Employers, building owners, designers and developers throughout the world are showing that it pays to invest in greener offices that keep their occupants healthy and happy.
A World Green Building Council report - Building the Business Case: Health, Wellbeing and Productivity in Green Offices - highlights the global momentum behind healthy and green office design and operation by way of 15 exemplar projects.
The report found that simple steps like improving air quality, increasing natural light and introducing greenery - those which typically have environmental benefits such as using less energy – can also have a dramatic impact on the bottom line by improving employee productivity and reducing absenteeism, staff turnover and medical costs.
For example:
The UK-GBC report sets out an Offices Metrics Framework to assesses factors across three 'pillars'. These explore environmental credentials, take in occupants' experiences, and factor in relevant economic impacts.
It is critical to not only measure the environmental features of the green building, but to measure the different physical features of the green building environment in order to determine how a green building affects its occupants.
Some of these physical features may be assessed directly, like light, acoustics, and pollutants, but some may require more subjective measures, like views or quality of amenities.
While directly or subjectively measuring the physical aspects of the building environment is important, arguably even more important is how the occupants feel and experience their workplace. After all, two people may experience 24° C and 65% relative humidity differently.
A perception survey is recommended to determine the experiential factors that are very important to the health, wellbeing and productivity of occupants of an office. Such a study considers many aspects of the occupant’s experience that are considered using a wide variety of questions, including thermal comfort, workplace satisfaction, and self-reported illness.
The first two pillars, environment and experience, affect how people work and how healthy they are in their work environment. Staff costs can typically account for 90% of the operating costs of a business, so anything affecting their productivity has a direct impact on the bottom line. Economic metrics are used to quantify that impact. These include:
For those looking at how to apply the framework, the UK-GBC has put together a how-to guide to assess indoor environmental quality.
Over 20 national Green Building Councils around the world are championing the cause of healthy green buildings, through certification and rating tools, research and stakeholder engagement to show how organisations all over the world are profiting from increasing the health and wellbeing of the people in their green buildings.
Terri Wills, CEO of the World Green Building Council, said: The results are clear – putting both health and wellbeing, and the environment, at the heart of buildings, is a no brainer for businesses’ employees and the bottom line.”
Beth Ambrose, Director within the Upstream Sustainability Services team at JLL, and Chair of the World-GBC Offices Working Group, said: “The business case for healthy buildings is being proven. All over the world, companies, both large and small, are redesigning their offices, changing working practices and trialing new technologies, to improve the wellbeing of their staff, tenants and customers.”