Well at Work: Creating Wellbeing in Any Workspace

In this sensible outing, Sternberg (Healing Spaces), an architecture and medicine professor at the University of Arizona, offers guidance on making workspaces—either at home or the office—more comfortable and conducive to productivity by attending to the “seven domains of integrative health”: “stress and resilience,” movement, sleep, relationships, environment (“what you see and breathe”), nutrition, and spirituality. She contends that putting on quiet background music can make workplaces more relaxing, citing a study that found workers were most stressed in either loud or extremely quiet settings. Noting research showing that access to sunlight in the morning improves sleep quality and overall mood, Sternberg recommends workers sit near windows or else buy an LED sun lamp for their desk. The author highlights companies that have taken creative approaches to enhancing well-being through office design, writing that Google’s Mountain View campus features multiple fitness centers to encourage exercise, which has been shown to stimulate creative thinking. The recommendations are bolstered by illuminating research, and Sternberg keeps a welcome emphasis on practicality (for workers whose offices don’t feature a fitness center, she suggests that just getting up and moving around once per hour can be beneficial). Equally applicable to home and corporate office spaces, this valuable guide has much to offer. (Sept.)