How Non-Traditional Atmospheres Improve Employee Relations

Corporations that Open Up the Work Space

Companies that intend to implement a more transparent work environment can just go for it with an innovative design of all workspaces open to each other. This is a natural, green expression of healthy airflow, natural lighting, perhaps an indoor water feature for limited privacy and noise abatement, and lots of living plant life.

How can a non-traditional atmosphere improve employee relations, open the mind, and release the imagination? Think of traditional cubical style enclosed workspaces with their mandatory one potted plant in each cubicle. There is really no real privacy; it’s an illusion of privacy. The walls create a closed environment for each person, but there is nothing to absorb all the surrounding sounds of 30, 40, or more people stuck at their desks for hours and hours.

The Value of Opening the Minds and Spirits of Employees

Innovation can mean the way you set up your work environment for your employees. Breaking the rules in traditional work environments means a more open approach that allows the creativity of every employee not just R&D. The way you set up work spaces, the flow of work being dominant over the design, areas where everyone needs access central to the room, desks located strategically where anyone can sit and perform tasks on pc’s or laptops.

Where the workspaces are located, flexible time schedules, using cloud capabilities so employees can have access to their work from wherever they are when an idea is forming, using their mobile devices. Having innovative office equipment like walking desks (treadmills with desktops), YES! People do get used to typing on their devices while walking on a treadmill in a very short time!

Consider having adjustable desktops that can be lowered for sitting and raised for standing while working facing a great view window for inspiration. Gone are the days of employers thinking employees must be busily engrossed in tasks every minute of their paid time. Moving forward with an open structure means giving your creative talent brain space, as well as physical space, and body movement space.

Employees Respond to Generosity of Spirit

Additionally, having a creative work environment in the office, a game room, a weights and work out room, a natural juice bar or food bar, and even a chef to prepare omelets to order for meals will form a work rhythm of winding up, sustaining, and then winding down from the intensity of mental work.

Employees are free to take “mental” breaks for re-energizing and refocusing their minds to begin again, repeating the process of free innovation and complex problem solving.

There is another very practical side to an energizing and healthy work environment. Lowered employer medical costs. Less absence for illness, less health treatment insurance costs, and when employees take less time off, there is definitely the advantage of work continuity. Projects are completed on time without and gaps when employees are happy to be focused on their work.