How natural is it to work from nine to five, sitting on a chair, staring at a screen, wearing your pyjama bottoms? Although it is today's latest standard, genetically, humans aren't really attuned to this norm. To challenge the current design of your (home)office, designer Govert Flint proposes a more dynamic concept, entirely based on your biology.
Enrich up your life
Why is a good work environment important? Happy employees perform 37% better compared to unhappy employees. Happy employees are less likely to show job withdrawal like absenteeism, turnover, job burnout, and retaliatory behaviors (so you might want to check yourself). Also a societal level it has effects: Happiness positively affects general health.
Now let's look at the design of your workspace.
There are three major themes (Sitting, Stress, Satisfaction) when it comes to the design of your workspace. If you want to make the right decisions when it comes to the performance and engagement, the following three themes should be taken into account.
Problem: Sitting
Prolonged sitting is a common feature in today's society. Despite the amount of movements our body is designed to perform, we spend most of our time in sedentary mode. That's a problem. Sitting is a huge cause of unnatural death in modern society. We may think that smoking and drinking affects our health, but scientists found evidence that 'sitting' might be the new smoking.
A sedentary lifestyle?
You have a sedentary lifestyle when you move less than 30 minutes a day, less than 5 times a week. When you have an office job, you are likely to sit for 11,3 hours a day. This includes the time you sit before and after working hours; the time you sit when you commute, have breakfast, dinner and when you're at home watching TV. When you go to the office, you can get your exercise from going to work by bike. But when you work from home, you are even less likely to get your 30 minutes of movement.
No more desk chairs!
Sitting in a desk chair with back support also makes your lower back carry less of your weight, decreasing strength of your core. Emotionally, sitting for a long time enhances negative feelings whereas muscle activity activates endorphin production and full body activity is perceived by the brain as being emotionally happy.
The designteam at Enrichers created the Buoy. Designed to keep your entire body active while you sit, allowing you to express yourself more at work. Creating a strong core and unconsciously keeping you fit and healthy.
Rather stand? This is Floatile, a disk filled with a strong bag of water that allows you to move your joints while standing. And don't worry about those quarantine kilos, the Floatile is strong enough to carry the load of a cow.
Problem: Stress
Life is full of stress. It's an every fact of life that we must all deal with. It comes in all shapes and sizes; even our thoughts can cause us stress and make the human body more susceptible to illness. The evolutionary function of stress is to increase our ability to cope with situations that require action or defense. Work-related stress then, is caused when we experience high demand to deliver and feel they have little control on meeting that demand. But there are also other stressors, like technostress.
Technostress?
Despite its many benefits, the digital workplace can also cause unintended negative consequences for workers, such as technostress. This is a type of stress caused by the rapid changes in technology and occurs as a result of the inability to meet the changing competencies. People using mainly digital devices to communicate at work are twice as likely to get ill from technostress. Symptons include headache, inability to relax, difficulty sleeping, and sore muscles in neck, back, and shoulders. In case you experience (light) symptoms of technostress, try minimizing the use of video calls, emails and phones. We support you. Who knew we would end up defending ourselves from wild emails?