„The companies present on the local market started to consider that a healthy and happy employee is more productive than a sick and frustrated one. And though our country is well-known also for its low-budget workforce, the companies started to invest more and more in their employees’ comfort”, has declared Iuliana Carata, co-founder Techno Office.
Therefore, according to the company’s representative, the most important aspects which help maintain a healthy environment in the office target using proper furniture, installing a recreation zone, as well as the initiation of flexible programs for employees.
The secret lays in being ergonomic
Choosing a piece of ergonomic furniture should consider, firstly, the mobility allowed to its user. Moreover, the selection of the product also should consider the materials it is made of, the consequences over the body and its exploitation durability.
„Our body is not conceived for sitting in a chair for long hours, on the contrary. We need alternative tensions, irregular and non-repeated moves in order to function correctly, including mentally. The numbness, the fatigue and the somatic stress are the first consequences of non-complying with this reality. And the time an employee is sitting in a chair affects its performance more than we imagined. That is why an ergonomic chair with adjusted settings and mechanisms should spare us at least by the lumbar, cervical pains or by the well-known sciatic nerve crises. And calculating the loss, we find out that few companies allow the luxury of a cheap chair”, added Mircea Ilaş, Designer Techno Office.
Moreover, he recommends alternating the working position with sitting and standing, the solutions in this case being a height adjustable office– sit-up desk – where the employee could work both standing and seating or even a lounge type office, which allows the employee to adopt a comfortable position, similar to the position experimented in an armchair or a coach.
Office lounge and relaxing zones
The companies could also help their employees with an informal design of the common spaces, such as meeting rooms or even a room specially dedicated to relaxation breaks. In these cases, Techno Office recommends using informal furniture such as lounge, but also integration of coaches, armchairs, game consoles or musical instruments.
According to the company, 70% of the companies designing their offices, and mainly those active in media, advertising, IT and FMCG, choose to implement a relaxation space designed mostly to presentations, brainstorming or informal talks.
Flexible programs
If in the large corporations outside Romania the employees are already benefiting from the possibility of programs where they could profit from the mobility offered by the technology era, on the local market the number of companies which make available to their employees flexible programs, where they could work from home one day per week, is still very low.
Moreover, where the job allows it, Techno Office recommends the alternation of the office work with the field work, an occasion for the employee to relax both the body and the mind. Not least, for the small companies, which carry their activities in a residential building with access to open air, the warm season is a good moment where the daily activities could be carried out outside the office. (source: Techno Office)
