Every year, winter brings with its own set of challenges. To provide uninterrupted services to your customers and a cheery environment for your workers, you need to get your business ready before the cold temperatures and icy conditions hit. It’s important not only to provide a pleasant environment, but also a protect the health and safe environment for your staff, customers, and anyone else who may visit your premises. To make sure you do this, you’ll need to manage the risks and plan for the worst.
Here are some things that can help you make your business winter-ready and prepared to warmly welcome your customers.
Seek Professional Help
Bringing the winter cheer at home is pretty easy. However, when it comes to your business, there are a few considerations you need to be keep in mind in the context of a business environment. Given this, it can be a good idea to consult the experts, who’ll guide you oon how best to create a safe and cheery environment for your team.
Install New Lighting
Winters and long nights go hand in hand. The long hours of darkness can not only be dull and gloomy, but also represent a real safety risk, especially for lone workers. Have new lighting installed in inside areas to brighten up long nights and gloomy winter days. Make sure you have adequate lighting outside too, especially around entry and exit points, to keep staff and customers safe as they’re coming and going. Furthermore, it’s a good idea to check security measures such as panic alarms and emergency doors before winter sets in to make sure they’re in good working order.
Add Some Cosy Appliances
The cold weather can make it difficult for your team to stay motivated and inspired to work. To make the working environment cheery, install coffee machines and tea stations if you don’t already have them. This will make your staff feel like you care about them, which in turn will keep them motivated. Small acts of kindness like these can help to warm chilly winter days.
Additionally, review your heating systems and upgrade them if necessary to make your staff more comfortable when the cold weather sets in. This will make your employees happier as well as boost their productivity – so it’s a win-win!
Take a Look at your Decor
A few simple upgrades to your décor and interior design can go a long way to make your premises more cheery, especially during winter. Add a fresh coat of paint in a warm tone, and add some bright and cheery cushions or lamps. Warm colours like oranges, pinks, and reds will boost your team’s mood.
Any change to your décor will also mix things up and help combat the monotony. This will automatically help to create a new working environment with fresh energy. Even changing things around in your workplace like how the desks are arranged can make a lot of difference.
Bring some Nature Inside
One of the reasons that we often feel depressed in winter is that we spend so much time inside and disconnected from nature. Therefore, bring some small pieces of nature inside can improve your workers’ mood and boost their productivity.
You can install some pot plants or even add som colourful winter hanging baskets – the latter are ideal for small spaces as they don’t take up floor space. This will help to create a warm and cheery environment. Of course, you can keep plants in your space year-round – a bit of greenery has been shown to have a positive impact on workers’ mental wellbeing and improve their productivity.
Run Special Events
Creating a cheery environment in the workplace goes beyond physical attributes such as interior décor. You can also bring some cheer in to brighten up dull winter days by running special events.
These don’t have to be anything huge – even a nice lunch or an afternoon yoga session will break up the monotony of dull days and add some cheer to your workplace.
Provide a Flexible Working Environment
Finally, if your staff are struggling to arrive on time on cold winter mornings, or struggling to stay motivated, why not give them the flexibility they need to stay on track. Of course, this won’t work in every type of business or for every role, but if you can, give your staff the option to set their own hours or work from home some of the time.
Make your business’ premises more cheery for winter with technical and physical changes to make the environment more pleasant, not to mention safer, for your staff and clients. You can also run special events and offer special flexible working conditions to make winter more bearable for everyone!
