Top 5 Tips to Increase Energy and Positivity in Your Office Space

We can spend up to 90,000 hours of our lifetime at work, which is almost a 1/3 of your life. It's not "nice to have" but a necessity to have a space throughout our work life that reflects our own personality, needs and creates a beneficial, productive effect on our existence.

Here we give you a quick go-to in making the best of your environment. 

1.  Remove Clutter – you don't have to be a minimalist, but most desks have WAY too much on it, and many offices are just messy in general. Clutter can be stagnant, energy-draining, blocking energy flow completely. Just like your home, a clean space that's not full of unnecessary chaos will truly help you focus.

2.  Light and Colour – daylight and certain colours have a psychological effect on mood and behaviour. Stuck under fluorescent lights in particular colour spaces can actually de-motivate and disengage staff mentally. For example, grey might feel neutrally and stylishly safe, but it can also lack energy, its not necessarily the colour but how people respond to it. Natural light cannot only produce serotonin (the happy hormone) by exposure to sunlight but can even increase the value of your property per square foot.

3.  Scent – burn a little candle somewhere, open the windows/doors or have plants – smells are so closely linked to perception and experience, and bad ones can trigger the wrong responses in the limbic system which controls memories, emotions, and feelings. Fresh smells are normally key linking to fruits or florals, anything too heavy can create the opposite effect.

4.  Living Plants – aesthetically green is a calming colour and plants create attractive interiors. But critically it will bring actual oxygen into the space cleaning out the normal toxic culprits of mold, carbon monoxide, dust mites, cleaning agents and the like. They literally improve the air you breathe – the more, the better we say.

5.  Reminders – get your team in their daily scrum or morning hustles to create a quick positive work sentiment, create a method for display in the office like post its or on special cork boards or scribing spaces. These pointers like "great boss" or "love having flexi-time" or "the team vibe rocks" all add to some great collaborative team spirit and a lovely reminder as you look up during the day. 

To recap, you may not be able to control much in your life, but your surroundings MUST be one. Whether it's within your own office, be strong with your employer to improve your space or as an employer create the right environment for your team. The outcome is really that it creates happy team members, it improves productivity, and all of this boosts your bottom line. There is no downside to a better office environment.