RECYCLING IN THE WORKPLACE

“Oh no, please don’t take away MY bin!”

This week sees two recycling awareness events. ‘Recycle Awareness Week’ and ‘Recycle Now Week’ So, let’s take a look at recycling in the workplace.

Most of us now recycle at home, but do you recycle at work?

Workplaces are notoriously full of paper, disposable coffee cups, cardboard, printer cartridges and more. All this stuff is recyclable, so it should be disposed of in the correct fashion. However, getting employees to recycle, understand where to dispose of their waste, and to know what items can be recycled can be a challenge.

Though it may seem like a chore, recycling is essential to help protect the environment. Not only are you reducing the amount of waste that goes into landfill, you can also save your company money by spending less on waste disposal. It’s important that you do your part in the workplace to help encourage recycling.

Some InterestingFacts

• 1 recycled tin can save enough energy to power a television for 3 hours.
• 1 recycled glass bottle can save enough energy to power a computer for 25 minutes.
• 1 recycled plastic bottle can save enough energy to power a 60-watt light bulb for 3 hours.
• 70% less energy is required to recycle paper compared with making it from raw materials.

How do I encourage staff to use the recycling service? Here are some of our top tips.

Encourage senior management to get involved and lead by example: their buy-in is important. It is also beneficial for key message come from them.

Educate staff. Tell them why you are starting to recycle (why it will save money and what the environmental benefits will be). There is still a lot of confusion about what can be recycled, especially over plastics, so clearly labelled bins will make it easy to remind people to recycle.

Install printers, which need a personalised code to collect printing. This should reduce the amount of redundant paper sitting on machines waiting for collection (some of which ultimately gets put in a bin at the end of the day!) Did you know that 40% of office waste comes from paper?

Speak to cleaning staff to ensure that they recycle correctly. It’s great to separate materials in the office, but pointless if they all end up in the same big bin outside!

Remove individual under-desk bins and install centralised waste and recycling points. This increases the amount of material recycled by removing the temptation for people to easily throw-away. It is important that the rationale for this is clearly communicated in advance, as you are likely to see some initial resistance.

Make the recycling point a design feature, build it into a bespoke housing or invest in some interesting colorful bins.

If your office is not currently recycling, then changing the company’s attitudes towards it may take time. But don’t let this put you off. Use the pointers above to sway your workplace to change to recycling and begin on your Eco-friendly business path. 

Hi Design ‘work spaces that work’

HOW ‘BIOPHILIC DESIGN’ IS BREAKING DOWN THE WALLS BETWEEN INSIDE AND OUTSIDE

The term ‘Biophilia’ when translated from its Latin roots means ‘Bio’ = Life and ‘Philia’ = 'the love of' so in a nutshell, the “love of life or living systems”.

Erich Fromm, German-born American psychoanalyst, first coined the phrase to describe a psychological orientation of being attracted to all that is alive and vital. It became more well-known following the publication of Edward O Wilson's (an American Biologist) book in 1984, entitled ‘Biophilia’. He defined ‘Biophilia' as “the urge to affiliate with other forms of life” and suggests that humans’ innate tendency to seek connections with nature is rooted in our biology and has built up through thousand of years living in agrarian settings.

Over the years advanced technology and development has meant as humans we have moved further away from our natural environment. Indeed, Edward O Wilson observed how increasing rates of urbanisation were leading to a disconnection with the natural world. We began living and working in enclosed and sterile environments, literally sheltering us from the elements of nature.

As a species we are now spending more time than ever indoors – with longer hours in the office, longer commutes, and much of our leisure time focused around screens. We are missing out on the physiological benefits of exposure to greenery, fresh air and natural daylight. If you put an animal in a zoo into a ‘lean’ cage they will become stressed, agitated and miserable, it is no different for humans and yet office designs of the past have been doing just that! Our opportunities to be immersed in nature are reserved for weekends & holidays.

Scientific studies have shown that workplace environments impact how we feel, perform and interact with others. And we have discussed previously how mindfulness and well-being are at the forefront of employer’s agendas. ‘Biophilia Design’ is a powerful tool for businesses striving to keep their people engaged, happy and healthy.

Biophilia has a profound influence on us as humans, both mental & physical. When incorporated into work-space design it helps reduce the signs of stress and enhances our cognitive thinking.

BIOPHILIC DESIGN IN THE WORKPLACE

Biophilic Design incorporates reconnecting people with the natural environment through using

natural elements in design that evoke positive emotional experiences including sights, sounds and scents, such as, maximising daylight, views of nature, fresh air, water features and textures. It is about breaking down the walls between inside and outside, by bringing the outside in.

For example, a recent study from an American university found a 20% increase in productivity in people after spending one hour in nature! Plants can be used to create natural work-space dividers, absorbing sound and creating more private spaces to work and a living walls also adds a visual interest, but it is more beneficial to place it where it can be seen by many, rather than just in the entrance foyer seen by few. Amazon, Google and Apple are leading the way when it comes to investing in Biophilic design. Amazon’s greenhouse spheres mean employees can be immersed in nature and return to desks refreshed and Apple has filled its California HQ with trees.

To really connect people & nature we are going to need a lot more than a few plants. We need to look how we feel when surrounded by nature and then incorporate that into our designs. There are other elements that we can bring into our buildings such as the variation in light patterns, space and texture that fills us with this sense of peace when where are immersed in nature.

We can use natural materials such as wood, stone, exposed brick and even grass-effect flooring to add texture to spaces. Varying acoustics, such as piped bird music, water features or quiet areas to aid concentration and invoke a sense a calm that you associate with nature.

Where possible, ensure employees are next to a natural source of daylight and that there is the opportunity for fresh air, such as outdoor breakout spaces. A simple window in a hospital room has been shown to reduce both patient stays and the amount of pain medication those patients receive. 

SO HOW DOES POOR ‘AIR QUALITY’ AFFECT US?

There has been lots of new documented research that has shown poor air quality to have negative effects on thinking, health and productivity. In terms of health, there is a recognised term for it, ‘Sick Building Syndrome’ (SBS), where people in a building suffer from symptoms of illness or feel unwell for no apparent reason. Symptoms include headache, eye, nose, and throat irritation, fatigue, dizziness and nausea. The severity of symptoms is linked to the time people spend in the building and indeed they improve or disappear altogether, the longer people are away from the building.

We are taught in school that plants are indispensable to human life. Through photosynthesis, they convert the carbon dioxide we exhale into fresh oxygen, and they can also remove toxins from the air we breathe. A ‘Clean Air Study’ conducted by NASA, also found that common indoor plants can help improve air quality and neutralise the effects of sick building syndrome by removing toxic agents.

Positioning Air cleaning plants such as Aloe Vera, Peace Lily and Boston Fern near employee work areas will aid concentration as well as create interest. Leasing them on a maintenance contract keeps them healthy and removes upkeep responsibility from the facilities team.

There are other measures you can take to improve air quality at work (see below image) 

There are clear benefits to implementing ‘clean air solutions’ into the work-space! – Increased productivity, reduced absenteeism, improved health and wellness of employees. A simple test of the theory? “Open the window!” 

CONNECTING PEOPLE WITH NATURE

The Biophilic Design approach allows us to celebrate all that is good about being alive and part of nature, thereby helping to reduce stress, increase productivity, boost creativity, reduce sickness and by using often cheaper materials sourced from our region, it aligns with our CSR of reducing our carbon footprint.

Winston Churchill once said “First we shape our buildings and then our buildings shape us.” 

Biophilic Design gives us buildings that bring the outside in and allow us to get back to our biological DNA of connecting with nature.

Hi Design 'work spaces that work'

SCHOOL DAYS AND AGILE WAYS? Is the agile working revolution a blast from your past?

Think back to your primary school days. You were encouraged to be creative, to work play and to learn not by constant confinement to your desk – very much a Victorian notion - but by structured freedom. Yes, you had a classroom, but it was divided into different areas for different activities. There might have been a table for writing at, but you would also get to sit on the carpet and in the book corner for registration and story time. You had a dressing up corner for creative play, while the school hall or school field was the area for physical exercise. Plus, on a hot day, I bet there was great excitement when your teacher suggested taking your work or activity outside, enabling you to concentrate in a cooler environment. Senior school and University were similarly varied – you made use of different environments for different tasks. 

In other words, you worked in an AGILE way in your formative years because that way you were stimulated to get more done, more efficiently. So, it really isn’t surprising that the confines of a traditional workplace office in our adult lives can be stifling, and can contribute to a decline in our mental health and well-being.

So, in today’s workplace, is there a way we can reconnect with the freedom and capacity for work that we once enjoyed? Could Agile Working be the answer?

IN A 'NUTSHELL’ – WHAT IS AGILE WORKING?

Sometimes referred to as ‘Activity Based Working’, this is a way in which an organisation empowers its people to work where, when and how they choose – with maximum flexibility and minimum constraints. 

Workers, equipped with the right IT support, are given greater autonomy – they can work in different settings within the office, at home or elsewhere. They become dynamic rather than static, and meanwhile, businesses can find that they can need 15-20% less office space – meaning that they can grow within the space they already have or reduce costs by renting less of it.

Agile Working brings people, process, technology, time and place together to determine the best way to complete a given task. Agile Working puts the focus on the endgame, trusting staff to be productive, in contrast to the traditional approach of being seen to be sat at the same desk working. This doesn’t mean an end to supervision or management, but a different way of doing it.

The aim of agile working is simply to create a more responsive, efficient and effective organisation, which ultimately improves business performance.

THE BREAK-OUT SPACE DESIGN

If you create great break-out spaces staff will use them. By designing these spaces to be multi-functional, i.e. they can be used for other purposes outside of lunchtime hours, they are no longer wasted or expensive spaces. Designed correctly, they can turn a traditional office cafeteria into a destination for connection, collaboration, focus and innovation.

A break-out area needn’t be extravagant or even take up much space. Screens and furniture can be used to section and divide up spaces. Soft furnishings, such as lounge style chairs or sofas, can help employees feel relaxed and comfortable.

Booths incorporating laptop ports or TV monitors can be a popular choice when designing break-out areas as they provide not only a place to relax and eat, but also privacy for informal meetings or quiet working.

THE AGILE WORK SPACE

By creating a variety of workplace settings to support daily tasks within the office we can ensure staff have complete freedom and flexibility.

These spaces can be traditional desks, but could also include agile work benches, huddle spaces, quiet rooms, collaboration zones, quiet work areas, well-being spaces, informal meeting spaces or multi-functional breakout areas. Basically, the whole office becomes the work area, not just the desk!

Businesses that have embraced agile working report an increase in productivity, as individuals are able to choose to work in the work space that most suits the task at hand. It means that when they need to get together with colleagues, they aren’t limited to a few meeting rooms and when they need to focus, they can find somewhere quiet to work.

Agile working doesn’t suit every task, or every business, and where it is used, employers and employees have to recognise that a true top-to-bottom culture-shift is needed to get the best from it. But make no mistake, it does represent the future for many organisations who haven’t yet woken up to its advantages.

Take a look at the how we recently created an Agile Workplace for Orbit Housing...

Orbit Housing - Agile Workplace Design - Click here

CONCLUSION

Agile working is not just a fancy new term for hot-desking. Nor is it a covert way for employers to reduce costs. It is so much more than this. It is a revolutionary way of thinking about the way in which workers who would traditionally have found themselves tied to one office space can now be freed to complete their tasks more effectively and flexibly, benefiting both them and their employers. Recent studies have estimated that 65% of children entering primary school today will ultimately end up working in completely new job types that don't yet exist…. That’s only 10-15 years away! Most companies take 5-10 years leases on property, so we need to be ready for change now. Surely workplace design needs to evolve and have fluidity to easily adapt to the future. Agile working gives you this. Get the foundations right and you can be sure that by the time your new office interior is complete, you’ll be well on track to get real return on your investment.

Hi Design ‘work spaces that work’

WELLNESS AT WORK

Mental Health was a hot topic during the month of May - it was particularly at the forefront of people’s minds attracting huge media attention. We had ‘Mental Health Awareness Week’ and this week brings stress-relieving ‘Massage At Work Week’. 

Various high-profile figures have been talking openly about their own battles with mental health. HRH Prince William, The Duke of Cambridge, Stephen Fry, Jameela Jamil, Katie Perry and Alesha Dixon, led the second annual ‘Mental Health Minute’, an initiative launched last year in order to encourage and support conversations around mental health. Over 300 radio stations joined in to kick off Mental Health Awareness Week and share an important mental health message. This year’s theme was all about the importance of listening, and the difference we can make to someone when we take the time to stop and to listen.

It’s thanks to campaigns like ‘Mental Health Minute’ and information becoming more widely available that the stigma attached to talking about mental health is declining rapidly. As a result, this is also affecting the workplace - employees are being open with their employers about their mental health and employers are realising that wellness at work and productivity walk hand in hand!

Wellness at Work

Mental ill health is estimated to cost the UK economy £94bn a year according to recent OECD figures. At the same time, the Mental Health Foundation charity calculates that policies addressing wellbeing at work increase productivity by as much as 12%.

75% of us believe that our work environment has a negative impact on our wellbeing and productivity. Considering that we spend most of our waking hours at work it really shouldn’t come as a surprise! In fact, on average we spend 42 hours a week at work.

What do we mean by the work environment?

Well, it encompasses everything from the type and quantity of work, the people, culture and the actual physical workspace.

When it came to designing offices in the mid to late 20th century, the word ‘productivity’ was traditionally the watch word. Designs were open-plan to maximise headcount per square foot, creating environments not unlike battery farms. Over the last five years this has increasingly changed and just as ‘Wellbeing at Work’ is becoming a key factor in employee retention and attracting new talent, it is now also a central consideration for many workplace designers and their clients, eager to explore the benefits of innovative practices such as agile working for instance.  

Psychology-based insights are significantly contributing to a reshaping of the workplace by helping us to understand how the environment & interiors can impact healthy, happy, empowered, collaborative and productive people.

Here at Hi Design we always consider the emotional needs of staff when designing a workplace. We believe that by providing staff with a choice of work settings (from quiet work areas, collaboration zones and social space) it empowers them, giving back control, which as we know is an important factor in achieving good mental health.

So once we’ve created a great place to work, what practical steps can we take to encourage wellness? What about massage?

Talk to some old-school employers about massage therapy in the workplace and you can expect sniggers and cynicism. And yet there is an increasing body of evidence that a programme of ‘Wellness at Work’ measures, that include massage therapy, can significantly improve productivity, and help in staff retention. For relatively little outlay, we can boost morale, make employees feel restored and happier and see absenteeism dwindle in line with their declining stress levels. No wonder savvy employers are increasingly switching on to the win-win benefits to them and to their staff of short, in-work massage sessions, as they feel the impact on the bottom line from a healthier, more motivated workforce.

Massage Therapy plays a part in the improvement of both physical and mental wellbeing. There are obvious immediate benefits in the relief of conditions like repetitive strain injury or muscle tension for instance, but it is with the respite from stress, no matter how brief, that we can find the greatest benefits. Stress has a huge impact on our body’s immune system and any therapy that helps alleviate it will mean that we becmes less susceptible to colds and viruses. The cost of employee sickness absence in the UK is colossal, as is the wasted time money and resource involved in staff churn when workers feel unhappy and unloved, so therapies that ease fatigue and lower work-related emotional pressures repay massive dividends in the long run.

We’ve all heard about achieving our ideal work-life balance, but what this really means is making an effort to avoid burn-out. Few of us can afford to work 3-day weeks to ensure this, so adoption of strategies that help with physical and mental health while working normal hours have become ever more important.

So what difference would a 15 minute massage really make?

First of all, general health improves. Headaches, back pain, and even blood pressure have all been proven to reduce following massage. Its effects are calming, and levels of serotonin, the so-called ‘happy chemical’ that our body produces naturally, are boosted. Basically, massage makes us feel more positive and cheerful – we are both relaxed but also re-energised, and better equipped to take on the next challenge.

Secondly, the increased blood flow that results from massage has proven positive physiological effects. Energy levels can drop during the working day, often after lunch, when we might reach for the mid-afternoon carb top-up from unhealthy sweets and snacks, just to keep us going. Studies show that we are at our least productive in the afternoon, so a short massage session would re-energise, raise alertness and concentration levels and improve our problem-solving abilities.  The clearer mind we enjoy after massage means fewer mistakes and greater productivity and effectiveness.

Thirdly, there is a subtle psychological benefit that comes from us feeling looked after. As employees we feel well disposed to our employers (we are ‘touched’ in both senses of the word) who have taken the trouble to look after our physical and mental well being. In addition, if we decide to take up the offer of free massage sessions, we achieve a sense of self-empowerment. We know that the greatest stress is felt when we feel like we are trapped in our work, with few choices or any sense of self-determination. Choosing to help ourselves with massage is a great way to really feel like we are taking control over our lives.

Finally, provision of massage therapy goes a long way to changing the culture of the organisations we work for. There is clearly a huge benefit to us if we opt for it, but the sense of physical and mental well being that it creates is contagious. Healthier, happier de-stressed people are much nicer to work with as colleagues!

Thankfully, we are all much more aware these days of the need to strive for better physical and mental health, and none of us need feel any shame in admitting to pain, depression or stress. At Hi Design, we want to create great spaces to work in, spaces that enhance working lives, where people can flourish, not flounder. Where space and budget allow, we will provide for a wellbeing room in our designs, but even if this is not practical, a discretely located meeting room may also be used for massage therapy. Some companies offer quick ‘at desk’ massages services, or even personal massage rollers. At the very least, layouts may be configured to encourage staff to move away from their desks regularly. But good work-place design is only part of the story, and we can think of few measures that can make as big a difference to wellbeing as massage therapy. Go for it, you’ll literally feel the benefit!

Massage therapy is just one aspect of the Wellness at Work idea. Over the coming weeks, we will be sharing our insights and experiences of designing spaces to meet the needs of the changing workplace. Through our series of ‘IN A NUTSHELL’ guides, we will give a clear explanation of emerging trends such as AGILE WORKING & BIOPHILIA etc, how they contribute to ‘Wellness at Work’, without losing sight of the bottom line! We will also share our Hi Design ‘Case Studies’ where these concepts have been proven in practice.

We very much look forward to you joining us.

Hi Design “work spaces that work"