How are your employees, on a general note? Are they well? Are they feeling good about their work lives? More fundamentally, do you even know if they are okay? While as a business owner, your goal is to facilitate productivity over all facets of work, do you know how to make staff work better? Sure, you can introduce the “T” word: Target, and it will deliver the goods on paper, which is the priority, but what about managing workplace stress? Is there a high rate of burnout? And if not, is it imminent? Healthy staff are happy ones, and while it’s not your responsibility to ensure that they are bounding into work every day, you do have a duty of care towards them while they are in your building. There are small things you can do to help your staff work a bit better, and a bit happier.
What snacks are they eating?
Is it someone’s birthday, and so the cakes and the buffets are making another appearance. The cake culture is all too common in offices, and apart from the obvious outcomes, like diabetes and obesity, the post-carb lull that people experience mean a less productive workforce. One way to help gear people’s eating habits towards healthier choices is to introduce nuts, seeds and fruit into the workplace, which you can make easier with office snack delivery — right to their desks. While you cannot dictate what people eat, if you provide healthier options, it will start the ball rolling to healthier staff. Remember, it isn’t about diet. Diet implies a short-term effort. Instead introducing lifestyle changes and habits are what sticks for the long-haul.
The sitting syndrome
They say now that sitting is the new smoking, and the office environment is one of the main culprits. We are used to sitting in chairs that don’t support our back properly, which will only contribute towards bad posture and problems later in life. An option would be to install new Office Furniture, that includes seating that is more suited to our body’s contours. Or if you are looking to remove the whole seating environment for good, then start to install standing desks. These aid productivity like you wouldn’t believe. Firstly, as standing is shown to aid productivity, and secondly, standing desks take up less space, so people have more room to move about.
The “B” word
Breaks away from the computer screen at regular intervals encourages people to get up and walk around not only combats the constant sitting, but it also reduces eyestrain. Another thing you can do to reduce the amount of strain on the eye is to install screen filter programs, like F.Lux, which is completely free. This works by changing the color of your screen to a more bearable tint, such as orange, which reduces the potential for eye strain, and lessens the amount of blue light. With more people being exposed to blue light and the research into how it is affecting our sleep and ability to switch our brains off, it is a nice little investment you can afford to make for the sake of your staff.
