7 Tips to Help Facilities Managers Make The Workplace A Stress Free Zone

by Tiffany Bloodworth Rivers on May 8, 2015
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As a facilities manager, you want to make sure that your workplace runs smoothly. You can spend a lot of Encourage your employees to reduce their stress at work, and they will be happier and more productive.time caught up in the need to run a facility effectively. However, to retain your employees and help them be happier and more productive while they’re working for you, it’s important to add a bit of fun to your workplace. Stressed-out employees are less able to focus and more prone to chronic health conditions. Lower your employees’ stress levels with these ideas and help them to loosen up at work.

Add Social Times and Spaces

Let’s get together: when you’re designing your facilities, design social spaces for your employees. These might be lunch or break rooms, games rooms, gyms, or even community gardens. When you provide places where employees can relax and socialize in a less-structured atmosphere, you may find that new connections emerge between departments and between different levels of management.

Encourage Open Communication

Your employees will have disagreements and differences. It’s only natural, given the diversity of backgrounds and generations in today’s workplace. It’s harder for employees to relax, have fun, and be productive and successful if they’re harboring resentment. When you’re in management, make sure that your employees know that they can come to you with concerns, and encourage them to talk them out with other employees as well. Be a listener, and help employees solve their problems when they seek your assistance.

Decorate the Low-Stress Way

Providing diverse indoor and outdoor spaces and mobile options will help your workforce stay social, engaged, and active. Add natural colors and elements to your office to make it a stress-free zone. Blue and green paint not only makes your office look natural, it also helps reduce stress levels, helping your employees feel calm and focused. When you bring plants into office spaces, you improve indoor air quality and relax your employees as well.

Help Employees Move

The design of the office environment can make life much less stressful for your employees. Ensure that your workplaces are designed for the easy movement of people, and provide meeting places as well as quieter spaces. When you work to help your employees move through their workplace and attend to their work, you reduce their levels of stress.

Add Fitness to Your Workplace

Exercising is a tried and true way to beat stress, but many of us sit for much of the day. Workplace gyms are a place to burn off stress, while gardens and other hands-on workplace projects get employees active. Encourage employees to get out for a walk or do yoga at lunch by creating employee fitness groups. Have a walking or running contest to see who can accumulate the most miles. If you want to get silly, hold a 80’s athletic fashion day to kick off the spring running and walking season.

Get Flexible

Employees often need to flex their schedules, and a workplace environment that’s accommodating leads to higher levels of job satisfaction. Provide flex days so that your employees can stay home with a sick child or attend a medical appointment, and you’ll find that your employees feel renewed and recommitted to your flexible workplace.

Leave Time for Fun

Whether it’s a Halloween dress up party, casual Fridays, or a contest that pits department against department, create traditions at your workplace that incorporate fun and social time. Teams that connect socially are more likely to connect well as they work together to manage your facilities.

Can better facilities management software reduce the stress in your office? By giving employees better tools for the job, you help them work more efficiently. Give your employees the benefits of a lower-stress workplace by adding iOffice to your office. Visit iOffice today to learn more about stress relief in the workplace.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tiffany Bloodworth Rivers

Tiffany covers leadership and marketing topics and enjoys learning about how technology shapes our industry. Before iOFFICE, she worked in local news but don't hold that against her.

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