Easy Ways To Improve Your Workspace
The average person spends up to a third of their life at work within modern society. Additionally, increased awareness regarding health and safety as well as an employee’s well-being, have increased the need for businesses to improve the workplace environment. Thus, we have identified easy ways in which you can improve your workspace environment.
Comfort
Employees often become invested in their work and fully immerse themselves within their tasks. However, a lack of comfort within the working environment can distract employees and leave them feeling drained or fatigued, thus negatively affecting their ability or will to perform their tasks. For example, an office space with harsh fluorescent lighting, may strain employee’s eyes and leave them feeling fatigued quicker than that of a more naturally illuminated environment.
Additionally, working environments with poor ventilation or lack of temperature control may leave employees feeling exhaustedly hot or uncomfortably cold. As a result, employees may become easily drained and increase their efforts to cool off/warm up which may result in overall lower productivity.
Businesses can easily improve comfort by installing temperature control equipment such as air-conditioners, improved ventilation, heaters etc. Additionally, natural light sources should be utilised, and traditional fluorescent light sources should be replaced with less harsh light sources. Businesses can also make use of more ergonomic office equipment to improve employee comfort while simultaneously addressing health and safety concerns.
Ergonomics
Improving ergonomics is an effective way of enhancing the workplace environment while simultaneously providing comfort and decreasing risk/injury to staff. Through the use of more ergonomic workspace equipment, employee productivity can be improved by reducing work-related injuries such a carpal tunnel syndrome, back pains, eye strain etc.
This can be achieved by replacing old office equipment such as CRT monitors with newer LED models, thus reducing eye strain on users. Additionally, water mats can be provided to all staff, thus enabling more ergonomic typing postures for users. Ergonomic chairs can also be used to help reduce back-related injuries, improve employee postures, and improve overall comfort. These improvements in ergonomics can greatly enhance the overall productivity in the workplace by lowering the potential loss of productivity due to work-related injuries.
Implement flexi-hours
Radical technological innovations and advancements in computer and online technology in recent years have enabled businesses to implement more flexible workspace environments and structures.
This flexibility allows organisations to create more adaptable working hours for their employees to cater for the ever-changing needs of both the business and its employees. Additionally, employees can even work remotely such asfrom home for tasks that can be done online, thus saving them travel time and expenses and improving their overall productivity in some cases.
Flexi-hours also allows employees the opportunity to better balance their life and work responsibilities by providing them with more flexible working parameters such as allowing them to start work earlier in order to leave earlier and collect their children from school.
Create an open space working environment
Communication is paramount within modern society and the contemporary business environment. An open space work environment allows for better collaboration and communication between employees and employers by creating a workspace that encourages employees to work together and share ideas.
This can result in better creativity and more efficient means of communication by removing physical communication barriers and opening up the workspace to create a more communal, friendly environment. Businesses such asGoogle makes use of open work environments to ensure that new ideas are constantly being shared and developed through collaboration and constant communication between employees.
Additionally, this type of workspace environment has grown dramatically within the past few years particularly within technological orientated business. This is due to the high demand of innovation and creativity required of modern businesses in order to compete and maintain a competitive advantage within the business environment of today.
Improve insurance
Unforeseen circumstances can potentially arise at any time, which is why businesses need to ensure that their assets and employees are protected to mitigate any losses and ensure the business can survive despite any potentially devastating events such as fires, flooding etc.
One way a business can achieve this is by making use of more comprehensive insurance plans that offer affordable business insurance that protects the business against a wide range of risks such as fires, business interruptions, money loss, fidelity, much more. Making use of such insurance plans is a key aspect of ensuring the long-term success and survivability of a business.
Adapting your business to better fulfil the ever-changing requirements of the contemporary business environment can be a difficult task. However, the above mentioned steps provide a few steps in which you can create a more flexible work setting that will enable higher levels of productivity, innovation and creativity as well as ensuring the well-being of both your employees and your business are maintained.