On a normal morning at work, your browser looks like this: work email on the left portion of your screen and a bunch of Word documents for other projects on the right side.
There’s another set of browsers opened with several tabs meant for different tasks and activities – and there’s also your phone, nagging you with calls.
The only problem is that because of having so many activities right in front of us, our brains are having a hard time directing our attention into one activity.
If you’ve been struggling to achieve deep work, whether you’re doing it in a shared office like a coworking space or an enclosed room like a private office, you may be experiencing attention residue.
The term sounds overwhelming but it’s a really simple phenomenon; it’s what happens when you constantly redirect your focus from one thing to another.
Those quick checks can reduce your brain’s cognitive capacity and costs you a seemingly-trivial but not really trivial amount of time before it clears up.
Affecting productivity and driving up voluntary turnover, the phenomenon has cost US employers nearly $200 billion yearly in healthcare coverage.
From encouraging sleep and meditation through nap pods down to healthy snack bars, quirky perks can be found in almost every modern workplace today.Yet amidst all of the clout and other activity going on, we have easily overlooked the fundamental factor that contributes to workplace stress: work environment – starting with the work itself.
For years, researchers have advertised the benefits of better work practices for performance and productivity, enumerating two critical contributors to employee engagement: job control and social support.
Recent studies have also indicated that having limited job control creates ill effects that extend beyond physiological well-being, it actually imposes burden on a person’s mental health.
Physical and Mental HealthBritish epidemiologist Michael Marmot and his team lead one of the most notable studies in the area popularly known as the Whitehall Studies.
Together, they discovered that the higher an employee’s rank is, the lower their morality is to cardiovascular diseases.
And as today’s businesses finally see the value of employees truly engaged in their work – a good example of encouraging certain patterns of thought and behavior – they finally realized that maybe they should be paying more attention to office design.Environmental psychologists are mavens of design for the scientific world.
A large number of environmental psychologists are moving what early scientist have learned about how humans experience space into design practice where it can help make people’s lives better.Among the factors that they focus on is how design affects one’s mood.
Through a series of psychological chain reactions, mood influences worker engagement – meaning, a positive state of mind results in enhanced levels of engagement.
So in order to create engaging environments, organizations need to design a workplace that emits positive mood.Employees who work in offices as such convey to their colleagues that their employers value their presence in the team and the contribution that they make to their company – and the good feeling they get from being respected enhances their engagement.
Hence, it’s no surprise that what they are communicating to the members of the workforce carry more weight than easily generated passages.Workspaces indicate respect for its users when it supports them as they do their jobs – employees want to do their work well and this creates a big influence in one’s self-identity.Generally speaking, designers speak to the employees who will work in that space regarding their jobs and how it can be designed in such a way that would optimize their performance.
More often than not, it gets designed to look good – to resemble that one workspace seen by the CEO from some magazine spread.Instead of copying some other aesthetically pleasing space, the main aim of its design should be to be able to help workers do well in contributing to their respective companies.
Remember that cute kid in yellow and her younger sibling in a stroller barging in on their dad during a video conference with the UK broadcasting company, BBC?
That video wherein their mom would later rush into the room to grab the two kids and the broadcasters – and their dad, too – were left baffled and in fits of laughter.Yeah, that video.It went viral not just because of how adorable and funny the whole scenario is, but because a large majority of the world can totally relate to the confused dad and the panicking mom.
Working parents have been there before – some, too many times – and they all know the anxiety and the fear of your kid wreaking havoc as you participate in a conference call with at least five members of your management.Parenting while maintaining a professional career is indeed stressful, but that’s the reality for almost sixty-one percent of married-couple families with a kid or kids under 18 in which both partners work.
And because of the advent of remote working and virtual offices, more and more companies are encouraging parents to work from their homes.Whether you’re a mom, a dad, or maybe both, here are a few inspiring stories and tips on how you can avoid your kid from going completely viral:“Secrets of the Remote Workforce” co-author Teresa Douglas is a proud mom who has been working from home since 2010.
In order to establish this with her children, she puts a “STOP, in a meeting” sign on her door.
In addition, she also implemented a house rule that if her door is closed, you can knock once, but if nobody answers, it automatically means she’s in a meeting.The physical barrier that you would establish can help remind you and your kid of the difference between work time and play time.
Highlighting the unique points of your very own brand through your office creates a brand new experience for both of your clients and employees.A well curated workplace branding infuses an office with a much deeper meaning, gives out a warm welcome to visitors and increases employee engagement, commitment and productivity.
Though despite of this, several organizations remain to settle to adding the newest logo in the lobby wall.Executive Vice President of JLL’s brand experience team, Big Red Rooster, Aaron Spiess says that it’s been a common knowledge among retailers that great branding plays a big role in sparking a shopper’s interest and loyalty for it gives them a better grasp of the identity of an organization.
Forward thinking companies are applying the same principle to their respective headquarters, seeing that potential customers aren’t the only ones affected by compelling branding of a physical environment – thoughtfully designed workplaces also have the capability to excite and engage employees.Effective Workplace BrandingThe reality is this, even those with the best branding are often not thoroughly understood by its own members.
And 24 percent vaguely knew what their company stood for.Speiss adds that too many workers are disconnected from the brands they actually represent.
Having a physical location that allows teams to experience it first-hand can help alleviate this issue.And this is not just to have better brand ambassadors.
The aforementioned factor is becoming a valuable consideration among job-seeking Millennials who aren’t just looking for modern offices – they are seeking for a place that’s unique and meaningful.First Impressions and BeyondA great looking lobby is just the start of having an effective brand experience.
Some have traced it back to despite having available resources around them to familiarize themselves with the work models, there are certain employers that continue to fail in creating a fulfilling path and culture for their employees.To make things even more alarming, a large number of these young professionals walking away from the corporate track are women.
According to a Deloitte survey conducted among 7,700 millennials coming from 29 different countries, one out of four respondents plan on quitting their respective job within a year.
Moreover, women are most likely than men to have left the company.A recent global ICEDR study orchestrated during 2015 to 2016, leaders believe that the majority of women at the age of 30 leave because of the struggle they experience creating a balance between their work and their life.
Women are frequently left burned out as they try to make a contribution to the business while making sure that their voices and opinions remain significant.Another reason cited by the readers is impact.
There are also certain young ladies who choose to continue their profession independently so that they have more control over their goals.And the last most common reason is the overwhelming feeling of being undervalued or underutilized.
The corporate world seldom fully recognize women’s ability to contribute, nor do they curate an environment that allows women to reach their potential and succeed at the highest levels.
Why We Still Need OfficesUndeniably, our way of working has gone through drastic changes.Today’s technology has allowed us to work almost anywhere we want – spurring a question that a growing majority of us is asking; if work have become digital why do we still come to offices?British economist Frances Cairncross – along with a number of other social and media theorists – predicted that distance will die during the year 1990s following the spread of the internet.
They argued that space itself would become irrelevant when every place is connected instantaneously to every other location on the planet.
Traditional workspaces will soon be rendered obsolete as instantaneous communication to almost everyone is established.But quite frankly, history has veered off a bit too far from what they expected.
There’s no denying that we can now easily talk to anyone from around the globe yet ironically, we still go to work every day.
On the other hand, corporations continuously invest in new or renovated office spaces located at the heart of urban areas so as to attract more talent.What They MissedLittle do the early commentators know that though we now have the option of working anywhere, it doesn’t necessarily mean we want to.
Even if we already have the power to access a large quantity of information right at our fingertips, we still strive for places that allows us to share knowledge face to face, to generate ideas, and to create pools of talents and perspectives.No matter how far humanity has gone in terms of modern technology, human aggregation, friction and interaction of minds remain to be vital aspects of work – most especially in the creative industries.
