Health and Wellness in the Office

There may finally be a reason to look forward to Monday mornings at the office!

Based on recent trends and developments in building standards, workplaces may soon be becoming more conducive to supporting the health and wellness of employees. The WELL Building Standard is the first building standard that focuses on combining work with wellness in an effort to support the health of employees that spend their time in the building.

Happily, this building standard has started to attract the attention of even the most financially conservative of companies given that an increase in employee wellness has been shown to increase a company’s success through greater productivity and employee morale. In practice, a building with WELL Certification (in that it complies with the WELL Building Standard) would ensure natural light rather than electric lighting, higher internal air quality, excellent temperature control, and comfortable acoustics, including through the use of white noise machines to reduce background noise.

Studies have shown that employees in such an environment are more alert, enjoy better sleep, feel less stress and distraction, and are less likely to catch colds or suffer from other illnesses. Other features include ergonomic sit-stand desks and filtered water hydration stations interspersed throughout the workplace to encourage better hydration.

The universal goal is to create an environmental that supports healthier behavior in employees. When you consider that most employees spend more than half of their waking hours in an office, it’s odd that most office spaces haven’t been designed with the health and wellness of employees front of mind. It’s so refreshing to see modern workplaces evolving to better support health and wellness!

Sincerely,

Jenni