Benefits of active design in the workplace

Designing for incidental movement in the workplace or healthy coworking office

Instead of talking about workplace exercise it can often make more sense to think about how to foster and promote a culture of incidental movement during the work day - this is a combination of personal willpower and workplace design in the context of a healthy building strategy.

We were born to move, when you look back in nature in evolutionary time, we didn't deliberately exercise as such but we were active for at least a few hours every day, it was simply part of our survival strategy in a harsh environment.

We were moving around, gathering, occasionally hunting, and keeping busy when food was short, weather was bad or other animals made trouble for us.

Walking meetings / standing meetings

How does all that connect with workplace wellness and a healthy office culture? Steve Jobs was a big proponent of one-on-one walking meetings, he figured out that a short walk in the fresh air can be, in some cases as good as a caffeine hit.

Short, focused team meetings can also be taken standing, either in a meeting room or around a table. They can also help avoid those seemingly inevitable energy slumps, helping ensure your concentration levels don't wane mid-afternoon for example.

So, how do you make that happen. Well, you can, you can either try and instigate it yourself or perhaps it's leadership, the boss or manager leading by example. Again, each workplace needs to experiment here to find what works for them, the key is to be open to such workplace wellness concepts.

We've all felt that feeling of sluggishness at some point in the work day in an office environment and a long afternoon meeting in an enclosed room with poor ventilation is not going to help at all, there's really no need to suffer through that anymore!

We know too much about how to create a healthy positive meeting room designed for productivity for that to be happening.

Active design stairwells in workplace design

Moving through the office building, stairwells are often this forgotten corner typically just left white with no real design interventions or points of interest, it’s as if the office architects or designers just ran out of steam or considered the stairs to be back of hours, rather than a space to embrace into the workplace design.

Imagine what happens if you were to spend just a little time designing those stairwells with workplace wellness in mind, what would happen, even with a minimal budget?

Perhaps you've got music playing, there may be living plants or other forms of biophilic design such as moss walls and nature-inspired artworks, or large vinyl graphics, something cool is going on with the lighting so that it feels inviting rather than a harsh blue-white LED from morning until night.

All of that would be what's called active design in the workplace - you'd be implementing design strategies that are there to promote workplace activity just by making it a more visually pleasant space to use, to move through from time to time during the work day rather than this perennially forgotten and under-utilized ‘Plan B’ option for navigating the building.

active design signage prompts

Never under estimate the power of signage at the point of decision, office workers about to press the button on the elevator for the 10th time that morning can be easily reminded that “hey, we've got these really cool things called stairs just over there, why not walk up to the third floor instead?”.

If we each make it our personal mission to use the office stairs a bit more, it can cumulatively add up to a meaningful contribution to the so-called ‘10,000 steps a day’ (which just means - moving around plenty each day). So this is another example of incidental movement during your work day.

It can be as simple as not sending an email to someone five floors up but instead actually going up to see them, and then walking back down - over the course of a day, a month and a year, that can make a tangible difference. It is one strategy amongst many and not a complete fix but it’s completely free and within reach of everyone, so why not grab it with both hands?

Standing desks in the healthy workplace

Arguably the most prominent shift when it comes to creating a healthy workplace is what's happened recently around standing desks, immediately taking a large slice of those sedentary hours sitting hunched over a screen and injecting a degree of extra movement that is so critical to creating a culture of workplace wellbeing.

There's been a real change in perception of what is acceptable in terms of workplace furniture in recent years and implicitly what a standing desk can can do for us in that respect.

Endless sedentary days are linked to lower back issues, they generally do us no favors in terms of out energy levels and do more harm than good overall. It’s time to mix things up!

Standing for part of the work day stimulates your blood flow, helping to maintain energy levels.

You don't necessarily need to spend the entire day at your standing desk, it’s OK to lean on a stool as well to take the weight of your feet, we recommend using a standing mat (see accompanying image) so that there is something soft under the feet, that makes a big difference to comfort levels.

A great brand to look for here is Fully with their eco-friendly bamboo desk tops.

How to get started with a standing desk in your office

Like anything in life, this takes a little practice, so don’t start by trying to pull 8-hour work days without taking a seat, it’s just not going to work and you’ll crash or burn within a week.

Start with an hour, then two and before long you won’t notice the difference. Nobody says you can’t sit down for the afternoon after a busy morning either! Expect a transition period of around three months for this.

Creating the habit of exercise around a work day

The flip side to what we’ve been calling incidental movement in the workplace is deliberate exercise, a chosen period of activity that has been consciously added into the work day as an opportunity to vigorously move your body, to get your sweat on, or simply to do some stretching, mobility work and so on. It’s all good.

Key to making this habit stick is a systems approach rather than relying on willpower alone. No matter whether you're a beginner or an elite athlete there, it’s about removing obstacles to that exercise happening. Try scheduling a workout like a meeting in the calendar.

Prepare your workout gear the night before a morning session, perhaps engage with workplace colleagues who are going to train too so we can hold each other accountable.

Office gym design in workplace wellness

For home workouts, or office gym workouts, all you really need is a basic set of gym equipment with an exercise mat, a few weights, a kettlebell, medicine ball or sandbag - the rest is psychological, if it’s an underground bunker with no natural light, no fresh air, no sense of visual interest, no coach or workout partner around… that workout is simply not going to happen, let’s face it!

That’s why outdoor workouts are a safer bet, weather permitting, or making the effort to get to an actual gym - which then becomes a ‘place of practice’, somewhere to really get the job done, rather than a space that has been partially converted into a pale imitation of a true gym. This may mean more time from your day but the value it adds may well make it worthwhile.

Our psyches are sharper than we think, they are not easily fooled. So, understanding yourself, your own personal motivation and the recognizing the limits of your willpower are all essential steps in creating a healthy work day.