Whatever your business size or niche, it’s vital to create an environment where your workers will thrive. There are many articles littering the web detailing how you can maximise productivity throughout your workforce. Several of these posts focus on the motivational strategies you can use to influence your team. However, the office environment itself has a direct impact on how well your employees work.
Here we take a closer look at how the work environment influences employee productivity and reveal the improvements you can make to enhance performance across the board.
Cut the risks of sedentary practices
Known as ‘sitting disease’, leading a sedentary lifestyle is unavoidable for most office workers. Sitting too much is bad for your health, as explained here by the NHS:
“Studies have linked excessive sitting with being overweight and obese, type 2 diabetes, some types of cancer, and early death. Sitting for long periods is thought to slow the metabolism, which affects the body’s ability to regulate blood sugar, blood pressure and break down body fat. Many adults in the UK spend more than seven hours a day sitting or lying, and this typically increases with age to 10 hours or more.”
By altering your work environment to make it easier for your workers to break up periods of physical inactivity, you’re not only doing your bit to reduce health risks but improving long and short term productivity. From the incorporation of standing desks to giving workers access to activities during their breaks, there are many steps employers can take to help their employees sit less and work better.
Help workers focus on a daily basis
Although a sedentary lifestyle increases the risk of developing long-term ailments, immediate productivity suffers as a result of short term issues. Fatigue, headaches, and eye strain are all commonplace in modern workplaces, but how you decorate, illuminate and position your work space could help in this regard. Try decorating office walls with artwork and illuminating workstations with natural light. You could also make better use of outside space by capitalising on surrounding scenery. Each of these changes work to help the eyes adjust and refocus for better productivity.
Strike the right temperature balance
Incorrectly heated work spaces can have more of an impact than you think. Work environments that are too hot or too cold lead to a number of productivity quashing results. There are many advantages to installing or upgrading your office air conditioning system, one of which is creating the cool and comfortable setting employees need to work as productively as possible. Just a few degrees difference can impact productivity, as explained by the researchers at Cornell University. The study found that offices with a temperature of 77 degrees Fahrenheit (25°C) used their keyboards 100% of the time and did so with a 10% error rate. Another office, this time with a temperature of 68 degrees Fahrenheit (20°C), was also tested and recorded 54% keyboard use with a 25% error rate.
Your air conditioner will give you all the features you need to control the climate within your office space, so you can discover the best and most productive temperature for your workers.
