Why do business owners ignore the environment where their team spends at least 23% of their year?

Its a cold hard reality that we spend far too much time each year locked inside the glass and concrete walls of our offices. According to the ABS our team’s spend at least 2,000 hours/annum at their desks and we as business owners spend on average 2,450 hours/annum. That is between 23% and 28% of our year’s inside our glass and concrete environment.

By comparison, we spend just 2,548 hours/annum in our beds getting not so great sleep. We average just 7 hours per day in our beds but work 8-10 hours per day in our offices. Add to that an average daily commute in Sydney of 70 mins and we spend between 26% to 31% of our year dedicated to work.

So what can we as business owners and CEOs do about it?

Happiness and wellbeing are the current trend in the workplace and there is no shortage of programs, consultants, even apps to help you increase happiness and wellbeing in your team. 

BUT, all of them fail to address the one space, the one space your team spends at least 23% of their entire year. Where you can make the biggest and most long term effect on you and your team’s happiness and wellbeing, the office environment.

By investing smartly in the workspaces of your team you can create a snowballing effect on the happiness and wellbeing of your team. In fact we believe that great office art especially that featuring nature and natural beauty is a catalyst for cultural change in your business.

Why is nature important in the office?

"interactions with nature can deliver a range of psychological well-being, cognitive, physiological, social, tangible and spiritual benefits” - NCBI

Surprisingly many of these benefits can be obtained by looking at pictures of nature and the natural environment, particularly reducing the physiological effects of stress.

So, while it may be harder to spend more time in your work day interacting with the natural environment, by bushwalking or even sitting outdoors under the shade of a beautiful tree.

We can bring waterfalls, rainforests, beaches, sunrises and more into your office in the form of large glass prints. 

Imagine you are having one of those days when things aren’t going to plan, you have a big deadline ahead but you can’t clear your mind, can’t focus. Drinking more coffee has’t worked, you don’t have time to sweat it out in the gym for an hour. 

But instead in your lunch room you have a huge 2 metre wide glass print of a serene and beautiful waterfall. You stand there in front of the waterfall, close your eyes and imagine the sound of the water flowing, you take 3 or 4 deep breaths, slow your mind and heart rate. 

You open your eyes and you are there, sitting at the base of this beautiful, calming and natural wonder. You take just 5 minutes from your day to refocus, centre your mind and body on the task at hand. How much better would you feel? Imagine the multiplying effect on your entire team of just one waterfall in your lunch room.

Reducing stress, particularly at times of high energy in a team can have a huge ripple effect on the culture of your team. When you bring nature into the lunch room and back of house workspaces of your team you can create an environment that is positively focused on wellbeing and encourages happiness. Studies into the medical effects of viewing nature in a hospital environment have yielded some interesting results 

"found that viewing nature for longer periods not only helps to calm patients, but can also foster improvement in clinical outcomes — such as reducing pain medication intake and shortening hospital stays” - Ulrich

So the benefits of simply viewing nature in the office environment can have some diverse, short and long term effects for your team.

What other benefits are there to business of Office Art?

“It shows management cares enough about the employee experience – and the customer experience” – FORBES

As mentioned in this Forbes article there are valuable benefits that workplace art can bring to corporate culture. They include boosting creativity and helping to reduce stress but they also demonstrate to your team that you care about them and the environment that they work in. 

We engage your team in art the art selection process, this simple act of having your team helping to choose the art for their workspace can have a dramatic effect on the productivity of your team.

Research conducted by the University of Exeter UK found that "People working in enriched (decorated with plants and pictures) spaces were 17% more productive than those in lean (bare and functional) spaces, but those sitting at empowered (allowing the individual to design the area) desks were even more efficient — being 32% more productive than their lean counterparts without any increase in errors.”

Professor Alex Haslam, who co-authored the research, said it was time for managers to recognise the potential improvements that can be made by handing some control of space over to workers and thereby giving them an opportunity to realise their own identity in the workplace.

He said: “Not only does office design determine whether people’s backs ache, it has the potential to affect how much they accomplish, how much initiative they take, and their overall professional satisfaction. Further research that we and others have carried out also highlights strong links between a lack of control over workspace and sickness in the office.

“All this could have a huge impact for firms of any size, yet employers rarely consider the psychological ramifications of the way they manage space. By paying more attention to employees’ needs they can boost wellbeing and productivity at minimal cost.”

So the challenge to business owners and managers is how to engage teams in the design and visual impact of the workspace, incorporating nature in an effective, streamlined and cost efficient manner.

At The Office Art Specialists we make this task easy for business. We manage the process from start to finish focusing on creating a great workspace for your team that delivers wellbeing, happiness, creativity and productivity benefits today and for many years to come.

Contact us today for your free 20 minute consultation to see if we are a good fit for your business. Click here to book your consultation TODAY.