What Is a Wellbeing Room & Should Your Business Have One?
A wellbeing room is a designated office space designed for employees to use during their working day. This should be a quiet, relaxing environment that’s easy to access. It’s just one way that businesses can support employee wellbeing. Stress is one of the biggest mental health concerns in the workplace and a wellness room is a space your team can use to reduce the symptoms.
Benefits of having a designated quiet zone
- Reduce absenteeism and presenteeism
- Increase employee retention
- Enhance productivity and quality of work
What should be in a wellness room?
Aside from using calming colour palettes, ambient lighting, plants and comfy seating, there are other ways you can enhance the wellbeing experience. Sound masking, for instance, can help to restore speech privacy and mask over distracting noises from outside the room. Layer this with natural soundscapes and you can help your employees de-stress with the sounds of birdsong and running water. Connecting with nature is considered a good way to boost wellbeing and concentration.
This could be particularly helpful after a difficult meeting or to take time out during a high-intensity work project.
Presenteeism can be an issue if people are showing up to work but not able to complete their tasks as well as they could. This could be as a result of physical and mental health related issues, or poor concentration due to a poor quality work environment. With concentration experts suggesting that we focus in blocks of time ranging from 10 – 52 minutes, a wellbeing room is a chance to take a break after a burst of high-focus work.
If you often have employees working overtime in the office, this can also be a space for them to recuperate and take regular breaks. This will act as a safe, calming environment where they can take a break from the computer screen. Having a healthy attitude towards the use of digital technology is also encouraged to improve wellbeing.
You don’t have to set aside a large area and making sure that the room doesn’t present itself as another office space can help. Investing some time and research into decoration and features you’d like to include is worthwhile.
Interested in sound masking for your wellness room?
If you’re looking to create a wellbeing room in your corporate office, Remark Group is a leading provider of sound masking and soundscape installations for businesses. Contact us today to arrange your demonstration or to discuss our solutions in more detail.