Health & Wellbeing: You want productive employees don’t you?

Summer evening on Skagen Sønderstrand - Peder Severin Krøyer 1893

The waning of the pandemic has left us with 3 zeitgeist defining realisations. First that we can, should we wish to, satisfy most of our retail needs online. Physical sales have rebounded but online ones have not diminished much from the boost they received via enforced lockdowns etc. Secondly that remote working …… works. Or largely does. Circa 70% of knowledge workers say they can work more productively out of the office than in it. And thirdly, that buildings can kill us. Put a large number of people in close proximity in badly ventilated spaces in the presence of an infectious virus and you’ll end up with ill, to very ill, to dead people.

We have actually known about this for years, decades even, but largely ignored it as mostly people simply got ill, or the flu, but seldom died. So collateral damage, as it were, did not warrant doing much to mitigate the situation. Well I think we’ve learnt our lesson over the last couple of years, and for most individuals, second only to the commute, is fear of unhealthy environments back in the office.

So almost all landlords and companies are now having to address those health & wellbeing issues that only the most progressive landlords & companies paid much attention to pre pandemic. Covid has in effect forced us, en masse, to do what we should have been doing anyway. And hallelujah to that.

For more reasons that you might think. Promoting good health & wellbeing is a good, worthwhile aim in its own right, but it is also one of the three flywheels that, operating in unison, are the necessary drivers of a happy, healthy and productive workplace. The other two being productivity and sustainability. 

Ultimately a company is looking for a productive workforce. As Paul Krugman famously wrote, “Productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run, it’s almost everything.” The more output we can get from each unit of input the better. Lazy but super productive people are a good thing, as they are the ones likely to find the quickest, fastest, easiest, most efficient way of getting things done. But either way, without productivity growth none of us are going very far.

But how do you get a productive workforce? There are of course many factors, but what is certain is that they need an environment to work in that looks after their health & wellbeing. You aren’t going to maximise productivity without doing so. The aim is to provide people with environments that enable them to operate at maximum cognitive function. Where they can work as well as they are capable of.

And how do you get an environment that maximises cognitive function, health & wellbeing? Almost definitely by focussing on creating the most sustainable building you can envisage. Exactly the tools and technologies that underpin sustainable buildings are those that enable you to create great environmental conditions.

The bottom line is that health & wellbeing, productivity and sustainability are flywheels for each other. They are not separate outputs. They are not different skillsets. They are three factors that have to be thought of in a unified way. Feedback loops abound and you need to be planning for all three as you consider each one. What differentiates a #SpaceasaServicemindset is doing just that. Thinking of the whole not the parts. Thinking of the ‘system’ that will enable these flywheels to fly. It won’t just happen. Getting two of them right is relatively easy, getting all three is not.

Let’s though now look at what IS required to create a ‘Healthy Building’. Here I am going to fall back on the definitive guide in this matter, Joe Allen, who leads the Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health. His May 2020 book ‘Healthy Buildings’, co-authored with John Macomber, has been described as a ‘call to action for everyone to demand healthy buildings with cleaner indoor air’, but I am going to paraphrase the key points from an earlier paper he led entitled ‘The 9 Foundations of a Healthy Building’.

For each of these you can dive as deep as you like, but at a generalist level, this is the gist of what matters.

Ventilation - plenty of it, fresh and recirculated, but avoiding street level (or car park) intakes and filter well. Maintain and monitor in real time and most likely exceed regulatory requirements. 

Air Quality - check the chemical emissions of your furnishings and building materials. Surprisingly nasty things can lurk there. Monitor humidity, CO2 and PM2.5 levels. Not annually, but continuously (same with ventilation). We’re looking to optimise, optimise, optimise.

Water Quality - careful with disinfectant levels, test water quality regularly, and look out for water stagnation in pipes.

Thermal Health - temperature & humidity are key determinants of how comfortable we are. Some like it hot …. Some don’t. Provide control or varying temperatures in different parts of your workplace. Monitor constantly. Don’t get into the trap of running heating & cooling at the same time. Getting this right takes thought.

Dusts & Pests - prevention is better than cure, avoid pesticides but have an ongoing plan. 

Lighting and Views - lighting that fights our circadian rhythms is a bad thing. Try to let nature do its thing. And views please. Happiness is a nice view. And vice versa.

Noise - is a productivity killer. Or an enhancer. Noise levels appropriate to the task/function are vital.

Moisture - enough is enough. Anymore is bad. Monitor and maintain ‘correct’ moisture levels.

Safety & Security - make sure everyone in your building is safe and secure. Meet fire safety and carbon monoxide monitoring standards.

Do read the source report* for this wafer thin summary. A lot of this is common sense but the devil IS in the detail. Most buildings run quite to very inefficiently, so there is a lot of low hanging fruit to create better spaces than your competition. 

The bottom line is that we know what is required to create a healthy building. For #SpaceAsAService operations the bar has to be higher than is traditional because the aim is to be better than the norm. Top operators will place providing great environmental conditions at the centre of their ‘Brand Promise’. In a post Covid world there will be great competitive advantage in providing spaces that genuinely are good for our health and well-being.