Companies can gain a competitive advantage by designing workplaces that make wellbeing a default choice, argue the authors of The Healthy Workplace Nudge book in a talk Dezeen hosted with Haworth in Chicago.
Architects and interior designers should be creating workplaces that nudge people into having healthy behaviour, says Dr Michael O'Neill, an expert on the relationship between office design and worker performance who leads Haworth's Global Workplace Research department.
Authors Dr. Michael O'Neill and Rex Miller claim that workplace design should encourage healthy behaviours
O'Neill was joined at the talk by his co-writer Rex Miller, a futurist, author and consultant. In a conversation moderated by Dezeen's US editor Dan Howarth, the pair explained the findings of the research presented in their book The Healthy Workplace Nudge. The book builds on the previous work of behavioural economist Richard Taylor, who states that policies and programmes could be designed to nudge people towards decisions that benefit themselves.
The pair's research is presented in a new book titled The Healthy Workplace Nudge
"The idea of the nudge is very simple," O'Neill explained. "A nudge simply makes it easy for you to make the choice that's in your best interests. It's about making the right choice easy to make."
Miller argued that workplace design should remove barriers to healthy decisions, while making unhealthy decisions more difficult. "80 per cent of the ti...