Employee Productivity Through Natural Light
It’s an age old conundrum. How can bosses invigorate a flagging workforce without disrupting the whole office?
Staff productivity is a key concern for any company, especially as it dramatically affects work input and therefore profitability as a whole. The insufficiencies of a desk-chained environment can be overlooked and disregarded as secondary. However, recent studies by the Centre for Mental Health have highlighted a major issue affecting staff in office-based workplaces – ‘presenteeism’.
A term for employees who simply show up to work as if it’s their only obligation, business bosses are increasingly finding that their staff come to work only to spend their days getting little to nothing done, slowing down important projects and negatively impacting on the staff forced to share their workload. If this sounds like your business, how can you boost your employee’s productivity and avoid this vicious cycle?
The answer? Natural light.
It sounds crazy, but when it comes to implementing changes for a positive office environment, many have argued for the health benefits from natural light, particularly sunshine. Sunshine is very important for well-being because of the UV rays it provides. These help the human body to produce vitamin D, dubbed ‘the sunshine vitamin’ by health experts. Vitamin D has been hailed as an effective treatment for allergies, back pain, tension headaches and namely, depression.
Studies have proven the benefits of natural light for workplace productivity. In 2008, a study of 1,000 city workers by the Federation for Small Businesses found that 22% of workers got less than 20 minutes of sunshine a day. As a result, two-thirds of participants suffered with depression and four out of five blamed their lack of motivation on their sunless working environments.
So what can you do? Well, rather than cashing out on expensive light boxes, artificial sunshine ceilings or vitamin supplements on tap, the installation of glass skylights is a worthwhile investment. If the ceiling above an employee’s head is restricting their vitamin D intake and so their capacity to work, the common sense solution is to remove the obstacle. Alternatively a roof window is a brilliant solution and will not only bathe office space in a glow of natural light but will boost the potential and welfare of all of those beneath it.
Sunsquare is one of the UK’s leading providers of high-specification skylights and roof windows. Designed to achieve maximum daylight with minimal framework, our skylights can be fitted to any surface on any home. For more information please visit the website.
Tags: business productivity, employee productivity, natural light, skylights
May 22nd, 2012 at 8:33 am
Interesting information to learn. This used to be one of the main reason’s factories were hated so much. No one wanted to be there all day and feel like it was night. One of the previous factories I worked for (Praxair) built a new facility and placed large windows at the top to allow for ample lighting along with natural light for the employee’s. But still at the same time there were no lower window’s for view, they were all placed up high. No sky light though.
May 23rd, 2012 at 10:01 am
Thanks for the comment, Ty.
The Hawthorne Effect is one of the oldest research studies in the field. It simply notes that when you make an effort to care about people’s work (such as giving them natural light), you tend to have a positive impact on the work itself.