-site cafes, only a few assigned desks with a-preference for hot desking, lounge style seating areas and a focus on relaxed gathering community spaces where colleagues can have more informal breakout sessions. These tend to be more conducive to brainstorming and an agile approach to change while fostering a sense of community and camaraderie between teams. Balancing these “we” spaces with “me” spaces is extremely important, too. Although we need community, people also need quiet time and thinking space in the office to avoid overwhelm and to recharge. So before you knock down all those walls, remember that providing quiet spaces for solo work is also critical to productivity and employees ability to recharge and focus. Something like a mindfulness room, where employees can relieve stress can go a long way in designing your stress-free design space and have proven to not only boost productivity but enables employees to optimise their own job performance, in turn leaving them more satisfied, motivated and creative.
When a company prioritises managing the stress levels of its employees through designing office spaces conducive to productivity, creativity, innovation and collaboration, they will seethe financial benefit through the fact that less stressed employees are happier, healthier and ultimately more productive.
