5 Ways to Make Your Workspace More Comfortable

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way people work around the world. Even the very idea of commuting has been upended as extreme circumstances showed that working from home was possible.

Today, employers need to understand how the expectations of their employees have changed. When a workplace is comfortable and employees feel secure, they’re likely to perform better. With that in mind, let’s check out a few ways to make your workplace more comfortable.

1. Proximity Cards

Safety begins with ensuring that only authorized people are allowed on the premises. The best proximity and access cards from industry leaders like Avon Security Products grant companies total control over who can go where. Their proximity cards let people into the building but also grant access to specific offices or rooms inside, so control is effortlessly granular.

Proximity cards give employees one single card that works everywhere, so they don’t need to schlep a bunch of keys with them and struggle to remember which one opens which door. Companies can onboard employees quickly since they only need to provide them with one key to access every space they’re authorized to go to.

Leading proximity card printers can put your branding on the cards, so it helps cement your company’s culture and works as an advertisement, too. Such seamless, smooth security helps them feel safe at work and connected to your company.
The embedded metallic antenna inside proximity cards stores encoded data, a unique set of numbers that the company sets up in each card. The HID proximity card reader verifies the numbers, confirming they correspond to the company’s internal database.

Security is a prerequisite for comfort, and employees need and deserve both.

2. Transparent Safety Policies

Sometimes, employees struggle to understand workplace safety policies, who to speak to, or what to do if a colleague makes them feel uncomfortable or even unsafe. Employees need to feel like someone has their back, and not understanding what to do if they should feel at risk threatens that.

What happens if the person making them feel unsafe at work is their superior in the work hierarchy? There should be a clear policy that everybody understands.
Hopefully, the issue never comes up in the first place! But if knowing what is and isn’t acceptable doesn’t deter people from missteps, at least knowing there’s a specific protocol to address it, and understanding how to report and fix the issue, should help employees feel better and safer at work.

Employees can’t be expected to deliver their best work if something work-related makes them feel unsafe or even unwelcome.

3. Dress Code That Matches the Culture

What exactly is the point of a dress code? Formal dress, or the act of seeing everybody in a uniform or even a suit, helps people take their jobs seriously. It reinforces the idea that they’re at a job. After all, police don’t wear their uniforms on the weekend or when they’re not working, and when you see someone in a police uniform, you know they’re a cop.

However, after years of remote work, people have gotten very used to wearing loose, less formal clothing, and many people want to continue doing so. Workplaces are reevaluating exactly what dress codes are for and what they should be, as they should. Is it fair to expect employees to spend their money on an entirely separate wardrobe of fancier clothes? Will seeing people in a different, less formal set of clothes actually change employee behavior?

If an employee has gotten used to working from home, expecting them to spend time and money on a commute, and then shell out even more for new clothing, could be too much to ask. To be sure, some employees are eager to get out of their homes and wear formal office wear again, but not everyone. It depends.
Ensuring there’s alignment between the company dress code and its culture helps to keep everyone happy and comfortable.

4. Good Compensation

Let’s face it. Even people with rewarding jobs have bills to pay, and getting paid a fair wage is one of the most fundamental ways to make people feel better at work. A competitive package makes employees feel valued, like their work matters. It’s not just their work or what they produce at their job that needs to feel valued; fair payment validates how they spend one-third of most days, a large chunk of their life.

When employees aren’t sure if their compensation is fair or suspect that colleagues at similar levels may make substantially more, they may feel resentment or ill at ease. These negative feelings can affect work performance. Managers should want their employees to focus on their jobs, not harbor grudges over their compensation.

5. Leaders Who Care About People

Every leader says they care about the people on their team, but a major part of their job involves prioritizing the company’s bottom line, and sometimes these things are at odds with each other. Not every boss means well, and some well-meaning bosses get carried away with crunching numbers and lose track of how the people grinding it out day to day are actually doing.

To some degree, caring about people is part of every leader’s job. But it really trickles down. If there’s a culture of indifference about people’s welfare at the top, lower-level employees are bound to feel it.

Sometimes, stressful, intense situations cause people to put their heads down and focus on their work. Managers don’t need to be best friends with their employees. But a certain level of concern for people that extends somewhat above the job description.

Motivating employees and getting their top performance means something different in an age where employees have experienced working from home. If they’re going to spend time and money commuting back to the office, they need to feel like there’s something in it for them. Making employees feel comfortable at their workplace is essential, so keep the above tips in mind.