Sustainable workspace

Sustainable workspace, isn't that just old wine in new bottles? I mean, we have been talking about work-life balance for years, isn’t it just the same?

Well, not to me.

Disclaimer: I am not a psychologist, life-coach or anything like that. The statements and opinions below are mine, and mine alone, based on my experience, courses and books I’ve read. I’m just genuinely interested in these topics.

First of all, I never really liked the phrase “work-life balance”. I get the intention, but in my opinion in that phrase, you separate work from life, meaning, IMO, that you set life on pause while being at work, and once your off from work, you regain “life”.

But to me it is pretty sad if that is the truth. Work is part of your life, a rather big one, on average people spend 1/3 of the day at work, that’s a lot, so if you do not have a life at work, what then?

Of cause work-life balance just means that you need to balance your life between work and “own-time” / free time / spare time what ever you want to call it, or rather, that your company, your employer needs to make sure that it is possible to have that balance.

So what is the difference between that and sustainable workspace? To me there are similarities, but also quite a big difference, where work-life balance focuses a lot on the balance as mentioned before, sustainable workspace focuses a lot more on what actually happens at work, how you work, the circumstances under which you work, it is basically what brings life into your work.

If you look up the word sustainable you will find a couple of definitions, for example if you take the Cambridge Dictionary, you’ll find these definitions;

-????????? able?to?continue?over a?period?of?time:

-????????? causing, or made in a way that?causes, little or no?damage?to the?environment?and?therefore?able?to?continue?for a?long?time:

(https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/sustainable)

And that is essentially also what a sustainable workspace is, it is a workspace that enables you to work for a long time without any damage, and when I say long time, I certainly dot mean long hours during the day, I mean over a long span of time, that you happily will go to work at the same company for years and years.

Now this could be quite literally interpreted as if you need to wear protective gear at work, hard hats, safety shoes, etc., and yes, in some workspaces you may have to, but it is so more than that.

A sustainable workspace means that you feel safe, that you are in a good space, that you are able to go home in as good a mood and as fresh as you went to work in stead of being wasted at the end of the day.

In order to create a sustainable workspace your company needs to provide the possibility to do so, but they cannot do it alone, you need to take your part in it.

The first part to me is to establish psychological safety, if you do not feel psychological safe it will be hard to establish a sustainable workspace, because, if you are psychological safe you can be you, and that will have an effect on your mental wellbeing and by that you will probably perform better.

Next up is good mental wellbeing, again, your employer needs to set the frames for this, but it is up to you, and your colleagues, to do what you can within those frames to establish mental wellbeing.

A third thing is simple rules on how we work together, and part of that, to respect each other and our needs.

Sounds easy, or does it?

Let us take a closer look at psychological safety. It’s not an easy task to establish that, and it is fragile, so chances are that the safety will be challenged, or even broken over time, over and over again, but we need to be able to reestablish the safety. In order to get started with psychological safety we need to build trust, we need to trust our peers, need to be open to them, show each other who we really are. This can be a hard job and will take time. But we need to establish an environment where we without fear can tell our peers and managers how we feel, what is on our minds without being afraid of their reaction and we must be able to be ourselves, to look like we want to, again without being met with prejudice. It must be an environment where you are safe to do uncomfortable things. If you and your company want to deep dive into this subject, please reach out to Gitte Klitgaard , she is an expert on this!

Next up is as said your mental wellbeing, and this is all about taking care of yourself. And that does not start at work, or cannot only be done at work, it starts at home. It starts with sleeping well. Your brain needs the break and so does your body. So actually, it starts before your sleep, and I’m not going to go into all the good advice on how to sleep well, but only highlight one: Do not spend time on your smartphone just before you close your eyes, read a book instead. If you google how to sleep well, you’ll get a long list of good advice, have a look at them, see if you can improve your sleep. Another thing that isn’t just at work is good eating habits. Eat good food in a reasonable amount, stay healthy. And work out, get fresh air, a daily walk takes care of both.

If sleep, food, fresh air and work out is in place you have a good starting point for mental wellbeing.

At work you should continue this. Take breaks now and then, a break can be going for coffee or tea, to the bathroom, for office supplies, or anything else where you leave your desk, and one thing is very important; Leave you tasks at your desk, don’t bring them on your whatever short walk. And maybe go for the coffee machine or bathroom that is a bit further away from your desk than normal, just to get those extra steps, and those few more minutes, do some mindfulness on the way, empty your brain. And speaking of mindfulness, stay in touch with yourself during the day, focus on how you are feeling, if you can feel your stress level rise, then maybe take that break, or / and maybe some breathing exercises. If it is really bad, take a slightly longer break and go outside for a short walk, do focus exercises like going slow, be drawn to what attracts you, notice patterns, see the beauty in everything (these are the Tuning The Senses steps from Street Wisdom – have a look at Home - Street Wisdom to get more info or reach out to me). The point is to get your stress level down, to get you to focus again. If though, you keep feeling stressed over a longer period of time, get help! Talk to someone about it, if it keeps being bad go see a doctor, get professional help! Some things cannot be cured with breathing exercises, a good sleep and healthy food.

The next step in getting a better mental wellbeing is hard; Avoid task switching and disturbances. We switch between tasks all the time and gets disturbed even more often by colleagues, mails, phones, instant messaging, sounds, movements. Depending on how easily you get distracted this will have a massive impact on you during the day. Here also comes in the rules about how we work together, for instance, how do I signal to my colleagues that I am focused and would prefer not to be disturbed? Put on my headphones? Yes, maybe, or it could be a rubber duck on my desk, a stop sign or something entirely else, but it must be a common rule, something we all agree upon. It will make you able to focus on your current task, a task that should be small enough for you to finish it within a “short” amount of time. When you finish a task you get a mental reward, a kick, in opposition to when you work on large tasks where you don’t get done for days and days, maybe even weeks, that will have a negative impact on you, or at least, you don’t get the frequent small rewards.

All of the above can only be done if you have the right circumstances, and that is where the companies need to do something, they need to establish that for you, you must be allowed to, for instance, take a break and go for a walk if needed, work from home, they need to trust you to do what is best for you and your company to get your work done and stay mentally healthy.

So a sustainable workspace is where you can do your best, where the company benefits the most from you, it is where there is trust between employees and employer, where mental health is in focus and all that in a psychological safe environment, it is where you come home from work with as much energy as you left in the morning.

So back to my question; It sounds easy, doesn’t it?

Yes, but it isn’t. It is a long journey, and if you are not provided with the trust, the right circumstances, then it is almost impossible to obtain a sustainable workspace.

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