Don’t Forget About These Elements When Designing A Supportive Workplace

Employee wellbeing in the workplace is more than just the perks of ‘dress down Fridays’ and takeaway food in the break room. It’s about designing the workplace with their specific needs in mind. 

You can send employee morale and productivity shooting upwards when you put time and care into creating a supportive space for them to work in. 

And there are quite a few ways you can manage this! Quarterly bonuses, shuttles to work, a dividend scheme, etc. All of these things make a company much nicer to work for. But don’t forget about the physical elements either. 

Indeed, the elements below often get left off of the employee wellbeing list; keep them in mind for better employee retention, focus, and results.

How Will the Temperature Differ?

A comfortable workplace is a temperate one! Make sure you’re testing for temperature differences throughout the workspace. 

Employees who sit near windows are likely to have the biggest fluctuations in temperature. If it’s summer time, they’re more likely to get sun exposure. If it’s winter, they’re more likely to feel the chill from the air outside. 

As such, your windows should be thick enough to maintain the internal temperature, and those who sit closest to the windows should have the option to close the blinds, shut an open window, or move elsewhere if neither of these options are available. 

Make it Easy to Keep Clean

No workplace should be without regular cleaning routines. Every day, there should be a cleaner or two in the building to make sure the space is hygienic enough to come back to tomorrow. 

The break room and toilets need particular attention, and it should be easy for the cleaners to report issues in the plumbing or signs of damage for you to fix ASAP. 

Workplaces shouldn’t be without regular inspections to ensure the cleaning team is hitting the right spots regularly enough either. You can download some quality cleaning inspection software from Janitorial Manager to deal with that. The admin of a clean workplace will otherwise be quite awkward to get on with. 

Let Employees Make Their Own Space

Try to limit any ‘hot desking’, as this can make it much harder for your workers to feel like they have a set space within their job. Instead, let everyone choose their own seats and desks, and then allow for customization of these spaces over time. 

Let your employees bring in their own photos, stationary, desk organizers, and any decor that doesn’t impact on anyone else’s space. A small cactus to sit by the computer? Absolutely. A tall plant with large leaves that reach across to the next seat? Absolutely not. 

If you want your employees to work in a supportive workplace, make sure you take the design elements above into account. Get your team into a space where they can do their best work, with the right temperature, cleanliness, and personal items all around them. There’s nothing wrong with being more comfortable at work!