Posted By tuula packington I work for an organisation providing professional services from around 40 offices housing between 300 - 10 people each and located across the UK and Ireland. As the H&S Manager I have recently been asked to provide advice on office well-being standards i.e. what guidance should be provided to our various offices on office layout, fitting, equipment standards etc. in order to ensure that our offices would be designed to provide a healthy and comfortable place of work. I am aware of the basic legal requirements for workplace welfare but beyond that I don't know where to turn for advice. Could anybody point me to right direction? Tuula

Posted By RCH Be aware that this duty of care extends to mental health as well as physical health at work. Mental health problems have many causes, including stresses in the workplace and in the life of employees away from work. Whilst you have no control over external factors it is good practice to identify sources of stress in the workplace and taking action to eliminate or reduce them. Organisational culture is key in determining how successful you will be in managing work-related stress. Organisational culture is often strong, rooted in history and difficult to change. Encourage good open communication with members of staff, consult staff and encourage participation in decisions that may affect them, discourage long working hours and high workloads, ensure that potential problems are recognised promptly and dealt with, ensure that internal support is made available. Work in partnership to ensure that bullying and harassment do not emerge as an issue and ensure that procedures are established and followed. Communicate new developments as quickly as possible to avoid the spread of rumours and misinformation. Staff need to feel competent and comfortable doing their jobs, failure to do so will leave them feeling inadequate and de-motivated. Roles need to be clearly defined and clearly understood, other wise this leads to ‘role conflict’ and ‘role ambiguity’.

Posted By Della Pearlman I am a construction librarian, and happended to see your comment when looking for something else - you might want to try these documents - hope they help!: The British Council for Offices’ newly published report ‘Workplace productivity - design, location and people’ (£33) makes clear the link between well designed office buildings, business performance and ultimately business profitability. The report reveals that moving or improving commercial office space can increase levels of productivity by a quarter, reduce absenteeism, help retain staff, encourage communications and the flow of ideas between individuals and departments. The report draws upon the recent BCO-CABE report, ‘The impact of office design on business performance’ which documented increases in productivity of 25% between staff who worked in well maintained, well designed offices and those that did not.(you can get this free & as a pdf from CABE at:www.cabe.org.uk)