The health consciousness is rising amongst the general population, now-a-days. However, the daily mundane office routine does not leave time for many to exercise and take care of their health. So, its about time the environment in offices change for better as a research has shown some good results from the change.
A research conducted by the Mayo Clinic endocrinologist James Levine, M.D., Ph.D., on environment-changing innovations has shown how 18 individuals lost a total of 156 pounds and 143 of body fat. The office goers had lost 8.8 pounds on average out of which 90 percent was fat. The triglycerides had reduced by 37 percent on average. Also, nine participants who had lost an average of 15.4 pounds wanted to lose more weight.
One of the significant findings shows that that there was no loss in the productivity due to the new environment. Instead, the productivity actually rose by 10 percent and highest ever monthly revenue was recorded by the company in January 2008.
A real life office was re-engineered and studied for six-months, after which the researcher got the positive results. The re-engineering included:
These changes were intended to achieve increased daily physical activity or NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis). The study was started in late 2007 at the SALO, LLC, a Minneapolis-based financial staffing firm and involved a total of 45 employees out of which 18 were studied for weight loss and experiment related changes.
Having come up with the positive and productive results, the re-engineered office has been regarded as the need of the future, hence dubbed as ‘office of the future’. It implies that the office of the future can help people maintain health even while working thereby reducing the ill-effects of the traditional work environment.