 Okay, thank you everyone for joining TechSoupConnect's July presentation. We appreciate it as being brought to you by Refuel Recharge and Create Your Change. I am Kat Milner, the owner-operator of Create Your Change, and we want to welcome Tony Wright today for being willing to present to us on your environment, your work environment both usually from home. She is an environmental scientist turned interior designer with a passion for making life more pleasant for people in their working environment. So without further ado, I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Tonya. So if you could just unmute yourself. Okay, hi everyone. Thanks for joining me today. I'm going to be taking you through a little presentation about how evidence-based design can help you increase your productivity and well-being while working from home. And just trying to set up my slide. Can everyone see that properly? Kat? Yep, can see it. Just fine. Thank you. Great. Okay. So just quickly, I'll go over what we're covering today. Just give a brief intro to me and then we'll go into talking about working from home, going forward post-pandemic, ways that you can measure productivity and well-being, how you can use evidence-based design to help you increase your productivity and well-being working at home. And then we'll be covering physical factors, benefits of nature and plants, in increasing working well-being. We'll be looking at creating structure in your work day and ways to stay connected and build trust between staff and management, which is vital for the success of working from home. We're also, because I really believe in putting theory into practice. So as we go along, I ask you to make a bit of a note of one thing from each section that you can do to increase your work from home productivity or well-being. So by the end, you should have an action plan to take away with you so you can get started right now. So just a brief intro to me. Like Kat said, I'm an environmental scientist, I'm a tier designer. I spent over a decade in science and academia, mostly looking at climate change related research and also doing some teaching at Melbourne Uni. While I was there, I saw all this great research being done, but no one really putting people or publishing papers that there wasn't much happening out in the real world. So I decided I wanted to do something a bit more tangible to make more of a tangible impact. And I left Australia and went to the UK and started working for in the charity nonprofit sector. And while I was working in Oxford, I was asked to redesign the office I was working at. And it made me absolutely fall in love with workplace design and how can people help people and organisations increase their productivity and well-being. And I went on a deep dive into the literature and use my research background to really start to craft really unique design spaces that can help people. So I wanted to start with a question. Are you working still working from home? If you just want to let me know in the chat. And do you plan to keep working from home? Does your office plan to keep working from home? Anyone? Let me see, try and get this. Yes, yes. Okay, okay, great. Got a few people saying yes. So we all know there can be some great benefits working from home. And, you know, there's many reasons beyond just a pandemic while we might want to incorporate working from home into our working schedules, at least part of the week. A lot of workers have decided now that they'd like to be at least two to three days at home and then a couple of days in the office as well. And that's because working from home can give you a better work-class balance. It gives you more flexibility in your schedule so you can start and end your day when it suits you best. And this might make it easier for things like childcare, attending appointments, running errands, getting enough exercise or social interaction and just making some healthy choices for yourself and having the time to do it. It also means no commuting. So the average commute in Australia for full-time workers is 4 hours and 10 minutes per week, which is roughly 15 minutes a day or 25 minutes each way. So actually quite a lot. And not only can you get your time back if you're staying working from home, you can use that time for other exercise, for other activities, like we're saying exercise or even just some extra sleep. And you can reduce the physical and mental effects of commuting. And those can include increased levels of stress and anxiety, higher cholesterol, elevated blood sugar, increased risk of depression. Working from home can also help you save money. So the obvious ones are on petrol, car maintenance, public transport if you take it, parking fees, professional wardrobe, buying lunches out. And it can also help the employer save money in many ways through reduced overheads. And like we're saying, all this adds up to an increased quality of life. So you can have, like we said, more time for physical activity, being able to eat healthier from home, less exposure to illness, which you might get in the office, and the ease for caring for health issue or disability if you have one. And as you all know, it's a lot greener, especially if we're taking those cars off the roads. So they're the pros. Now we all know there are some challenges. If you want to put in the box in the chat, let me know some of the challenges you're experiencing working from home. Okay, Trudy saying hi, Trudy. Trudy saying isolation. Yeah, that's a huge one. Cat is your husband keeps accusing me of being a shard in. Yes, even if you couldn't stay home, I definitely have that a lot as well. And that's something I deal as well with being a sole trader working from home and living alone. So definitely. Yes, I do. I like being at home too. Yeah. Okay, Trudy, you don't want to leave each other. You don't want to stop that one. That can be a big problem too. Yeah, Marina. Yeah, that can be an issue. So Marina saying being at a company, it takes longer time to communicate with the coworkers working from home. And that communication in the ways that we can do that formally. But then also the informal social aspect we get as well can be hard to bring through when we work at home as well. So there are definitely things we need to address. Okay, great. So there's some of the issues you're working on. I put together a few... Oh, yeah. Of the general comes of working from home that people talk about a lot. Because there are some potential pitfalls that we really do need to start addressing if we want to keep working from home productively and keep that as part of this flexible work arrangement option. So one of the biggest issues is the perceived loss in productivity by management. But like we're saying, we're seeing people either working too much. So there's work bleeding. You can never switch off because it's in your home. Or they're actually not working enough because you're getting procrastination happening. You're distracted by maybe your household chores or children. It's just so easy to go to the kitchen and get a snack or there's so many ways to procrastinate around the house. A lot of people are having an issue of potentially there's a lack of a dedicated space. So not everyone's lucky enough like I am to have a separate room where I can have a home office. A lot of people are needing to work out in shared spaces like living rooms or kitchens. And so this is really leading to a real lack of work-life balance. And like we're saying, you can never really switch off because it's always there. It's in your home. And like Trudy and others were saying, we're isolated from our colleagues. We're lacking community. This can all be an issue and weigh on our mental health. And like I said earlier, there's this perceived loss of productivity. But how do we even measure productivity or well-being? So my next question to you if you want to pop in the chat is, are you measuring your productivity and well-being in general working from home? And if so, how are you making that happen? So if you just want to write something in there, in the chat, so Trudy saying no, so not currently measuring it. And that's the thing that we're finding a lot actually is there's this perceived lack of productivity, but no one's actually measuring it at all. So it's all just mental and maybe, as in a lot of cases, for a lot of different work tasks, productivity can actually increase when you're working at home because of those lack of distractions. So Kat's saying that she wants to do both, but she's not sure how to track it. Yeah, that's a good point. And Trudy's asking how to measure as well. Well, that's what we're going on to next. I'm going to give you a little bit of an idea of how that's possible. But it sounds like no one's really has a system up in place at the moment. So if we just take it back to a definition, generally speaking, productivity is defined as a ratio of output to input. So in organizational operational terms, that means productivity can be described as a ratio of company turnover to employee cost. Now, that's when you're looking at a whole company level. But we want to maybe just focus in on how we can do things as an individual when we're working from home and keep a track of it for ourselves. So again, there's three main ways that people try to measure work productivity. They're management by objectives, where you get a specific set of goals and targets agreed on between staff and management to achieve for every kind of task or work that you do. The second is quantitative productivity. And that's where you set goals and targets, like KPIs, to achieve within a certain timeframe. And the third one is measuring by profit. And that just means tracking revenue. So basically, if the revenue is increasing, that means employees are more productive. Again, that's a bit more of a company-wide one. But to track your own productivity working from home, it's probably easiest to start with the first two methods and work on setting yourself specific targets and goals and seeing how well you can meet them. So have a think about the kinds of tasks that you're doing in your day. And that's where tracking yourself can come in handy. I don't know if anyone's currently working on if they've got any KPIs that they set themselves. But maybe just start combing through what you do and trying to put some specific goals that you can track. And then you can set up your own, basically, productivity surveys. So although there's no single definition of well-being, most people agree that it requires meeting various human needs, some of which are essential, so like being in good health, as well as the ability to pursue one's goals, to thrive, and really feel satisfied in life. The OECD's How's Life report identifies there's three pillars for understanding and measuring people's well-being. The first being material living conditions, that's really like our survival, quality of life, and then sustainability. So well-being can be measured using a number of different staff surveys. And the common ones I've put up here, which include mental health surveys that are used by government health organizations, as well as staff satisfaction and safety surveys. So the big ones are the anxiety, depression, hazardous drinking. Those are the rare ones that if you go to a GP and you're saying I'm having trouble, say with depression, they'll get you to fill out those specific surveys and they're scored. There's also a survey called the Workplace Incivility Scale, and then you have surveys you can put out about if you've been experiencing bullying or harassment in the workplace or even when you're working from home. In either way, when you're measuring productivity and well-being, it's really important that you establish a baseline so that you know where you're starting from before you make any changes. Like we've seen here, no one seems to be currently tracking their productivity or well-being. So it's important that we start doing that and create a baseline, a start point, and then you can start putting in some of these changes. And that way, when you re-measure it, you'll be able to see exactly how much these little interventions you're putting in these changes in your environment helping you increase your productivity and well-being. And then you can just keep on monitoring using the same surveys and the same KPIs, say, at regular intervals, say weekly or monthly, and just set aside some time once a week or once a month to check in to see how you're going and if you're still on track. So evidence-based design can really help you when you are looking at trying to increase your work productivity or well-being. And in case you don't know, evidence-based design just means constructing a building or a physical environment based on scientific research to achieve the best possible outcomes. So while it might seem obvious to me coming from a science background to base any changes or design of a space on data and evidence, it's actually not the norm. So for me, I find that quite strange because it's logical for me to face these decisions on something if someone's actually done the research and the data's in. And this is the problem. I feel like there's so much research being done and they're releasing their findings in these journal articles and that they can directly help you to increase your productivity and well-being working from home and in the office. So that's what I do is basically read through the scientific literature to bring all that knowledge into my design work and I've put together some of the basic principles and some information for you in the rest of the slides that you can easily take home and apply to your own work spaces. So the biggest effect on productivity is made by physical factors that can relate directly to your psychological and physical comfort. So the main ones I'm going to talk about today are lighting, temperature, noise, air quality and having a dedicated space to do your work. So in terms of lighting, the main productivity drains are having a lack of natural daylight, your workplace being too dark in general and they're being glare from light sources either directly into your eyes or reflecting off of your screens. So the best practice is to obviously try and maximize daylight as much as possible. That means either working near a window or if you have a skylight. I know it's not always possible depending on where you have to work at home but if you can try and get as much natural daylight as possible that is the best thing you can do. Also try and keep your vertical surfaces bright. Now the big thing is having no glare on your computer screen. So as you can see in the diagram I've included here, if you have a window it's actually better to position your desk perpendicular to the window than either facing it or the window being behind you because that way the glare is not coming either straight to your face or onto the screen itself. And make sure if you have a desk light with you make sure the light is not reflecting straight onto the monitor because that's going to cause glare as well. In general terms warm white colour bulbs are best at 150 lux which is around 90 watts in LED light. They're more pleasant to than other conditions and also in studies they people perform better in word categorization tasks. So keeping that warm light. So this is where you can write down something for yourself. Have a bit of a think about is there something you could easily do to upgrade your lighting in your workspace currently? Do you need to shift where you're working? Maybe move your desk around? Do you maybe need to bring in some other lamps to increase the lighting? Because like we're saying the maximum is actually 500 well the best optimum amount of workplace lighting is actually 500 to 800 lux. And there are little monitors that you can get that are quite cheap or even just apps on your phone that you can use to measure your lights of the space. Okay so moving on to temperature. So thermal comfort is described as state of mind which expresses satisfaction with the thermal environment and basically it's subjective so it can vary from person to person using based on a broad range of factors that can be age, gender, metabolism rate and the time of year so the season. In an office thermal comfort is measured by analyzing the number of discomfort complaints that you get but at home you can just tailor it to yourself and that's why you only have to worry about you. Studies have indicated that temperature change within an 18 to 30 degree Celsius range can influence performance on office occupants in tasks like typewriting, learning performance and reading. So generally speaking the temperature range of 21 degrees to 25 degrees Celsius is a stable temperature for office productivity so you want to be trying to keep your home office within that 21 to 25 degree Celsius range and just note that there's a decrease in occupant performance by 2 per cent per every one degree Celsius increase in temperature within 25 to 30 degree Celsius. So you can see that actually changes in temperature have a huge impact on our productivity so make sure that you're monitoring your temperature which you can do with a simple Samantha to keep it between that 21 to 25 degrees. So when we're talking about noise basically we can also call it acoustic comfort and it's really important to workplace design that's because continuous and prolonged noise at high levels can induce can induce and increase stress levels over time and obviously increased stress is going to decrease your productivity and well-being. So we can see here we've got a neutral sound pressure of a typical air conditioner in an air-conditioned office is between 45 decibels to 70 decibels and as you can see down the volume we've got a bit of a scale going on here. So a private office is about 40 decibel noise level recommendations so we want to keep it about that which actually is the average home noise and just to put that also into a bit of context a refrigerator hum is around 40 decibels so you want to make sure that you're trying to keep it around them and as you can see in here actually we've got office noise around more than 70 decibel and that's actually at a level if it's prolonged that can start increasing that stress those stress um and like we say just as temperature is really affects productivity so does changes in noise so for the same temperature change that we had of one degree Celsius so that two percent of productivity difference is actually the same every time we change the decibel from for 2.6 decibels so again noise is hugely impactful um on our productivity and well-being and just as a little tip uh nature sounds especially the sound of water and running water can actually help you to relax and reduce stress so it's not just about reducing general background noise you can actually start using noise um sounds in a beneficial way as well so maybe think about the noise levels where you're working at home um where do you think they would fall on this scale so are you is that other other people working at home with you at the same time do you have kids running around um but do you have your own private office that you can close your door and really be on top of those noise levels and once you've put think where you you know where you land on the scale maybe try and write down something um that you could do to improve those noise levels to have a bit of a think about that and jot something down okay so now we're going to move on to a really big one which is air quality um so you may have heard of sick building syndrome or building related illness and they were first documented in the 80s um basically sick building syndrome is used to describe a situation in which the occupants of a building experience acute health or comfort related effects that seems to be linked directly to time spent in a building now that can sound kind of nebulous and it kind of is but the symptoms are wide ranging and can include dry itchy sore or burning eyes um alongside irritated nose or sinusitis symptoms respiratory irritation headaches lethargy and mental fatigue so all of these things pride together obviously reduces your work efficiency and also increases ascenteeism um so have a think have you been experiencing any of these symptoms do you think you've experienced that at home or in the office maybe you've experienced it in the office a bit more um have a think about if you've been experiencing that in your workplace just going through sick building syndrome the causes now these are quite wide ranging as well they can be chemical contaminants like um volatile organic compounds um biological contaminants like pollen bacteria molds uh inadequate ventilation electromagnetic radiation which can come from our computers tv's microwaves basically any electronic device or psychological factors are an even an issue so excessive work stress poor communication um also poor inappropriate lighting like we've talked about as sense of sunlight noise like they're saying bad acoustics poor ergonomics and humidity so basically that's telling you what is causing sick burning syndrome so have a think about um are you experiencing that maybe the pollen bacteria molds could be an issue working from home um and also your devices could be a big one as well so maybe have a think about how you could be mitigating those effects so air quality in general um at least for our purposes today can be broken down into two main categories they are contaminants and ventilation so a good workplace with good air quality actually has higher work performance in office tasks such as text typing proof reading and even mathematical tasks um so when we break down the main contaminants we have like I said before the volatile organic compounds um or aldehydes now these are the main contributors to poor air quality um they're ubiquitous both indoors and outdoors um VOCs are organic chemicals that are emitted as gases from products or processes um and for the most part you can actually smell them when they're present so typical sources of VOCs indoors include things like cleaning agents disinfectants air fresh air freshness dehumidifiers paints in your in your wall your furniture um all of those products can have VOCs in them um now another one is carbon monoxide so um in contrast to the VOCs carbon monoxide is actually impossible to smell taste or see um and at low and moderate concentrations it can cause fatigue chest pain or impaired vision and at high concentrations it can even be fatal so um sources of carbon monoxide are usually things like generators um poorly maintained boilers or furnaces um and automobiles and vehicle exhausts from nearby idling vehicles things like that um um next we have particulate matter so again found inside and outside their mixture of solid particles and liquid droplets suspended in air so things like dust pollen smoke soot um they're all the um all the particles themselves are different sizes but the ones that are most of concern to us are the smallest which are about 10 micrometers in diameter um diameter or smaller and that's because those small particles can actually be inhaled um and inhalation of particulate matter can affect the heart and the lungs um so indoor examples um of particulate matter could be things like um produced by fireplaces uh smoking cigarettes um or other activities like that and then there's a few others that are on the radar which are things like radon carbon dioxide nitrogen dioxide and methane and just on the right there i've included a table that gives you the recommended um indoor air quality um by the living building institute um yeah by the international well building institute and that's just there for your reference um basically indoor air quality sensors are available to purchase um and they're pretty much the only way that you can measure these contaminants some homes may already have things like carbon monoxide sensors fitted when it comes to um ventilation um ventilation basically moves outdoor air into a building or a room and distributes the air within the building or the room so the general purpose of ventilation in the building is to provide healthy air for breathing both diluting the pollutants which originate in the building um and removing pollutants from the room um building ventilation has three basic elements they are ventilation rate which is the amount of outdoor air that's provided in in the space and the um quality of the outdoor air air flow direction which is the overall air flow direction in the building um which should should be from clean zones to dirty zones and then air distribution or airflow pattern and that's um where the external air should be delivered to each part of the space in an efficient manner um and airborne pollutants generated in each part of the space should be removed in an efficient manner as well um so there there are three main methods um that may be used to ventilate a building and they are natural ventilation mechanical and then a hybrid mix mode um natural ventilation is the natural forces that drive outdoor air through um purpose built building building envelope openings um and those are just a fancy way of saying windows doors um chimneys uh and things like that in your home mechanical mechanical ventilation is basically using mechanical fans to drive ventilation um so they could be fans could be installed directly in windows or walls um or using air ducts uh things like that um and then we have hybrid or mix mode ventilation and basically that's just a mixture of both so you get both um natural driving forces um and also using fans as well so basically it's harder to monitor adequate ventilation without equipment um but you can increase the ventilation rate of your home office area consciously um just by opening your windows and doors to the outside um and then this can be hard depending on the weather like especially recently you don't really want to open your windows um but maybe just try and do a quick ventilation um like every time you take a longer break and that way you can try and get up to those 8.4 air exchanges per 24 hours and if you look at the diagram like pull up here just in the corner um it can show you how the air is going to be moving in your room so if you've got one opening two on the same side on a different side now the best is actually this cross ventilation so if you can have a window on one side of your room and a door on the other and just leave those open that's going to get the air to pass through really quickly and easily so have a think if there's a setup where your home office is if you can do that um just quickly every few hours just to get an exchange of air so it's really important to have a dedicated workspace when you're working from home um and this can help you optimize your workflow which will increase your efficiency and then your productivity um workflow is also helped by having everything you need to conduct your work together in one spot and that's close to you giving yourself visual and acoustic privacy from other members of the household can also really help in reducing your stress and increasing your productivity if it's at all possible it's best to have an entirely separate room like a study or a home office uh when you're working from home and that's one where you can have a door that you can just shut at the end of the day um and that will help you to really delineate work from home life um which is a really big help in that work-life balance so having a separate room also allows you to reduce your potential distractions as opposed if you're sitting at the kitchen table and stuff's going on um it can reduce your work-lead like I said you can just close the door at the end of the day it's really delineated work-only space and reduce your stress and again improve your work-life balance now if you can't accommodate an entire room um to your workspace uh just from who you're living with how big your house is um and you have to use a shared space in your house it's important to create a permanent and dedicated space even if it's just a nook somewhere or an edge of a table um this will really help you increase your work efficiency by reducing the setup time and help you to get some of the psychological advantages of having that separate room so again reducing those distractions having the close proximity of all the equipment you need things like that now have a think about the space where you're currently working at at home are there any ways in which you can improve it is there any way if you are working in a shared space is there any way you can give yourself a separate room for your home office I know that's a big one and not always um immediately obvious one of my clients who was working from a desk in the corner of their open land kitchen dining area actually just recently converted her playroom her children's playroom um into a her dedicated home office room um this was a room that was currently just um the kids didn't really use it they mostly just used it to um store toys and kind of just became a bit of a dumping ground for that so what we did was take a lot of those things out there they downsize of that put some storage in there so now that room is now her dedicated office but then can also still be used by her kids um when she's not working so have a think is there a better place to be put in your home office um than where it currently is now we're going to move on to workstation ergonomics which i'm sure you've all done in the office in the workplace at one point or another and having the correct ergonomic setup is just as important at home as when you're in the office and the outside is that you only have to do this once so the diagram on the right um shows the correct posture um so the most important thing is being the height of your desk and the keyboard um and the height of the monitor so that way you're not putting any strain on your body and opening yourself up to injury so basically just working out where if you naturally just put your shoulders back um and bend your elbow that height of your where your arm naturally sits and then also making sure that the top of your monitor is just in line with your eyesight um make sure you've got all the equipment that you need um make sure you've got a proper office grade desk chair that is adjustable so you can make those movements for yourself um and make sure you have all the accessories you need like the rest wrist for your keyboard a foot rest is um you're a bit shorter and you can't get the right desk height um or a fatigue mat if you're doing a sit-stand desk that really helps with your standing for extended periods of time um and if at all possible do try and get a sit-stand desk because it's so much better for your health than being seated for eight hours a day um but only if that's possible so just have a think have you actually done a proper workstation ergonomic adjustment for your home office setup um and if you haven't think about doing that and there's plenty of resources online so you can take a picture of this one um for how it should be set up um and have a think about what do you need to upgrade always making sure if you follow this diagram as well um that you put the things that you're using most commonly closest to you and spreading out because again we shouldn't really be leaning forward too much and changing um putting pressure on our lower backs and things like that okay so now we get on to nature and there's actually so many benefits of having nature um and indoor plants in your home office basically humans have a high level of happiness and well-being when we're in the natural environment so we're trying to harness that and bring that inside so when you do bring any kind of natural environment or green inside your home it carries on that positive effect and it can increase your satisfaction it's funny like we we crave nature so much that even passively viewing natural stimuli through a window not even in the house but actually through a window can also reduce our stress um and elevate a positive mood the use of nature and plants from windows have been reported to help to reduce anxiety and tension and also um assist in increasing productivity and well-being and if that's not enough they also help you actually improve your indoor air quality filtering out pollutants a lot of different indoor plants can do that in fact um studies have shown that you can even get a reduction of 10% in workers absenteeism by the introduction of nature into a workspace so um it's just incredible incredible gains you can get just by bringing some nature in or giving yourself a view of nature and again in fact we crave it so much that studies have also shown that looking um even just looking at a computer generated image of nature for 40 seconds can decrease that stress and increase focus so it's a great thing to do um in between tasks and during little breaks um if you are thinking about uh introducing indoor plants into your home office um like I said it's a really quick and easy way um to increase your air quality and reduce your stress just make sure that if you have a pet um to be careful on which plants you choose because some indoor plants especially um a lot of the ones that purify air actually can be toxic to animals so just make sure that you're choosing pet pet friendly versions um so now we're getting on to the more um well-being side of things as well and that's creating structure um in your day and that is so important to maintaining the work from home productivity and well-being um basically creating and sticking to a regular structure can help tackle some of the main issues with working from home um and help you to increase your productivity reduce um any overworking or work creep um the flexibility of working from home means you can define your own work hours so make sure they're the ones that the most convenient and productive to you so you can actually set your hours around other commitments you have whether that's childcare um or your own say exercise um gym things like that uh classes just remember everyone's different so the beauty of working from home is that you can actually work to work around when you are most productive so have a bit of an experiment to find out the most productive time of day um that is when you're most productive and then structure your work day around that um scheduling work blocks in your calendar can also help stick to your schedule um and reduce procrastination and increase your productivity you might even want to try experimenting with some different time management techniques like the pomodoro technique which is 25 minutes of work five minute breaks and it gets a bit more complicated just look it up if you haven't heard of it um also you need to make sure you're scheduling uh regular daily check-ins with either supervisors or colleagues at the beginning and or the end of your day it's a great way to keep your structure going and making sure you're staying on track um it's also really important to make sure you're taking regular breaks including macro breaks exercise and mealtimes and we'll talk a bit more about that on the next slide but just have a think about how your work day is currently structured and if there are any ways that you can improve that um so just quickly because I know we're um running out of time I'll just go through this basically your ideal break schedule is about 52 minutes of work followed by well you should get 17 minutes of rest for every 52 minutes of work people like to break it up into different ways so again you can experiment for yourself but make sure you're getting at least 15 minutes per hour of concentrated screen work and 15 minutes per two hours for less strenuous work um so just figure that out biggest thing is that breaks need to be away from your computer screen you need to be not doing anything visually demanding so make sure you're not looking up at anything too close or at that kind of arm length um don't be doing any repetitive motions and make sure you're practicing on refocusing your eye in the distance as well during um breaks is also really great to be doing some exercises and stretching it can be either done seated or standing and there's many shoulder rolls neck um different um exercises and stretches you can do and even take it into some basic yoga poses and if you do have that sit-stand desk make sure um that you're using it you're standing up at least 15 minutes every hour and to get the best health benefits from that sit-stand desk you can be standing more like 30 minutes to 45 minutes per hour um so the lack of trust between the staff and management is the main reason for organizations not wanting to continue with working from home arrangements so it's really important for both sides to invest time and energy in building these trusting relationships um ways to include uh ways to do that include maintaining regular regular communication like we're saying those daily weekly check-ins um just be aware that because the majority of our communication is actually non-verbal it's important to get to see the person that you're speaking to um so we can pick up on body language so try and encourage everyone to turn on their cameras when they're having the virtual meetings then we also want um to be open and transparent it really helps if you can provide a space for staff to share and discuss and collaborate ideas around working from home um and setting those targets and again the biggest thing is setting those clear expectations and the work output and deadlines um also people need to be sure that they have the right equipment when they're working at home um not everyone has everything personally so you need to make sure that you as the employer or if you're an employee um your management is providing you with all of the correct equipment so whether that means sending out some company-owned devices chairs laptops things like that make sure you've got everything so you can be as productive as possible um then we'll just quickly just say um ways to maintain communication and culture so like we were saying before some people are experiencing some isolation um a really good way around this is to start setting up if you're a part of a team morning or afternoon phone calls or video calls each day have a bit of a mental health check-in say hi a lot of workplaces have really helped um found it helps if they just have check-ins that aren't about work at all you can actually get to know people a lot better um and then it's not the stress of those deadlines so just have times where it's purely social interaction like you would get if you're in the office just in the kitchen or chatting around um the office and you can also do things like set up um you know on platforms like Slack have dedicated just non-work chat um channels or even just have an ongoing virtual kind of like study buddy um you can have I do that with some friends as well which is really useful to keep you on track and just have some social like informal social interaction so hopefully you've put down something for most of those things the biggest thing is just making some action now so maybe try and write down something that you can do as some really small action that you can do as soon as we finish this webinar so you can really start getting the ball rolling okay um so that's me does anyone have any questions let me just have a look in the chat we've got yeah great Trudy yeah you told me about that beautiful view you have of your garden yes absolutely even just on a micro break just putting your eyes to refocus out in the distance um and just having that relaxing beautiful garden view that can do so much to decrease stress and and refocus you um so Kat said um if you can't have a dedicated room what about using screens to create a dedicated space yes absolutely um Kat anything you can do to create this visual privacy so that's a really big thing um as humans as well psychologically we don't usually like our backs facing out into the room because we don't like the idea of not knowing who's behind us and so anything you can do to just to create a little bit of a pod for yourself if you have to be in an open living space anything you can do like that will be great um and Trudy said you can never understand in the workplace where managers don't acknowledge great work yes that is the biggest thing and that's important to building this trust um because if you feel appreciated you're going to do better work as well so honestly it's like best of both worlds um yeah it's so important to tell people how much you appreciate them and how much they're valued so make sure you keep doing that um and Marina said you'll be taking kind of breaks and works yes great Marina make sure if you can get outside every hour um that's great just have a bit of a longer walk remember to be taking your micro brakes as well um so I think that's us at 5 p.m cat did you we need to wrap up or does anyone have anything else yep well I just want to make sure that we appreciate you Tonya for taking your time and sharing your specialty with us today I know I learned an absolute ton today and I hope everyone else got a lot of value out of today we will be sending out the recording so keep an eye out for that and I just want to thank you again Tonya and everyone for joining us today of course thanks so much Kat I know there was so much information in there I wanted to get some really good content for you guys so I hope you can go through it again yeah you got some uh amazing content for you packed so much into such a short time and I want to thank everybody again for being patient with the technical issues that we had or at the beginning of the the session today so uh don't forget to come and join us uh next month we're going to have Wendy Perry of workforce blueprint with us and that should be a lot of fun as well so I'm going to go ahead and stop there recording um great