Designing an Environment for Employee Health and Well-Being
By Shawn Pence, Design Director, DEI Incorporated
Great design is more than aesthetics, form, and function. In post-pandemic commercial interiors, it now includes a focus on how the lighting, colors, sounds, and textures that surround us as we work influence our mental and physical health. Employers are prioritizing creating a workplace for their employees that not only promotes work efficiency but improves their health. This wellness focus pushes designers past the typical space planning, branding, and interior design typical of their role. Below are some of the steps the DEI design team is taking in their design process to improve wellness in the workplaces they create.
REDUCE EMPLOYEE STRESS & ENCOURAGE CREATIVITY:
- Incorporate outdoor meeting and break areas into the initial building program.
- Bring the outdoors inside visually through organic patterns and colors in fabrics, flooring, and graphics.
- Create flex workspaces for change of scenery & short breaks from intense & complex work.
- Include site lines from work areas to the outside.
HEALTHIER ENVIRONMENTS:
- Improve air quality by specifying products with low VOCs.
- Implement biophilic designs with plants and living walls.
- Space plan with social distancing options possible for cold/flu season.
- Add both exercise and meditation spaces into the floor plans.
INCREASED PRODUCTIVITY:
- Choosing furniture that allows for physical activity throughout the workday: sit-to-stand desks, treadmills at workstations, task seating with multiple ergonomic settings.
- Place acoustic materials strategically to minimize background noise.
- Lighting plans with layers of lighting types and temperatures based on the use of individual spaces.
- Place technology strategically to promote breaks in daily screentime.
Here are some great examples of creating spaces for employees.
