Throughout the years, corporate offices have gone through many changes, from cubicle farms to open floorplans, including unique benefits such as employee game rooms. But while trends in office design may fluctuate, one thing will always remain the same – the effect that the workspace has on employee performance and consequently business success. A well-designed space can create a more productive and less stressful work environment, enabling employees to produce their best work every day. If you’d like to experience these advantages, here are some workspace features you should consider enhancing:
Increased workspace comfort
Regardless of the industry and the office area, each workspace should be comfortable. Proper ergonomics can aid in boosting productivity, lowering muscle fatigue, and even reducing the chances of more severe musculoskeletal disorders developing. To increase comfort within your workplace, provide your employees with ergonomically crafted furniture and work areas, as well as the option to alternate working positions. Offering different work zones employees can switch between throughout the day is also a good idea, particularly if you provide hot desking, breakout, and informal meeting spaces, along with creative areas for brainstorming.
Letting in more natural light
The benefits of natural light are well-known. But apart from improving mood, increasing energy, and reducing health risks, being exposed to natural light throughout the workday can also help to reduce eyestrain, decrease headaches, and prevent blurred vision symptoms. If you have the opportunity, you can boost the efficiency of your employees by maximizing natural light, removing blinds, adding skylights, and finding similar solutions. If not, even replacing any flickering lights and opting for brighter yet warmer artificial lighting may allow you to achieve similar productivity-boosting effects.
Reduced environmental noise
In every workplace, it’s completely natural to come across certain distractions, whether it’s chatty colleagues or frequent email notifications. However, some distractions can cause more harm than others. If you’re currently doing construction work within the workplace, for instance, the constant noise can be quite detrimental to employees, raising their stress levels, diminishing their focus, and decreasing motivation. Instead, modular building solutions may be a wiser choice. By constructing offices and facilities off-site and assembling them quickly on-site, modular solutions will enable you to reduce noise and other common distractions, thus allowing your employees to remain productive.
Improved quality of air
Although often overlooked, the office’s indoor air quality can have quite a significant effect on your workers’ health and overall performance as well. In fact, research suggests that companies can experience a rise in productivity of over 10% when pollutants are reduced and fresh air in the workplace is increased. To enjoy these same benefits, you can improve the quality of air within your own workspace by implementing no-smoking policies, installing air filtration systems, maintaining appropriate humidity levels, developing green cleaning protocols, keeping the office neat and clutter-free, decorating with plants and greenery, keeping the windows open, etc.
A focus on nourishment
Proper nutrition is vital for ensuring our bodies function optimally, but this may be even more important in the workplace. What your workers eat fuels them and allow them to power through their workdays. In an effort to increase the focus, energy, and overall productivity of your employees, it might be a good idea to encourage a better food culture and healthy eating habits within the workspace. This can be done by dedicating specific eating spaces, limiting the availability of processed foods, stocking up on fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as clearly labeling nutritional information and food allergies.
Making fitness a priority
As our bodies weren’t made to sit all day, movement is another aspect that could benefit the health of employees and their work performance. Actually, workers who lead more active lifestyles tend to be more productive than their inactive colleagues, displaying higher levels of alertness and energy as well. Regular exercise can also aid in increasing concentration and sharpening decision-making skills, so aim to encourage movement within your workspace. Invest in standing or walking desks, make sure stairways are accessible and open, or provide bicycle storage and incentivize biking to work. If you have the space and budget, you can consider joining the trend of in-office gyms as well.
Evidently, the design of your workplace can significantly impact the health and well-being of your employees, along with their job satisfaction levels and overall performance. If you manage to enhance the aspects mentioned above and create a more worker-centric office design, the profitability and success of your business may increase as a result.