WFH: Is This Your COVID Office Or Your New Business Location?

Whether you plan on working from home for a few months or for the foreseeable future, take the planning of your home office seriously – it has a direct impact on your emotional wellbeing. The mental health benefits of a well-planned work from home situation was always important before COVID, but it’s even more so if you’ve been newly obliged to “transfer” to a home office situation. And – in addition to improving your emotional wellbeing on a daily basis, your smartly planned workspace can increase your productivity.

For your productivity and ability to focus and get work done, it’s best if you have a separate, designated space so that even if you’re wearing your PJ’s, your brain knows, “when I’m here, I’m working”. It’s also clearly easier for others in the family to understand that when you go to your designated space, you have “gone to work”.

Where can you set up a workspace? We’ve worked on projects where WFH was set up in a portion of a basement, a spare bedroom, a room over the garage or a separate suite added on as part of a planned renovation.

Your WFH space doesn’t have to be an entire room, yet you should be mindful of needing to close a door when making business phone calls or participating in zoom meetings. It can be in a room where your designated space is divided from the other areas of the room with furniture, especially if you don’t need specific acoustics (i.e. you don’t need quiet for phone or video meetings).

And most importantly, take the activities and lifestyle of your family members into account! Who else might be working from home? Who may be floating in and out and across your work area? It’s a tough situation to explain to small children and pets when there is no separate room with a door.

Did you know – Americans typically spend 90% of their time indoors. It’s easy to see why your indoor environment has a large impact on your psyche. We list some important considerations for emotional wellbeing and productivity, below.

Important practical tips to ponder when relocating your work to your home: It’s optimal to have a door leading to the outside from your work space so that visiting clients and team members don’t have to go through your whole house. Some towns have rules about parking at your home, how many employees you can have in the home, and the number of delivery vehicles pulling in and out of your property. Many towns have strict rules about signage for your company and how much square footage of your home can be dedicated to your business.

Productivity Tips

Let the Sunshine In Daylight gives you an increased sense of well-being. Your work space must be well lit, preferably with windows allowing you to view your yard, garden or other natural beauty; so even though you’re indoors, you retain a connection to the outdoors. Skylights are also great at providing natural daylight. If windows facing nature are not possible, bring in artificial lighting that can approximate natural light. Don’t forget the need for and placement of task lighting.	Let Nature In Plants add natural beauty, and brighten up the room with color and living energy. Little known fact: They clean the air and are nature’s noise filters. Working in an environment with plants promotes calm, soothes us and provides a natural de-stressing agent.	Uncluttered and Tidy It’s no surprise: cluttered workspaces lead to anxiety. Typically piles and messes are all around you because you “just don’t know where to put it, so I’ll leave it here for now”. It’s tough to put it away when you don’t know where exactly “away” is. Tackle all the “stuff” in your workspace by assigning a home for every little thing and make it a point to send it back home when you’re done with it. We’re already in a tense situation and we don’t need a mess to add to stress.

Whether it’s a completely new house, or simply a small renovation, you can take your goals to us so we can work with you to turn your vision into reality.

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