Using AV Technology to Promote Office Wellbeing
Glengarry Green Ross: Using AV Technology To Promote Office Well Being
We as humans have innate physical preferences for natural settings, natural sights and sounds attend to our psychological and physiological needs, promoting feelings of contentment. Even though this is the case, we find ourselves caught in an ever-growing digital and technological world that we cannot tear ourselves away from.
Mobile phones play a massive role in our lives. As soon as our eyes open in the morning, we check the phone. It’s the last thing we see at night. When we go out to eat with our families, everyone’s head is down looking at their phones rather than interacting with each other at the table. It is our connection to the world we live in now.
We’re not taking time to go outside for a nice jog or walk to enjoy a beautiful day. We go to the gym. It’s faster. Everything has to be done at a quicker pace. We have to juggle our personal lives with the need to keep up with a much more demanding and competitive work life, and we are increasingly isolated from nature in a modern, industrialised world leading to stress, lack of motivation, and depression.
It’s difficult for businesses to find and keep good employees. Because of technology, young adults today are able to operate small businesses online from home. They don’t need to go out to a nine-to-five office for their income. They can work at their leisure. The only problem with that is the uncertainty of a good income. The “working at leisure” usually ends up being constantly on call in order to maintain a proper financial situation.
Companies are beginning to realise the benefits of promoting employee wellness and are becoming aware of the need to adapt workplaces to foster a healthy environment. It’s very difficult to retain talented workers for any length of time in a typical business environment. They need to find solutions to make their offices a place where the employee enjoys coming each day, where they have an engaging experience that they want to keep coming back for.
WAYS TO ENGAGE YOUR EMPLOYEE IN THE OFFICE
There are many ways to appeal to your employees senses within the office space. You can include fostering green spaces with an abundance of plants, trees, water features. You can allow them to have small fruit or vegetable plants that they can take care of at work and share with each other.
Hiring a professional plant adviser to come in and work with the employees to set up their own area will get the employees involved and allow them to customize their own space as they would like it. It shouldn’t, of course, interfere or be a safety hazard. A simple approach would be to use the five senses:
- Sight – Nice, natural colours will be soothing and reduce stresses.
- Touch – Fabrics that are soft and welcoming encourage comfort.
- Sound – Nature sounds relax the employees and encourage productivity.
- Smell – Using essential oils or candles in soft scents will bring calming effects.
- Taste – Having coffee or food to share with each other gives a sense of community and offers interaction among the workers aside from using through technology.
AVM builds Multisensory Experiences, combining soothing sounds of nature like water in springs or birds chirping to mask human speech and electronic noise, paired with congruent digital sights, such as natural landscapes on a Digital Video Wall or a real-life waterfall to visually stimulate employees.
While it may not be possible to radically change existing architecture to accommodate this, office spaces can be profoundly augmented using Green AV technology. They take a holistic approach comprising sight, sound, and science to reduce distractions and bridge the gap between modern life’s demands and our intrinsic human needs.
Now when you have to leave home for however many long hours you may be at work, you’re not dreading the time away. It feels like you’re going to a park.
THE BENEFITS OF THIS TECHNOLOGY
- Turnover – With this technology, staff turnover will be greatly reduced. No one will want to leave their office when it feels like a garden. That will save time and training expenses for finding new talent.
- Medical costs – Employees won’t be missing time due to illness from stress or depression from being stuck in a cold, sterile office for hours upon hours every day. This will save you loss of work production, sick pay, insurance costs.
- Employee Production – Employee production will go up because workers will be rejuvenated and energised second to feeling as though they are outside. Being able to interact with the plants and each other will be exciting. Having the ability to concentrate and focus without interruption will allow them to get their tasks done on a timely basis. This will allow you to have deadlines met.
SUMMARY
Most people find AV technology to promote employee wellness crucial in order to maintain a long-term relationship with the same employer for any length of time. These days, that’s no longer heard of. At most, employees garner one to two years at a time with the same employer.
Having this type of atmosphere for the workers would significantly increase the chances that they would want to stay with that job over any other organisation. They would go to work feeling less stressed which would in turn make their private lives more relaxed.
It may even cross over to the point where young people actually put the digital devices away at home and go outside to enjoy nature for real. Maybe they would put some plants in their homes or incorporate some of the technology into their places. They may even put their mobile phones down in favour of actually having a stimulating conversation over dinner with their family.
It would be so nice if this technology led this generation back closer to a time when people were happy to just spend time with each other and spoke on the phone rather than text. This could be a really great thing if it took life to how it was in days gone by for relationships.
Contact Us to find out how we can transform your office