Wellbeing is quickly becoming a focus of branch design. This is traditionally a topic focused around the corporate office working environment, but supporting health and wellbeing can add significant value to your branching strategy as well, especially in the COVID-19 era.
As we’ve written in the past, workplace wellbeing has a strong impact on the productivity, focus, and overall motivation of your employees. And the inverse is true as well, a workplace that doesn’t support wellbeing can lead to employees disengaging from their work. This plays a major role in not only employee performance, but also winning the war for talent with recruiting and retention.
These concepts extend to members and customers as well. Wellbeing oriented design seeks to eliminate sources of stress and other negative health risks while promoting attributes that improve occupants’ health. This includes natural light, indoor lighting that matches the color and intensity of outdoor light, comfortable temperatures, and plants and materials that inspire our connection to nature. These attributes make us feel more comfortable, focused, and at ease, creating spaces where people generally enjoy being.
In the COVID-19 era especially, the air around us presents the risk of carrying infectious disease. One of the core aspects of wellness oriented design is clean air through efficient airflow and HVAC systems that pump in highly filtered outside air rather than simply recirculating inside air. This create a refreshing, clean space where occupants are less likely to breath in pollution, volatile organic compounds, allergens, or smoke from forest fires. This also significantly reduces the risk of COVID-19 transmission, as the risk of virus concentration building up in indoor spaces as people breathe and talk is mitigated.
HAPO Community Credit Union is leading the way with wellness oriented branch design with the first WELL Certified credit union branch in the world. The WELL Certification evaluates every aspect of a building’s impact on wellbeing, from air quality and lighting to ergonomics and glare on monitors. This is a powerful tool for creating healthy environments for your staff and customers.
Supporting health and wellbeing in your branches not only helps protect the people who use them, it demonstrates a fundamental commitment to the people in your community. People will recognize this, and it will differentiate your financial institution as a great place to work and bank.
