Workplaces of The Future Will Have Responsibility For Health and Wellbeing

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GUEST AUTHOR , 24TH JUNE 2020

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Written By;

Johnathan Ransom

Co-founder

Square Mile Farms

Even Before The Coronavirus Swept Around The world, Employers Were Beginning to Take A Role in Employees’ Health and Wellbeing

It started with big tech employers, like Google and Facebook, which transformed their offices into fun campuses filled with table tennis tables, yoga studios, and candy shops.

Not only did these campuses represent a new, more modern way of working, they also helped attract and retain top talent. Of course, during the lockdown, this trend became more relevant than ever, with employers establishing new wellbeing teams within their HR departments to help look after the health and wellbeing of their remote working staff.

This investment isn’t purely due to a moral imperative, although that is, of course, a factor. Employee sickness, especially during an epidemic, can be costly to the business, while a decreased sense of wellbeing can impact significantly on productivity.

In fact, every £1 spent on workplace health initiatives results in a return on investment of between 2x and 34x. A healthy workplace and work culture help improve both the health and wellbeing of employees, creating a happy, healthy, and productive office.

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Yet, lockdown also means that these fun tech campuses need to compete with home offices. Sure, the campus has table tennis, a juice bar, and yoga classes, but your home has a TV, garden, all your hobbies, and so on. And it requires no commuting.

So, what happens after the lockdown is over? Working from home has become second nature to many, yet the practice has also highlighted the importance of a physical place to share ideas, collaborate on projects, foster greater creativity, and engage colleagues on a personal level. While working from home may have a bigger place within society, it will never fully replace the office.

However, every business will need to adapt to attract people back into the office after lockdown. To achieve this goal will require a complete culture shift to prioritize employee health and wellbeing. This will mean more investment in communal areas, communal activities and providing physical experiences that are beyond digital screens and tools.

As Jonathon Gibson, Director and Head of Sustainability at Avison Young nicely summarises:

“It will polarise between ultra-efficient low cost and soulless spaces, driven by cost per head, which are there purely as a function for when people absolutely need to meet up.

“Then, on the other end of the spectrum, you’ve got the high quality, experiential office, designed to be a space people want to come to and spend time in, that will help attract the best talent. People will be coming to the office for an experience, to have ideas and be creative.

“If you’re operating in the middle ground you’re in danger of being left behind or paying for something that’s never used. So, for this reason, the right companies will make the investment.”

Exciting new health and wellness ideas for the workplace

There are a plethora of workplace wellbeing solutions that focus on supporting employees working from home. The likes of Perkbox, for example, gives employees a range of discounts and monthly rewards. However, they do little to encourage top talent back into the office.

To inspire employees, rather than simply distract them, ideas need to be purposeful, and not just simply a source of entertainment.

So, to truly entice people back into the office, companies will need to implement solutions that improve both physical health and mental health, whilst impacting across many areas such as aesthetics, air quality and connection to nature.

Here are some of the most promising ideas:

Reconnecting with nature
It’s frequently been observed that humans feel better after communing with nature. This “love of life”, or biophilia as it’s known, could involve walks in a park, increasing natural light and fresh air, interacting with an office dog, or adding a few plants to the workplace. Connecting with nature can help reduce stress, improve focus and productivity, and increase mental stamina.

According to a Human Spaces Report, working in an environment that incorporates natural elements increases employee wellbeing by around 15% compared to those who work in environments lacking in nature. While this may sound obvious, reports indicate that 47% of workers receive no natural light and 58% have no natural greenery.

Square Mile Farms is capitalizing on these findings by designing and installing vertical farms within workplaces in London. Not only does this approach offer a highly-visible, attractive green space, but it also provides a source of fresh food. Imagine just walking around the office to collect your salad!

Enabling healthy choices
With the enhanced role HR and wellbeing teams are taking in employee health, it’s not enough to simply give employees gym memberships and leave it up to them. Without space and time to make use of the gym membership, it’s pointless, and it shifts responsibility to the employees.

While health and wellbeing need to be a choice for employees, it is up to employers to enable those healthy choices. Doughnuts on a Friday may be popular, but a fruit basket from Monday to Thursday could be much more effective at improving health.

More than either of these perks, however, employees want more sports within the workplace. According to research by Perkbox, the first and second most prized workplace perks are extracurricular activities and office sports, respectively. These were ranked above unlimited holidays and free lunches.

For example, some businesses are offering free fitness streaming via sites such as TV.FIT to help employees stay healthy at home during the lockdown. So many of TV.FIT’s corporate clients have asked about creating better employee engagement through the platform when things get back to ‘normal’, so they bought a leaderboard app to allow greater competition between users.

At Square Mile Farms, as well as installing vertical farms, we also run employee engagement sessions, where employees learn more about growing plants and their food supply, enabling them to make healthier choices on their own. The plants we grow on-site can also be eaten, providing direct access to highly nutritious food, and reconnecting employees to the food supply.

Not only do classes and sports competitions improve employee health and wellbeing, but they also foster improved teamwork and collaboration. In terms of the culture shift, the results can be dramatic.

To serve us into the future, workplaces need to undergo a massive transformation. Offices need to become attractive spaces filled with nature and light. Employers need to enable healthy choices by creating time and space for collaborative office activities, such as sports and education, as well as offering healthy food and drinks.

Those who achieve this transformation will attract the top talent and produce the most creative work, making it well worth the investment!

HR & PEOPLE

‘Climate Grief’: Fears About The Planet’s Future Weigh On Americans’ Mental Health

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By Victoria Knight

JULY 18, 2019

Therapist Andrew Bryant says the landmark United Nations climate report last October brought a new mental health concern to his patients.

“I remember being in sessions with folks the next day. They had never mentioned climate change before, and they were like, ‘I keep hearing about this report,’” Bryant said. “Some of them expressed anxious feelings, and we kept talking about it over our next sessions.”

The study, conducted by the world’s leading climate scientists, said that if greenhouse gas emissions continue at the current rate, by 2040 the Earth will warm by 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius). Predictions say that increase in temperature will cause extreme weather events, rising sea levels, species extinction and reduced capacity to produce food.

Bryant works at North Seattle Therapy & Counseling in Washington state. Recently, he said, he has been seeing patients with anxiety or depression related to climate change and the Earth’s future.

Often these patients want to do something to reduce global warming but are overwhelmed and depressed by the scope of the problem and difficulty in finding solutions. And they’re anxious about how the Earth will change over the rest of their or their children’s lifetimes.

Although it is not an official clinical diagnosis, the psychiatric and psychological communities have names for the phenomenon: “climate distress,” “climate grief,” “climate anxiety” or “eco-anxiety.”

The concept also is gradually making its way into the public consciousness.

In a June 23 episode of the HBO series “Big Little Lies,” one of the main character’s young daughters has a panic attack after hearing about climate change in school.

Other recently released TV shows and movies have addressed the idea.

An April survey by Yale and George Mason universities found that 62% of Americans were at least “somewhat worried” about climate change. Of those, 23% were “very worried.”

Both younger and older generations express worry, although younger Americans generally seem more concerned: A 2019 Gallup poll reported that 54% of those ages 18 to 34, 38% of those 35 to 54 and 44% of those 55 or older worry a “great deal” about global warming.

There is no epidemiological data yet to show how common distress or anxiety related to climate change is. But, people say these feelings are real and affect their life decisions.

Los Angeles residents Mary Dacuma, 33, and her husband decided not to have children because they worry about how difficult the world might be for the next generation.

“The general anxiety about climate change made that decision for us, and now we can plan for that,” said Dacuma, who works in public relations. “Having it already decided has helped to ease my state of mind.”

Alyson Laura started seeing a counselor for anxiety and depression in college. Eventually, she began working in building sustainability, where she helped businesses reduce their energy and water consumption.

But, a few years ago, she began talking to her therapist about the contradictions in her life.

“I saw corporations destroying the environment, but I was working for them, and I knew what they were doing was wrong,” said Laura, 36, who lives in Atlanta. “It was causing me mental anguish. My therapist advised me to take action on what I could control and try to find another area of work. I just couldn’t work in an industry that was harming the Earth.”

So how do people alleviate feelings of stress, anxiety or depression surrounding the planet’s fate?

Bryant, the Seattle therapist, said the No. 1 action he recommends is sharing these concerns with others, whether a counselor, psychiatrist, family, friends or an activist group.

“There is a lot of underlying worry, but not a lot of dialogue or discussion, and so people feel isolated,” Bryant said. “Talking about it makes you feel less isolated, and it’s also a way to relieve the tension, find a pathway forward and find a purpose.”

In that vein, Dr. Janet Lewis, a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Rochester in New York, recommends building relationships within a like-minded group. That could involve group therapy, environmental activist groups or online communities.

For Laura, becoming involved with the international activist group Extinction Rebellion has helped her build a network of people who share her values and made her feel as if she’s making a positive contribution to society. With the group, she has participated in nonviolent protests and is organizing the Atlanta chapter’s first grief circle, where people can share their anxiety and grief about the destruction of the Earth.

“Activism is also therapy for me,” said Laura.

Personal action is a way to take control of a situation in which you feel powerless, said Dr. Elizabeth Haase, a psychiatrist at Carson Tahoe Health in Carson City, Nev.

“Small gestures, such as taking fewer airplane rides or buying local produce, can actually make a difference,” Haase said. 

Susan Clayton, a psychology professor at the College of Wooster in Ohio, said one way to tackle the uncertainty of environmental change is learning how it might specifically affect your community by viewing climate model predictions.

“If you know what you’re going to face, it’s not quite as scary,” said Clayton, who also co-authored the American Psychological Association’s 2017 report on how climate change can affect mental health.

Lewis said it’s also crucial for people to remember that their mental response to climate change is often valid.

“Most of the kinds of pathologies that we’re accustomed to treating in psychiatry, they tend to be out of proportion to whatever is going on. But with climate change, this is not inappropriate,” she explained.

“The goal is not to get rid of the anxiety. The goal is to transform it into what is bearable and useful and motivating.”

(Ikon Images/Getty Images)

Victoria Knight: vknight@kff.org, @victoriaregisk

RELATED TOPICS MENTAL HEALTH PUBLIC HEALTH ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH

This story also ran on People.com.This story can be republished for free (details).