Creating and maintaining a healthy work place environment is great for employers and employees, it helps improve morale, increase productivity and creates overall greater wellbeing.

The World Health Organisation defines a healthy work place as: “A healthy workplace is one where workers and managers collaborate to continually improve the health, safety and wellbeing of all workers and by doing this, sustain the productivity of the business” (World Health Organisation, 2009

Here are some tips that have been collected to help you whether you are an employer or employee that can have a greater impact of your work place.

Reward

Rewarding employees can go a long way to boost morale within a team. This can be as simple as saying “thank you” on a job well done. It can also be a financial bonus, extra days paid annual leave or buying lunch for your team. Something as simple as saying thank you and recognising your teams hard work so can so far to boost confidence and ensure you are getting the best form your team.

Mental Health Training and awareness

One of the best things you can do is create a workplace that promotes positive mental health. Create a mental health plan and have staff trained in how to recognize the signs and symptoms of people who might be suffering with poor mental health and how to signpost them to help. If staff know they work in a space that will support them through mental health and have a team who understands they are less likely to suffer alone and look for support. Use our EUNIOA project to help you create your plan.

Promote a work life balance

Having a work life balance is not only important for health and relationships but can also improve employee productivity and performance. Some ways of achieving this is to offer hybrid work options for your staff, can they work from home 2 or 3 days a week. Encourage your staff to take breaks especially away from their desks or work area. Regularly review your team’s workloads. Look for feedback form your staff too what is working well for them how do they think improvements can be made and where, they may have some ideas that you have not thought of due to not being in their position. Also something as simple as playing music in the office can make a huge difference to people’s mood.

Don’t be afraid to unplug

With increased access to our emails and phones it can be harder and harder to switch off from work mode, especially if you have found yourself working from home during the pandemic. Making sure you give yourself time to recharge your batteries when your day is over allows you to recover and be ready for another day and also gives us time to focus on our hobbies, relationships and catch up on some valuable sleep. 

How to maintain these changes

These things can be done over time as they say Rome wasn’t built in a day. Take your time but always include your staff in these changes and find out what is working for them and what isn’t. Once you have implemented some changes, in 6 months’ time hold a review see what’s changed in your workplace. Has your team’s productivity increased? Are people happier coming to work, maybe the mood has changed in your workplace? We’d love to hear if you have tried to create a more positive work environment and what the results where? Leave a comment below to let us know.