Best Practical Ideas for Creating a Healthy Home Workspace
Best Practical Ideas for Creating a Healthy Home Workspace
Remote working allows flexibility in creating your workspace and working from anywhere you feel comfortable. Remote working allows you to take your work anywhere you go.
But you need to keep in mind that when you continuously move to different places for working, you need to take all your devices and equipment together. You have to spend extra time setting up your devices every time you change your location.
When you work from home, you might want to work from somewhere comfortable, like your bed or couch.
Working from such places can reduce your work productivity and performance.
Even though remote working allows you to work from anywhere you feel comfortable working, it is always better to create your workspace.
When you work from the same place, it helps to enhance your productivity and increase your work performance.
Practical Ideas for Creating a Healthy Home Workspace
Here are some ideas that you can use while creating a healthy home workspace while working remotely:
Select Your Spot
Before you set your office space, you must select the office space. Most of the time, you might feel like working from your bed. But the question is, do you feel productive enough while working from bed?
Working from bed sounds comfy and relaxing, but your productivity level declines when you work from your bed. You might fall asleep when working from your bed in the worst case.
Sometimes, while working remotely, you might work from\ your garden or terrace while getting some fresh air.
While working from crowded places, do your job matches your work areas. Some jobs need peaceful places, while some require their employees to stay in touch with people.
Some of you might not work in crowded places, while others like to be around people while working.
Therefore while selecting a workspace, you need to select your spot based on your personality and job.
If you are the one who needs a peaceful environment while working, you should work in a place with less distracting elements and zero disturbance.
If you are the one who likes to be around people while working, you can place your work desk in places where there are people’s movements like your living areas or your garden.
Make Sure Your Spot Have Enough Light and Air
Another thing that you need to keep in mind while selecting your work spot or workspace is to have adequate light and air. When there is not enough light and air, it can reduce your productivity level.
While selecting your office space, you need to ensure enough lighting, and you need artificial light at a minimum level.
When there is not enough light, you will need to use fluorescent light, which emits ultraviolet radiation to increase your exposure to carcinogenic radiation.
When you work on fluorescent light for too long, it can harm your health like eyesight problems, headaches, increased stress, etc.
Moreover, sometimes fluorescent light keeps flickering, disturbing you while working, and can cause headaches, migraines, anxiety, etc.
Likewise, you should also ensure proper air and ventilation facilities while selecting a workspace. Ventilation helps to pass fresh air from outside and keeps the room fresh.
When there is poor air quality, you can feel fatigued while working, have headaches, irritation, etc.
Therefore, you should first see the light and air facility while selecting your work spot.
Get Ergonomically Office Devices
As mentioned above, while working remotely, you might work from anywhere you feel comfortable.
For example, when you work from your couch, you might feel comfortable first, but it might not suit your body posture.
When you are in the office, you are provided with an ergonomic chair, and your desktop is placed in a good way for your body posture.
Likewise, you need to invest in suitable ergonomic office devices like a chair, desk, monitor, mouse, keyboard, etc.
While working, you need to stay in the same position for nearly 8 hours. Staying in the same position for nearly 8 hours can stress your body. You can also face muscle pain, fatigue, musculoskeletal disorder, etc.
Therefore, when you use an ergonomic chair, work height-adjustable desk, and monitor, you face fewer chances of facing such health problems.
Furthermore, you need to use an ergonomic keyboard and mouse that provide your hand comfort while using the mouse and keyboard.
Ergonomic keyboards and mice are designed to provide comfort and stress while moving the hand.
Make Sure Power Outlets are Around You
While setting up devices on your work desk, you should check power outlets around you. When your power outlets are in one corner of your room, and your work desk is in another corner of the room, you will need extra cables to connect all your devices.
For example, when your power outlet is far away from your work desk, you will need some extra cable to connect your laptop, printers, wifi, and other necessary devices.
And when there are lots of wires, it makes your workspace look messy, and too much wire can be chaotic.
Hence, when you place your work desk near your power outlets, you can easily manage your wires and make your work desk look clean.
Keep Distracting Elements Away
If you are a person who can easily get distracted, or if your job requires more high focus then, you need to keep all the distracting elements away from your workspace.
Distracting elements can include play stations, TV, Landline phone, unhealthy snacks, etc. Distracting elements also include our family members, roommates, or even pets.
For example, when you are in the middle of your work and your pet walks into your workspace and starts to play with you then, it can distract you when you are working.
Likewise, when you keep TV around while working, you might start to feel monotonous and watch TV, distracting while working.
Keep All The Required Equipment Around You
Constantly getting up in between your work to get some stationery items or any other necessary device while working is not fun.
Getting up and constantly moving here and there to bring necessary equipment can be distracting, and you can lose your focus on your work.
When you constantly move here and there to find the necessary equipment while working, your productivity reduces.
You need to organize your office equipment and stationery items properly. You can separate cabinets to keep each item separately to find them easily whenever you need them.
For example, you can make separate cabinets for your office stationery, papers, files, folders, small electronic items, and more.
Moreover, you should also keep a trash can near you to throw any unnecessary paper rightways. You do not need to pile them up and throw them at one, making your work desk look dirty.
Decorate Your Workspace
A little bit of work desk decoration hurts none. Decorating your workspace will inspire and motivate you to work some extra hours. Since you spend half of your day at your workspace, refreshing touch to your workspace will energize you.
Decorating your workspace will reflect your personality and provide you with a positive atmosphere. You can add some of your favorite quotes that keep you motivated.
As color can make a huge difference, you can add some colors to your workspace, colors that inspire you, or some soothing color.
If you are a nature lover, you can add indoor plants and make them eco-friendly. You can take care of your plant when you are on break.
Plants also help create a positive atmosphere and help to increase your work efficiency.
Do Not Let Anyone Entry Unless its Urgent
Last but not least, you need to make some rules for your workspace, like no entry in the room until a specific time. In other words, you need to set boundaries or rules while you are working.
When you are working, you can get distracted and lose focus when someone comes to your workspace.
For example, when you are working, you can get distracted by your toddler when your toddler walks into your room.
While working, you should shut your workroom door, ensuring no one will enter your room. No one can enter your room without your permission when you shut your door.
Due to increased awareness of remote working, working from home has increased.
Many companies are providing remote working options for their employees. Remote working provides advantages for both employees and employers.
Here are some advantages of remote working for both employees and employers:
Advantages of Remote Working
Zero Commute
As the name itself, remote working suggests the ability to take work anywhere. Nowadays, most employees look for remote working options to work from home or anywhere they want.
One of the benefits of remote working is employees do not need to travel to their work, saving a lot of time. If you need to travel to your work daily, you have to separate 1-2 hours for getting and traveling to work.
If you live in city areas, you might have to face massive traffic daily, consuming lots of time. When you reach your work after facing colossal traffic, your energy will reduce, and your productivity level will also reduce.
While working from home, you can utilize your traveling time to do something productive, like exercising, doing some courses, and more.
Reduces Expenses
Remote working is cost-friendly for both employees and employers as it helps reduce both employees’ and organizations’ expenses.
You can reduce office rent expenses, parking space, stationery, office equipment, etc.
You can utilize these expenses for employees’ beneficial training and development programs.
Likewise, you can save on travel, parking, and vehicle maintenance costs as an employee. You can also save on food and lodging costs if you stay away from your home. If you stay in city areas, these costs are usually high compared to remote areas.
Hence, remote working helps reduce the expenses of both employees and employers.
Provides Flexible Schedule
Remote working typically comes with flexible schedule benefits. A flexible schedule allows employees to choose their work hours and work whenever they want, but they have to finish their work hours.
It allows employees to work when they are most productive. When employees work when they are most productive, it helps enhance their work and increase productivity.
When you work from the office, you may not have a flexible schedule option, and most of the time, you have to clock in and clock out at a particular time.
You have to work at a specific hour even if you do not want to work. It can reduce your work productivity, and your work quality may not be as good as possible.
Personalize WorkSpace
When you work from the office, you will be given a specific space like a cubicle or a cabin. Sometimes, if there is much staff in your office, you may not have enough space, and the workspace can be congested.
Also, you will have fewer options to customize your workspace while working from the office. Sometimes you have to share your work desk with your colleagues, which can be not reassuring.
But when you are working remotely, you can create your workspace anywhere you feel comfortable working from.
If you like to work in a peaceful environment with very little disturbance, you can choose your workspace accordingly.
You can select a space that has enough lighting and has fresh air. Likewise, you can even add some plants and decorations that can lighten your mood.
Enhances Employees Productivity
As per the study conducted by Stanford University, it is found that remote employees are more productive than onsite employees by 13%.
When you work from the office, you can get distracted by gossip about your colleague’s incredible work, helping your colleagues with their work, etc.
Likewise, if your office is in the city area, you can get distracted by outside noise like vehicle noise or music played at the stress.
Also, if some protests are going on, you can get distracted by those protests. But while working remotely, no one can disturb you while you are working.
You can place your work desk in spaces with a less distracting element. You can work anytime you feel productive, automatically increasing your productivity level.
Wider Talent Pool
Remote working options help bridge the gap between job seekers and job providers residing in any part of the country or even the world.
When there is a remote working option in the organization, you can work for the organization by staying in any part of the world. As a remote worker, you will get many job opportunities just by staying in your room.
Similarly, as an employer, you can hire talent worldwide without any location barriers. Sometimes, you can hire employees for lower wages than onsite employees.
Likewise, the hiring costs of remote employees are less than onsite employees. Many expenses occur while hiring onsite employees, like recruitment interviews, training expenses, etc.
But for remote employees, all these activities can be done online, which costs less than the former option.
Hence, you can hire talented employees at minimum costs without any location barriers.
Conclusion
To conclude, everyone has a different preference for their workspace. Some like to work in a peaceful environment, while some like to work around people.
Therefore while creating a workspace, there might be differences in their procedure due to their preference.
In this article, I have tried to mention some ideas while creating a workplace that can be useful for both people. I hope this can be useful for you in creating a healthy workspace.
Also, if you have some more ideas for creating a healthy workspace, please feel free to mention them in the comment section below.