A Fremantle space with a wellness focus is seeking to change the narrative about work, post-COVID restrictions.
PERTH now has two wellness-focused co-working spaces, with the recently launched Earthed, in Fremantle, joining West Leederville’s Vitality House.
Earthed bills itself as being Australia’s only health-optimised co-working space, providing its users with amenities that enhance health and focus while they work.
Among the offerings are grounding mats, electromagnetic frequency (EMF) mitigation devices, alpha-wave music, filtered water and air purification, along with lots of plants and natural light.
“The difference with us is that we’re really going after the micro[1]environment,” said Earthed co-founder Heath Daly, who is guided by the philosophy that health is our greatest asset.
Focusing on a different aspect of wellness, Vitality House’s focus is “bringing work and life into balance” by offering members access to in-house yoga and mindfulness classes, spa services, infrared saunas and ice baths.
Another player in this space is Mello House, which celebrates its fifth birthday this June.
Located in the State Buildings and described as “a social and cultural hub”, Mello is a different kind of workspace.
With its light-filled work areas, lush furniture and an ever-changing collection of art, Mello provides a visually and culturally nurturing environment for its members to work and socialise.
A comfy future
Together, these spaces reflect the broader shift in expectations around our work environments, especially around comfort, balance and wellness, which isn’t surprising given the upheaval since COVID arrived.
Not only has awareness of mental health issues been more prevalent since COVID, those of us who have worked from home in trackies, perhaps in bed with a pet, while avoiding a stressful commute twice a day knows it’s hard to go back to the office.
And now, as companies struggle to get people to return to the office, or even to stay with the company, co-working spaces are facing the same dilemma.
“I think it’s changed indefinitely.
I think people’s expectation of what a hybrid work environment can be will change,” Earthed director and co-founder Emma Daly said.
“I think there’ll be much more of an expectation of not wanting to go back to that traditional setup.”
Productivity
When they were designing Earthed, Mr and Ms Daly extensively researched the aspects of the standard office environment that contributed to poor health: for example, bad lighting, lack of fresh air, or a lot of EMF pollution.
On the flipside, what they found was that changing some of these environmental factors was good for productivity as well as health more generally.
The Dalys quoted one study in which productivity went up by about 80 per cent after fresh air was pumped into the work environment.
“You’re not compromising anything that makes for a good workspace in a traditional sense. You’re just enhancing it in an invisible way,” Ms Daly said.
“They’re very simple, easy things, but they’ve just not become the norm or standardised yet.”
Mr Daly, who also co-founded Mother, the restaurant where Earthed is housed, said the purpose of their work was to help people get into a flow state where productivity was boosted because things felt easy.
“If you engineer a space, you can get so much more productivity, especially for us coming from [working in] kitchens,” he said.
“We know if you structure a kitchen a certain way, the efficiency of that place is going to be tremendous.”
Does it work?
Mr Daly acknowledged a lot of people thought his work was “woo woo”.
“But as soon as you investigate you see, for example, that there are thousands of studies on ‘earthing’ getting measurable and repeatable data.” he said.
“It’s just not in people’s immediate focus. People tend to think if you can’t see it, can’t smell it, can’t taste it, that it might as well not exist.”
And as they say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
“The feedback we were getting was exactly hitting the point of what we were hoping to achieve,” Ms Daly said.
“People are commenting in terms of the increased level of focus and productivity.”
She said some people also reported feeling calmer the next day and not as exhausted.
• Dr Kate Raynes-Goldie is a multi-award-winning designer, researcher, futurist and certified facilitator of LEGO Serious Play. She is also the CEO of Lovego, where she is improving the dating experience for businesswomen
