Let's Take This Outside

As we move into summer, Nightingale is excited about new designs for outdoor office spaces.

Encouraging employees to get out and enjoy the sunshine has proven benefits for wellness, productivity, and company culture. By fostering spaces where employees can work outdoors or by encouraging outdoor summer activities for employees, workplaces can improve the quality of life and work for current employees. This, in turn, attracts new employees, since people want to work at places that have great company culture.

Here are several ways you can get outdoors at your workplace this summer.

1. Create a Workplace Community Garden

If you have the space outside, creating a nice garden space where employees can walk, ruminate, and smell the fresh, floral scents provides a nice oasis from the indoor office space. You can easily turn this into a team-building activity by spending an afternoon planting flowers with employees—a fun activity for a sunny day.

If you don’t have an outdoor green space for your office, this is also an easy one to do indoors—minus the dirt. Investing in some indoor potted plants and setting them together in a makeshift indoor garden is a great way to create a reprieve indoors.

2. Get Green as a Team

Encourage employees to participate with the company in community initiatives like bike to work day, trash-clean up, or even tree-planting. As a company, you’ll be doing good
for the planet and for your employees by getting them outside and active.

3. Create an Outdoor Workspace

Even if it’s just a picnic table or two, providing space for employees to take their work outside is a great idea for the summer—just make sure there’s access to wifi! Being outside and getting a solid dose of vitamin D will boost employee health, boost energy, and put a smile on employees faces, even as they tackle a mountain of work. Outdoor work spaces should always be flexible, to support a variety of social interactions and configurations.

4. Host Team Events Outside

Whether it’s a BBQ, lawn games, or even a team hike, connecting to nature and getting outside the office has been shown to improve our relationships with others, according to a Texas A&M study. Outdoor spaces at work can reduce stress, build teams, increase employees’ physical activity (reducing illness), and foster better social interactions.

Enjoy the sunshine while it lasts, and reap the benefits!