For most office workers, those commute-free days of remote work are in the past. Instead, most companies are opting for a hybrid approach. An estimated 79% of U.S. companies now set weekly office hour requirements, with most companies requiring workers to spend at least three days at the office.

As employees readjust to in-office work, companies are searching for ways to support productivity and well-being. 

One often-overlooked factor? Lighting. The right lighting setup for your commercial lighting clients can make a significant difference in employee comfort, focus, and overall job satisfaction.

Often, employees really aren’t asking for much. In the r/office Reddit forum, for example, user cintapixl says:

“After returning to the office after COVID lockdowns, pretty much everyone in our large open-plan office complained about the lighting. Too bright, giving people headaches, migraines, eyestrain, etc. It's automatic, so we can't even turn it off.”

At home, employees have the flexibility to adjust their own lighting to suit their needs. When they return to the office, however, they generally lose the ability to control environmental factors. This is particularly challenging for employees who have worked from home for a long time or for people with light sensitivity.

This is one of the ways lighting and productivity are connected — after all, it’s hard to work when you’re uncomfortable.

With office lights too bright, causing glare, or flickering, it’s important for lighting professionals to understand how those lights impact workers, so they can take steps to mitigate the issue. Lighting workplaces in a way that promotes safety, well-being, and productivity is a small — but impactful — way to help a workforce readjust to office life.

Lighting Workplaces to Boost Morale and Productivity

While some people missed the structure and social aspects of an office environment, others dread the morning commute and frequent interruptions from co-workers.

In offices where employees loved working from home, heading back to the office can impact morale — reducing productivity and sometimes increasing employee turnover.

Let’s take a closer look at the word “morale.” According to Robertson Cooper, a UK-based organization specializing in employee well-being, morale includes three business-critical qualities:

• It increases cooperation and collaboration.
• It improves mental and physical health.
• It promotes resilience.

“Morale is a word that’s been around for some time but which reflects a very contemporary idea — it’s a quality that enables people to pull together, to stay well and positive, even when times are tough. It’s something that’s always pretty important for all organisations, their leaders and their employees; in short, for all of us.”

— Robertson Cooper

All three of those qualities are interconnected:

• If an employee experiences mental illness or a workplace injury, they might struggle to collaborate.
• If this impacts workplace cooperation, office stress levels could rise, impacting employee resilience.
• And when people lose resilience, they’re more likely to struggle with their mental and physical health.

This cycle highlights how workplace conditions — both physical and psychological — play a crucial role in employee well-being. One of the easiest ways to support both morale and mental health is through proper lighting, which has a direct impact on mood, energy levels, and stress management. When a workplace makes lighting changes that improve working conditions, like adjusting overhead lighting that’s too bright, for example, employees take notice.

How Better Lighting Can Boost Mood and Mental Health

LED office lighting produces bright light that delivers more lumens per watt than other types of lighting. Although natural light is best at triggering the cortisol production in our brains that helps stabilize our emotions, modern, energy-efficient artificial lights are a great substitute — especially when windows are scarce or employees frequently work in the evenings.

LEDs are capable of producing a wider range of correlated color temperature (CCT) than incandescent or fluorescent bulbs. This makes it easier to choose cooler lighting that decreases fatigue and improves alertness (hello, productivity!). If the light is too warm, however, it can trigger a sleep response in our brains, making us feel tired.

These light-induced shifts in mood and energy levels happen because of how artificial lighting impacts the hypothalamus —the part of your brain that’s responsible for controlling your circadian rhythm.

How Can LEDs Help?

Workplaces are generally advised to have lighting that delivers a consistent CCT between 3,500 and 5,000 Kelvin. This range, which is closer to replicating natural light, stimulates our minds and promotes alertness, which in turn helps reduce stress and improve morale.

Our modern LED products, such as the LED troffer retrofit and our LED volumetric troffer, offer smart features like manual adjustments and automated settings that adapt to natural light. These features help maintain a stable circadian rhythm by ensuring consistent lighting throughout the day. This minimizes the impact on employees’ sleep-wake cycles and mood regulation.

Keeping Employees Healthy With the Right Lighting

Office buildings might not carry the same physical risks as a hospital or a warehouse, but lighting professionals still need to keep health and safety top-of-mind for these settings. In fact, some of the most common office accidents — slips, trips, and falls — can happen as a direct effect of poor lighting. After all, it’s easy to miss a step if the lighting is too low in a stairwell or to trip over a hazard that’s obscured by shadows.

Without the right lighting, workplace environments can also cause a wide variety of vision-related problems. Poor illumination forces people to squint or overwork their eyes to see what they’re doing. If you haven’t experienced it, eye strain may sound like a short-lived inconvenience, but it causes fatigue and can lead to impaired vision if it goes undiagnosed for too long.

Office workers who spend a lot of time on the computer (that’s almost all of them) are also at higher risk of dry eyes if the lighting isn’t right for the environment. Vision problems can also lead to headaches and increased stress, both of which impact productivity at work and increase sick calls.

Ergonomic injuries are another area of risk when it comes to office lighting. Just sitting in one place for a long time, day after day, can cause postural issues. But when lighting is poor and workers can’t easily see their computer screens, they tend to lean forward or sit in awkward positions, increasing the risk of injury and lowering productivity.

How Can LEDs Help?

One of the biggest problems with commercial lighting is that people tend to use one-size-fits-all solutions. Fluorescent tubes are either on or off, with no dimmers — but people have different levels of comfort and needs. Maintaining proper brightness levels is also critical to preventing everything from falls to eye strain.

Unfortunately, too much light can also cause problems — nobody wants to cringe every time they enter their workspace because the office light is too bright.

LED fixtures like our LED Light Panel Retrofit offer much more flexibility. This retrofit comes with field-adjustable light output — which means employers and building owners can control the lumen output and wattage based on the needs of employees. LEDs also come with a variety of other office-friendly smart features, like:

• Bluetooth control that allows users to control individual lights or groups of lights using a smartphone or other connected device
• Group editing that allows businesses to customize lighting plans depending on the needs of the space and the employees who work there
• Scene selection that allows employees to control the brightness and intensity of a room depending on their needs at the time

Improve Your Lighting, and Productivity Will Follow

Simply put, the purpose of office lighting is to help everyone to see what they’re doing. If workstations aren’t properly lit, there’s more potential for mistakes, which can lead to costly corrections and duplicated efforts. Productivity can also be lost if employees have to work slower to avoid those mistakes.

Standard lighting can lead to employees adjusting their computer screens to avoid glare when the light is too bright. When there is too little light, they end up bringing in desk lamps from home or relying on floor lamps to create the atmosphere that works best for them. These may seem like minor modifications, but when they’re compounded, they could lead to resentment, impact morale, and lower productivity.

How Can LEDs Help?

Health and safety, morale, and functional lighting are all factors that affect productivity. That means that tackling productivity issues requires a holistic approach to lighting — one that:

• Allows offices to adjust or automate brightness and warmth as needed
• Includes a range of lighting options, from task lighting to light panels
• Gives employees some control over their own lighting conditions
• Includes motion sensors that turn lights on and off depending on occupancy, increasing safety and energy efficiency

Office Lights Too Bright? Not for Long.

Good lighting is vital to overall workplace productivity — especially at a time when some workers would rather be working from home. Clients who are just beginning to think about a new, updated lighting plan may want to start by considering ways to add natural daylight (skylights and clearing windows can be great options).

Then you can suggest ways to use energy-efficient products like our LED Volumetric Retrofit or Light Panel Retrofits to create a lighting plan that complements all that natural light. After all, good lighting benefits everyone. Your clients’ employees will be able to see their work without straining their eyes — or their backs — and they’ll enjoy higher productivity due to higher morale, healthier employees, and fewer mistakes.

Want to help your clients create a more comfortable, productive office environment for their returning employees? Contact us today to learn how we can help.