Business Wellbeing and the New World of Work
By Business and Wellbeing Expert, Ros Jones
So much has changed over the last few years in many areas of our lives. Our expectations, our values, beliefs and priorities have all been challenged which has resulted in people reassessing what they want -and deserve -from life and work.
Prioritising your wellbeing
To be sustainable, the future of work has to be different than in the times before the Pandemic.
Business wellbeing is the essential new way of doing business going forward into this new world of work and progressive businesses are already adopting it.
Business wellbeing is all about adopting a balanced approach to business growth. It turns everything on its head. Forget about chasing the money, worrying about the competition, micromanaging your employees and worrying about where your next customer is coming from.
Instead, place focus on developing quality relationships, collaboration over competition, an emphasis on learning and personal development, looking after your physical and mental health, having an abundant mindset and the essential factor – make sure you’re having fun! When you stop having fun, smiling and laughing, eventually everything else stops working and your personal and business wellbeing suffers.
Business wellbeing is not some fluffy abstract concept. Embedding it into your business culture has already proven to lead to bottom line growth. Employees become a united team, motivated and determined to pull in the same direction as the vision of the business, and the customers just come knocking.
Just one example is the change of thinking around working environments. More than ever, it’s recognised that the environment in which we work is fundamental to productivity and all-round business wellbeing.
Spacemade has been instrumental in helping design workspaces that enable coworking and neighbourhood coworking, flexible working and working closer to home as options for business owners and employees alike.
Flexible working
The Pandemic showed us that working from home is possible and has its advantages. Many businesses are opting to continue with that policy, even as part of a hybrid approach that includes a mixture of office and home working. It releases the significant overheads of maintaining a large office building and if it’s proven it works, why not continue?
Over time, though, enforced working from home has been shown to lead to personal and business wellbeing issues such as feelings of isolation, lack of motivation and fall in productivity.
Working in the same space you live can have a negative impact on your work/life balance too: it becomes more difficult to avoid distractions like responding to personal email or calming a whining pet (or small child) and the boundary between work and personal life easily gets blurred as you go back to the laptop after the evening meal.
But there are now more options available.
Coworking
Coworking spaces can provide flexible alternatives to working solely from home. Spacemade has been instrumental in helping design workspaces that enable coworking and neighbourhood coworking, flexible working and working closer to home as options for business owners and employees alike.
Four advantages of coworking for business wellbeing in the new world of work
- Being in coworking spaces means you’re in close proximity with other working professionals, whether you work with them or not. This can improve motivation and create a sense of community, which in turn will help boost productivity by combating feelings of isolation. We humans have an innate need to belong to a community. The hum of the office is sometimes exactly what many workers need to get a feeling of belonging and some extra motivation. This makes it easier to take responsibility for our personal and mental health and wellbeing which is an important principle of business wellbeing.
- Coworking offers opportunities to build relationships outside of the business which is another key principle of business wellbeing. Read more about the 5 Principles of Business Wellbeing here.
- While coworking spaces can be perfect locations for holding both client and team meetings, they can also provide in-person networking opportunities where you can get to know your coworking colleagues through events held onsite like informal café gatherings or catered lunches.
- Meeting people doing different work than you can help build the feeling of being part of a community and may even provide opportunities for new business or collaboration.
The impact of our working environment on our mindset and therefore our motivation and productivity is huge. It’s important to get it right. If you’re looking at flexible working options to support business wellbeing, coworking spaces might be a good option.
The best coworking spaces offer a range of workplace settings to choose from whether it’s on-demand desks, private rooms and conference rooms.
Further reading: The 5 Principles of Business Wellbeing
