We know that noise in the office is unpleasant, but did you know that stress and sick leave causes problems within the workplace not only for the employers, but for the employees as well. How do we prevent this? And could creating a ‘healing office’ increase productivity?
In a recent episode of our Ecophon podcast, A Sound Effect on People, we were joined by Anicee Bauer, Design Researcher, and Coen van Dijck, CEO, from Design Studio D/DOCK, both of whom are specialists within office design. In this podcast our guests discussed how they were able to create a “healing office” and how they perceive productivity. Coen discovered from his research that “10 years of working only drove people away from their “natural balance” and this was a negative effect on their wellbeing, leading to “people not having their lifestyle in their own hands anymore” and reaching a “breaking point”.
Coen and Anicee also investigated the effect of new ways of working, with the increase of social media and the rapid improvement of home-working technology. As well as discussing the drastic change affecting the way we are are creative, they also explored the effect on how we communicate. We can now be surrounded by work throughout the day and night; therefore we also need to consider how we will create the right balance of work and social life. Coen discusses further in the podcast about bringing in a level of home comfort to the office environment to recreate the ideal balance.
Ecophon are later joined by Trevor Keeling, Senior Engineer, Sustainability and Physics, at Buro Happold Engineering. Trevor discusses his ideas on productivity and how we measure it when there are so many types of personalities within the workplace. He strongly believes that wellbeing includes both being able to function well and feel well and this is a main step in increasing productivity within the workplace.