Well-being

Wellbeing is now becoming an integral part of the modern working environment, its about accommodating your staff’s physiological needs by ensuring that they have the optimum working environment, by reducing the time spent worrying about technology, or their environmental needs and by allowing them to focus on what really matters. 

Leading companies know that improved employee well-being not only helps people to be healthier and lowers staff absence and associated costs but that it also helps them to be more productive, creative and innovative, and less likely to leave for a competitor.

A quality workspace design leads to a less stressful and more productive atmosphere. So it makes sense that employers take the physical work environment of their employees into consideration when planning their workspaces – so that employees feel comfortable and calm in their physical work settings and produce their best work. And as almost 30% of our lives are spent in the office, and in order to find and retain top talent, it’s makes sense for companies to foster an environment that empowers people with the right space to work, to think and collaborate naturally.

Good workspace design can have a positive impact on workplace well-being and a wide range of varied choices is the most obvious differentiator. By providing different types of spaces to support the different kinds of work performed in the course of the day you can engender a sense of well-being.  

A mix of open ‘team’ and enclosed ’private’ areas, access to natural light and colleagues combines to give people choices and empowers them to find the spaces and tools appropriate for their work at hand, this in turn lowers stress levels and increases vitality and social interaction with others.

But because privacy remains important in the workplace for confidential discussions, quiet phone calls and the times when we just need to focus quietly, alone, a variety of open and private spaces usually solves the need for both collaboration and concentration areas, with individual users making their choices as required.

There’s no question that improved employee well-being boosts productivity and creativity, reduces stress, cuts absenteeism costs, and helps connect people to their colleagues and the organization. It’s a very tight market for skilled knowledge workers, Engineers, product developers, financial professionals and other skilled, experienced professionals who know how to innovate and companies are using well-being as a way to recruit and keep these staff.

“People who are happier at work are more productive—they are more engaged, more creative, have better concentration,” says Nic Marks, of Happy Planet Index, a global index of human wellbeing and environmental impact who’s spent more than a decade studying the economics of wellbeing.