Do you want to improve the health and well-being of your staff? Most companies would jump at the chance to develop a reputation for a good working environment and to improve productivity. There are a lot of ways you can do this. One method which has sprung up in popularity recently is the ability to optimize the office space via environmental workplace monitoring.
Naturally, this is a practice with many benefits, making it a good choice for anyone who wants to directly improve the air quality of the workspace. Let’s take a look at what you need to know.
The Importance of Optimization
Your staff spend an average of 40 hours every week inside the office environment. Therefore, it is vital to make sure that this space is perfectly calibrated to their needs, both physical and mental. Lots of companies excel at the mental element – they have well-being schemes and ongoing support – but the physical aspect is often overlooked.
Taking the time to do things like optimizing your workspace is something that has a major impact on employee health and well-being. Monitoring things like air quality, bacteria levels, occupancy levels, and other environmental elements are all vital for making sure that your staff get the best support.
Air Quality Monitoring
So, let’s talk about air quality monitoring.
Did you know that indoor air quality monitoring that takes place in the marketplace is all about tracking pollutants like CO2, PM2.5, and TVOCs? It also tracks temperature and humidity levels, which are an important part of air quality levels.
The sensors are used to properly measure the data, analyze it, and then provide information on the appropriate action that can be taken to improve the air quality in your office. This process is fairly important – there is a lot of scientifically-backed evidence that suggests you need fresh air in the workplace to get everyone to perform at their best.
Employees who work in places like overcrowded offices or go to long meetings in rooms with poor ventilation are more likely to be exposed to high concentrations of CO2.
The symptoms of carbon dioxide can include a 23% impairment in decision-making, an 11% reduction in overall productivity, increased drowsiness, impaired attention, and a loss of concentration. Understandably, that’s a lot of symptoms that you don’t want your workers to be exposed to. Therefore, you must take the time to track key areas where CO2 is likely to build up and then take the appropriate steps to prevent this.
The impact that a building can have on the health and well-being of its occupants, is now an important concern in the wake of the pandemic. It’s changed the way that we look at health and safety, and a poor level of air quality affects the health of staff, which means that your business could see an increase in staff absence.
Prioritizing Workplace Wellness
It’s never been a huge priority to make physical and mental well-being the top focus for employees. Given that Millennials make up 35% of the workforce, and the fact they prioritize health, it’s important to be able to say that your business emphasizes workplace wellness. Lots of workers now choose companies that prioritize their health over and above many other factors.
Inefficient Workspaces
Something that workplace wellness monitoring is good for is uncovering inefficiencies in your work environment that you might not even have known about. It’s possible that your air-conditioning system isn’t properly calibrated, or you aren’t putting a proper energy solution in place. This is the kind of thing you can identify when you monitor the workplace with a level of detail.
For example, the average occupancy level in an office space is less than 55%, but there are so many building systems like heating and lighting that run in areas where nobody is working.
Finding Solutions
It’s important to find the right solutions when it comes to workplace monitoring because protecting the workspace is very important. There’s a lot that you can do to make sure that this kind of thing runs as it should, and it all boils down to having the right kind of support.
The best thing that you can do with an issue like this is to take the time to invest in a proper solution. When inequality is identified, or monitoring reveals that something isn’t quite up to spec, it’s important to find a solution that deals with the problem once and for all.
INVZBL-Envelo offers targeted solutions for workplace monitoring. Not only do we look at the air quality, but we also focus on surfaces to make sure that they are protected, (with surface protection), in key areas and touch-points where viruses can build up. People can then make sure that overcrowding isn’t an issue by optimally spacing out staff.
Final Thoughts
There is a heavy need for workplace monitoring which draws massive attention to how important it is to protect the well-being of staff. Every workplace has a responsibility to its workers, and it’s important to recognize this responsibility for what it is. The benefits to large corporations, SMEs, education facilities and even transport hubs are huge. These include:
- Reduced sickness
- Increased productivity
- Retention of staff due to increased happiness in the workplace
- Less energy being wasted
All the above also assist in an increase of profit for businesses proving that workplace monitoring has a great ROI.
Prospective employees are more discerning when it comes to the workplace environment. They are less content to put up with conditions that do not align with their values and beliefs about the modern workplace. This means businesses have to make the transition toward being more wellness-oriented.
It’s not the easiest thing to do yourself, because taking the time to track air quality, surfaces, and population density within the workplace is all things that require a proper solution like the one INVZBL-Envelo offers. It’s understandable why a lot of companies reach out to professionals to handle this for them.
However, it is well worth doing in the long run. Being able to recognize and make positive changes in the workplace will help to create a more wellness-oriented working environment. It’s this kind of decision that not only improves the health of workers but also elevates a business’s reputation.
This article originally published on our partner webpage at https://envelo.solutions/school-classrooms-are-we-just-back-to-business-as-usu
