Sharp NEC Display Solutions announces a partnership with Fusion Spaces to help organisations foster better home-based working environments which embrace best practice for user wellbeing through an on-line assessment tool and a range of bundled home-office technology solutions.
“We believe in creating safe, comfortable and inclusive working environments that nurture and support human physical, psychological and emotional wellbeing,” says Jayne Cox, co-founder of Fusion Spaces.
“Through our new assessment tool, WorkFree™, we are helping employers and employees manage work environments safely, comfortably, happily and respectfully.” Says Kenneth Freeman, Fusion Spaces workplace wellbeing consultant.
The Covid-19 crisis has proven to be massively disruptive for all sorts of obvious reasons. However, it has also catalysed the trend towards a time when some degree of home working becomes the norm for increasing numbers of office workers.
As the country faces stronger measures to counter Covid-19, temporary guidance is now no-longer appropriate. Remote working, from home or other non-traditional office settings, has now been normalised and employers must not only ensure that they can provide legally compliant working environments for their remote staff, but also, for simple business reasons.
Environments that are stimulating and which promote wellbeing and engagement (rather than merely mitigating the worst effects of a poor workspace) are bound to be more productive, leading to better outcomes for organisations. The WorkFree™ tool is built on three equally important foundations, which will enable employers and employees to achieve the mutually beneficial goal of healthy, happy and effective work.
Assurance. To enable employers to meet their responsibilities and obligations to ensure that employees have a safe place to work. This includes having systems to manage compliance with legal requirements, and the need to provide the necessary evidence for compliance and benchmarks for continuous improvement.
Comfort and quality. To ensure that home-based workers can set up an effective and comfortable working environment that suits them, and which gives access to a range of professional quality (but domestic scale) products to support and improve their physical and mental health and wellbeing.
Freedom and empowerment. To ensure that home-based workers are empowered to manage their work and space. Employers must respect boundaries of privacy, minimise intrusion into the private space of their employees (physically and digitally), and recognise and respect different domestic and family arrangements without judgement.
The WorkFree™ assessment method, which is based on employers and their staff completing surveys, requires that all three foundations are aligned and that there is broad agreement between the employer scores and employee scores for each of the foundations.
The assessment method has three grades, “approved”, “good” and “excellent”.
“The working from home concept requires a whole new perspective on the meaning of productivity and its intertwined relationship with wellbeing and motivation,” states Jon Raines, corporate account manager at Sharp NEC Display Solutions. “Where previously, organisations managed the working environment within the office setting, they are now empowering the workforce to work more independently at remote locations. By partnering with Fusion Spaces, we are helping our customers to best support their home-based workforce, ensuring their safety and wellbeing.”
Along with the assessment tool, there is support available to help organisations create a plan of continuous improvement and guidance on the sorts of interventions and products that might be useful to create healthy home working spaces.
