Place

Pillars in action – Place

Greater emphasis on the importance of ‘place’

The environment in which we work affects our health, wellbeing and performance. From more subtle factors such as our light exposure in the office to more salient factors such the amount of green space on campus, our office and campus environments all contribute to our everyday experience of our workplace. As science brings more of these factors to light, Monash is responding through placing greater emphasis on the importance of ‘place’, as Indigenous Australians have done for thousands of years.

The actions we're taking:

Ensuring healthy and safe indoor environments that maximise wellbeing.

  • In light of COVID-19, continue to monitor and improve air changes in all buildings and ensure natural ventilation in new builds.
  • Lend more importance to the optimisation of daylight, views and high building envelopes in new buildings and major refurbishments.
  • Ensure spaces are multi-use and flexible for work and wellbeing where possible.
  • Where possible, track adherence to COVID-19 safe plans (e.g use of wipe stations).
  • Building standards: rapidly remove features of building (e.g cladding) that no longer conform to building codes.

Enhancing the campus environment

  • Promote the benefits of working outdoors:
    • increase staff awareness of campus outdoor spaces and their attributes, i.e. power availability, seating typology (incl. DDA), drinking fountains.
    • promote walking meeting venues i.e. Jock Marshall Reserve Nature Walk, the Public Art Trail and Indigenous Garden.
  • Strengthen our connection to Place and celebrate our Indigenous heritage, culture and knowledge.
  • Improve WIFI capability in select outdoor environments.
  • Complete a tree succession planting framework for each Australian campus.
  • Harness opportunities to increase outdoor weather-protected seating areas for staff and students.

Promoting active movement

  • Promote greater awareness of bike arrival stations and external bicycle network connections.
  • Infrastructure development: incentivise active movement through building new ‘active loops’ (i.e., designated paths) that indicate to users kilometre/steps achieved.
  • Promote prominent campus walking tracks (e.g the Tan Track at Clayton campus) to encourage increased use.
  • Monitor and maintain sufficient night-time lighting levels on campus paths and walkways.