As more and more kiwi businesses make genuine positive changes to better care for our natural environment, we shouldn’t forget the importance of caring for the environment we go to work in every day. Just like wild animals in their natural habitats, our health, happiness, focus, and energy are all significantly affected by our work environment.
Fortunately, there are positive steps we can take to care for our workspaces. Here’s a just few ways we can make little changes in our workspace to promote health, happiness, and productivity.
Health
Safeguarding staff health is particularly relevant over flu season but no matter the time of year, creating and maintaining a healthy work environment is fundamental to every other aspect of workplace wellbeing.
This can be as simple as ensuring access to cleaning wipes, or as innovative as using antibacterial folders and pens in your workplace. Always ensure you’ve got quality cleaning products on hand (or at least under the nearest kitchen sink): working in shiny, clean surroundings is better for us, and just feels better too. Don’t take clean indoor air for granted, especially in winter: air purifiers filter and neutralise airborne viruses, bacteria, dust, mould, and other nasties, leaving staff to breathe easy. And don’t forget: dehumidifiers keep moisture to a minimum, enhancing worker health and comfort at the same time.
Of course, one of the best ways to promote healthy living over flu season is to enable your staff to get the flu vaccine. Find out more about keeping your staff well with a flu jab, and make sure everyone has the chance to improve their odds this winter.
Happiness
Happiness and professional satisfaction are some of the most crucial components in overall workplace wellbeing. Happy staff not only work harder and stick around for longer, they’re also more likely to genuinely care about the work they do and the welfare of the business they work for.
Aside from the odd jaunt to meeting room or coffee machine, a lot of us spend the majority of our professional lives at a workstation, so making changes here can have a really significant impact on staff happiness and wellbeing. Ensuring that a workspace is equipped with comfortable, high quality furniture, like office chairs and sit-to-stand desks, enhances worker comfort and gives people the flexibility to work in the ways that suit their own body best. Expanding the concept of comfort to include the whole office, keeping people warm is a workplace happiness bottom-line: make sure you have the heaters you need to stop people getting too chilly.
Productivity
It might sound obvious but above all, workspaces are places designed to… get work done. Exactly how conducive your particular work environment is to productivity can vary for all kinds of reasons: a few of which are touched on above. But the actual composition and layout of a workspace can also have a striking effect on how easy it is for staff to get things done.
When you’re looking to enhance workplace productivity, rethinking your space may be the way to go. NXP’s Fit-out specialists have years of experience listening to client ambitions and paint points, and working alongside their customers to create real-world workspace solutions: from concept all the way through to final installation. Sometimes the key to boosting productivity lies in changing up the solid, physical work environment in service of crafting a space that fits for your business.
Keeping our workday surroundings in excellent, comfortably habitable shape isn’t difficult: just a few of the right changes can tip the balance and make a huge difference.
