What is a healthy working environment?

A healthy working environment is one that accounts for and responds to the various needs employees have, whether physical, emotional or professional. Healthy working environments actively provide employees resources that make taking care of themselves easier while working to eliminate unhealthy elements in the workplace. The four major components of a healthy working environment are:

• A healthy work culture: Healthy working environments communicate expectations to employees clearly and are reasonable about job requirements. They embrace work/life balance, learn from mistakes productively and encourage collaboration.
• A safe environment: Healthy working environments make sure that employees don’t encounter any unnecessary danger when doing their jobs. They make sure working areas comply with regulations, have safety protocols and facilitate safe practices.
• An emphasis on health and lifestyle: Healthy working environments encourage employees to maintain good health, enabling them to perform better and more reliably.
• A high level of professional support: Healthy working environments help employees develop their professional skills rather than encourage needless competition. This produces team members who can create more value for the company and more opportunities for their futures.

Creating a healthy working environment requires an investment of time, energy and money, but the outcomes can lead to greater employee retention and performance. Businesses that support employee health often find the initial investments pay for themselves.

How to create a healthy working environment

Here are the steps for creating a healthy working environment for your company:

1. Determine the nonnegotiables

The first step toward creating a healthy working environment is making sure you meet the baseline requirements of a healthful workplace as established by law. By making sure your company operates responsibly, you protect your business and the jobs you provide to the community. Review the various sources of health-related regulations, such as:

• Federal labor laws
• State labor laws
• Local regulations
• Industry-specific guidelines

Many of these regulations help you protect your employees and their health, providing a critical foundation for your company’s healthy working environment. They also often represent costs of doing business that might influence how you otherwise invest in health initiatives.

2. Understand your budget

Healthy working environments require some financial investment, but you can also achieve many goals by adapting the systems you already have. It’s helpful to understand how much you can spend on creating a healthful working environment and how much progress you can make with investments of time and energy. For instance, your company may not be able to buy new ergonomic chairs because of cost, but it likely can make sure managers limit communications with employees outside of business hours to promote work/life balance.

3. Prioritize goals

Healthy working environments require upkeep and commitment. Decide what health-related goals are most important for your organization and its employees and strategize to meet them. It might help to categorize goals by the area of professional health they promote: work culture, workplace safety, health and fitness or professional support. Your company can benefit from making a few targeted improvements in each area, rather than only focusing only on one. You also might consider surveying your employees to better understand which initiatives they’d appreciate most.

4. Improve the physical working environment

Improving the physical working environment helps keep your employees healthier and safer. The efficient design and layout of a workplace, along with supplying employees with the proper tools to do their jobs, affect health by reducing the potential for harmful effects. Some ways to make sure your physical work environment supports employee health include:

• Ergonomic support: Whether an active or sedentary job, ergonomics affect all professionals. Purchasing or reimbursing for ergonomic office supplies—such as chairs or standing desks—shows respect for the comfort and health of your team.
• Improve safety communications: Make sure your workplace uses clear and well-placed signage or electronic communications to inform employees of any safety hazards they can avoid by following safe practices.
• Create welcoming break areas: Breaks, whether a lunch hour or a few minutes of rest, help employees feel energized and productive when on the job. Make sure your break spaces are enjoyable and comfortable to use so that your team knows you value staff taking a moment to relax and refocus.
• Provide collaborative spaces: If your employees have spaces to meet and work together, they’re more likely to enjoy the collaborative process. This might mean designating meeting rooms, or it could be as simple as installing white boards where employees share ideas with the team.
• Consider temperature: Temperature can vary greatly even within offices, so make sure you account for unwanted temperature changes. For instance, placing desks near a frequently opened door with a draft might needlessly interrupt your employees’ focus.