The Most creative ideas for healthier work environment 

Many of us feel their workweek is running on a loop, which can be a life-threatening symptom of deteriorating mental status and indicator of a bad work environment. The worse work environment a man undergoes, the less productivity he will develop. That’s why it is very crucial to shed the light on some of the most creative ideas to improve work environment and increase productivity. We must devise new methodologies to open the way for a more comfortable, healthier workplace that motivates us to work and innovate with ease and full confidence. 

As an HR specialist/manager, we feel you and are aware of the burden behind this very common question: How could I improve my team’s productivity? 

In this article, we will explore some of the most creative ideas to improve the workplace environment and start fresh. 

The Power of a Positive Work Environment and its Impact on Boosting Productivity 

As most people spend almost a third of their lives at work, creating a comfortable and positive workplace environment is a fundamental element of individual wellbeing. Studies show that happiness in the workplace increases productivity and employees may also be absent less frequently. A positive workplace foments the sense of ownership among employees and boosts the level of creativity and communication.

Open space layouts have been shown as one of the key mechanisms to improve communication and collaboration among co-workers. Also, using calm and relaxing colors in the workplace combined with carefully considered lighting schemes can foster better and healthier work environment. 

Being close to nature is also proven to boost wellbeing, as keeping plants at offices can enhance the air quality, lower stress levels, encourage more interaction among co-workers via the latest technology channels for better communications. 

Ensuring a healthy work environment will help companies have happy employees with higher productivity and efficiency. For this, companies should have goals in place for creating better and more encouraging environment. In the following lines, we will explain more about the best practices to achieve these goals. 

Proven Ways to Improve Work Environment 

Before we start, we must tell you this: At Resal Glee, we don’t offer you just unauthentic random content about the best ways to achieve blah blah. Nevertheless, we aspire to offer you a content with the most practical and actionable solutions as advised by renowned experts. 

Building a Culture of Employee Appreciation

Regardless of how many years we have spent in this life, the power of appreciation could last forever. Just notice your co-workers or employees in other companies, you will realize one very common thing; some distinguished employees desert some big, notable companies, not because of low salaries, but due to the lack of appreciation. 

How would you expect employees becoming motivated if they knew that their hard work and achievements are going unnoticed?!

It is simple and easy to appreciate others but we rarely notice its importance. Start now and honor your employees’ dedication and commitment. Prizes can help motivate employees, telling them you do value their time. But be fair in your choice of reward to employees to show that you do value their time and dedication. 

And this is exactly what Resal Glee already presents. It is a platform designed for just one purpose; promoting the spirit of appreciation through smart gift options, consistent with the taste and the aspirations of each employee. It is a very flexible system that offers two key factors; money and time. Try it now and find out more about its benefits. 

Applying Colors to Office Design, Furniture

Colors play a very significant role when we decide to design our workplace, starting from the offices and furniture. Shades and hues affect people’s mood, behavior, and various emotional state. For instance, using calm and relaxing colors such as blue and green in offices creates calm and serene atmosphere, evokes creativity and enhances focus. Meanwhile, warm colors such as red and orange are applied in offices to increase the energy flow and enhance enthusiasm. 

According to Dr. Bernard C. Meyers – one of the most renowned color psychologists, colors have great impact on humans. Meyers further said that applying calm colors to offices will evoke serene atmosphere and will open people’s minds, hearts, and souls. Yet, with cold colors applied to offices, emotions of doubt, questioning, and pessimism erupt. 

Furthermore, colors also affect mood. For instance, dark colors are associated with feelings of sadness and introversion. On the other hand, Bright colors spark openness, optimism, and increased activity. That’s why choosing colors wisely while designing offices can improve work environment and stimulate productivity. 

For this, applying suitable colors to interiors can help create a positive, healthy workplace, and accordingly enhance productivity in both public and private sectors. So, bear in mind using appropriate colors to achieve our key goal behind working in offices: productivity and success. 

Using a Combination of Artificial and Natural Light

Proper lighting environment in offices plays a major role in employee productivity. Studies have shown that natural lighting evokes energy and improve employees’ neuronal activity. On the contrary, using improper artificial lights in offices can reduce productivity and harm employees’ mental wellbeing. 

For this, employers must ensure to provide appropriate combination of natural and artificial lighting to improve work environment and increase productivity. Here are some suggestions to improve the lighting system in your workstation: 

• Make good use of natural light: taking into consideration the presence of retractable awnings and other factors that could affect employees’ vision. 
• The use of fluorescents lights: very energy efficient, and closely resembles natural sunlight. 
• The use of smart bulbs: can be better maintained, and help light certain areas where employees work to ensure better visual comfort. 

At the end, improving your combination of natural and artificial lighting is one of the key factors to serve general welfare and boost productivity among employees. Employers should ensure providing each employee with needed proper lighting space regardless his/her job description or the location of his/her work in the facility.  

 

The Use of Open Workspace for Better Human Collaboration 

Designing an open office space is one of the key creative concepts to improve work environment and increase productivity. An open office space layout can foster better, easier, and faster communication among employees. It reflects the modern vision of how companies design offices so as to improve work environment and reach better levels of productivity, creativity, and innovation. 

Experts also stressed the importance of creating open office spaces for more positive ambience at the workplace. According to a recent study released by Harvard Business Review (HBR), open offices enable employees to report more engagement in their work, more communication with their peers, and a stronger connection to the company. Not only this, open offices help accelerate creativity and innovation, enhance exposure to different kinds of expertise. 

“It really creates an environment where people can collaborate; they can innovate together. There’s a lot of spontaneity in the way people bump into each other, just a really fun collaborative creative space.” HBR study further added. 

Focusing on applying an open office space concept boosts levels of productivity and helps create a more positive work environment.

Be Close to Nature, Grow Plants at Office 

Being close to nature and keeping plants at offices to improve the air quality and lower stress levels are among the most creative ideas to create more favorable work environment and improve staff well-being. Adding plants to interior spaces is proven to be one of the most effective indoor air purifiers for removing common toxins and dust and increasing oxygen levels. Hence, plans can enhance air quality and create healthier and more comfortable environment for employees. 

These greenery installations also play a very major role in reducing stress levels among employees. They can enhance our ability to focus and boost our attention span. Studies have shown that offices with plants make staff happier and more productive and satisfied than lean designs stripped of greenery. 

You can grow plants and add indoor plants to offices in many various ways. You can position plant pots in multiple locations, in tables, shelves, putting into consideration the provision of proper lighting and watering at regular basis. You can also put living walls that would look stunning and provide large swathes of real planting from floor to ceiling, creating a profound impact on employee health, happiness and productivity, and organizations that seek to help staff improve their physical and psychological wellbeing will reap the associated benefits.

Dr. Weam Alnasser, a renowned specialist in phytotherapy, said many plants such as lilies, orchids, and venus flytrap plants that are also known as office plants can filter and absorb dust from the air and boost staff wellbeing. 

Encouraging Staff Collaboration by Using Modern Technologies  

Technological innovations can be a key factor to enhance cooperation in the workplace. They are fundamental to more powerful collaboration and more interaction in the modern world.  By using the most up-to-date communication systems, electronic applications, servers, and platforms designed for teamwork, you can boost collaboration and encourage more cooperation among employees.  

According to Dr. David Nan – professor of information technology and communications, IT enables employees to make achieve and smarter communication. 

For this, you can use applications such as Slack, Asana, and Trello to encourage employees to interact and implement tasks more effectively. You can also use other similar platforms to organize live group meetings, attach files, and make conversations. These all will lead to save time and effort, better organizing, enhance interaction and cooperation among employees within a positive work environment towards more productivity. 

 

And now, we come across a very reasonable question in your mind: What are the outcomes I shall get in return?

Expected Outcomes of Improved Work Environment

Better Productivity and Efficiency 

 

Achieving better productivity and efficiency is one of the main goals behind seeking a healthy, inspiring work environment. When achieved, organizations will reap the associated benefits. Hence, here are some creative ideas that can improve work environment and boost productivity and efficiency:

• Invest in modern technologies that can help ease workflow and increase productivity. 
• Divide tasks among employees, allocate workloads, and create a better schedule for your team members in order to maximize the skills and experience of each individual.
• Provide employees with relevant and consistent training, and with the needed tools to boost their performance and enhance productivity. 
• Increase interaction levels among employees, unify their visions to improve their daily performance for better productivity. 
• Encourage a more proactive attitude and innovative stance among employees to exchange thoughts and hear their suggestions to boost productivity and efficiency. 

 

When applying these ideas to improve work environment, organizations can then reap the fruits, enjoy more productivity and efficiency as well as ensure happy employees. Peter Drucker, the father of modern management, once said: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” This means organizations can focus on improving productivity and efficiency through creating an inspiring work environment. 

Achieving Job Satisfaction, Having Happy Employees

Ensuring that your employees are happy with their jobs is one of the most innovative ideas that can help improve work environment and achieve productivity as well as efficiency in workplace. You have to provide your employees with consistent training to develop more skills needed to do their tasks more efficiently. You must also listen to what employees need and act on it as this will make them feel essential, valued and heard. In addition, Happy employees are more productive, more engaged, and more likely to achieve corporate goals faster and more efficiently. A happy workplace leads to lower rates of absenteeism. Therefore, organizations have to encourage cooperation among employees, provide them with clean, adequate workplace that has a healthy combination of natural and artificial lighting, greenery spaces, and excellent choice of colors added to office and furniture. 

 

Lower Rates of Absenteeism

The happier and healthier employees are, the more likely it will be that the organization will be successful. The logic with this approach is that creating a positive, vivid work environment will make employees will be more able and motivated to go to work, resulting in increased productivity, decreased absenteeism, and higher morale for the individual workers as well as the entire team. Therefore, it is important to maintain a positive interaction among employees, ensure transparency, avoid overlooking hurdles to achieve productivity, offer direct and indirect support.  

In other words, creating a positive, comfortable work environment will help motivate employees to work harder, improve the quality of work, and increase ability to focus, leading to lower rates of absenteeism. Ensuring that equal care and attention is given to each employee is the key to excellence and success. 

Increasing Productivity and Profitability

Having higher productivity and profitability is one of every organization’s key goals. Providing improved work environment plays a significant role in reaping desired outcomes. When employees work in a positive, motivating environment, they will be able to work more efficiently and productively, to reflect later on the organization’s profits. 

Some organizations use some innovative ways to achieve more productivity and higher profitability, including encouraging cooperation and interaction among employees by using modern technologies. 

We can control how the workplace would be by being close to nature and keeping plants at offices to improve the air quality and lower stress levels. This will help improve staff well-being. Furthermore, successful companies choose colors wisely in interiors and provide appropriate combination of natural and artificial lighting to improve work environment. 

Indeed, happy employees will lead to high productivity and profitability. That’s why it is important to ensure a calm, positive work environment. 

Conclusion

At the end, we should realize that a good work environment plays a major role in improving the quality of work life, achieving high levels of productivity and efficiency. Choosing appropriate colors, lighting, open office spaces, plants to the workplace is inevitable and creates a better work experience among employees. Encouraging more interaction among employees can boost productivity and promote dialogue and mutual understanding. That’s why companies and organizations work to apply the principles of better work environment to ensure happy employees and profitability. 

As Kathi Karr, Horace Mann Educators Corp. vice president, said: “An employee who feels good is a productive employee,” That’s why it is important to invest in a good work environment and promote positivity and creativity among employees to achieve productivity.