Healthy buildings equal a healthy business and healthy workforce

There is a growing body of research that highlights the business case for healthy buildings. This research shows that as well as supporting employee wellbeing, healthy buildings can drive several economic benefits, including higher rents and longer lease terms.

With the continuation of work from home and flexible work policies, offices need to differentiate themselves to stand out and attract occupiers. We have seen this play out as sustainability rises up the agenda.

However, while occupiers are seeking more transparency and accountability from their workspace providers, according to a recent study by The Instant Group, many are finding it challenging to get accurate sustainability data. It was this that motivated The Instant Group to create its Sustainability Index, a unique platform that ensures quality data on building performance, helping operators and occupiers track and report on their sustainability initiatives.

A year on from launch, operator listings with the Sustainability Index badge have seen a huge increase in interest in their workspace, with UK operators seeing an 300%-plus increase in click-through rates.

The obvious next step following the launch of the Sustainability Index was to focus on health and the impact workspaces have on a person’s physical and mental wellbeing. Healthy workspaces are no longer a ‘nice to have’; they are a ‘need to have’. Companies that effectively optimise their spaces for health and wellbeing are transforming their workforces into even greater assets and developing happier, more productive employees. It’s a win-win situation.

While real estate is taking strides forward to provide healthier buildings, there is no wellbeing benchmark specific to the coworking and flexible office market. This is an issue for occupiers looking to diversify their portfolios into a larger proportion of coworking spaces, as their core portfolio invariably takes wellbeing through external verification into account.

The Instant Group set about addressing this as a priority but required an industry leading expert to partner with to provide a robust rating system for the coworking sector. We identified the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI), which has led the standard of healthy buildings for well over a decade. This partnership was essential in the development of the WELL Coworking Rating. Derived from the health strategies in the WELL Building Standard, the Coworking Rating includes more than 50 features spanning all 10 concepts in WELL, such as air and water quality, light and thermal comfort, and physical fitness and nourishment.

People spend around 90% of each day indoors, with a majority of that due to people being at work and in offices. It is important that a person’s surroundings are optimised to not only encourage productivity but improve health outcomes, which in turn reduces staff absences and increases staff retention.

The World Health Organisation has referred to indoor air quality as ‘the world’s largest single environmental health risk’. The CBI has calculated that by delivering cleaner workplace air individual productivity in cities like Singapore, Sydney, Los Angeles and Barcelona could be boosted by at least 17%. The rating also measures thermal comfort. Think about how distracted workers can be when an office is too cold due to air conditioning (or leaky windows in some of our older real estate) or too hot in the summer. There is an optimal temperature that encourages productivity and even a small percentage change in productivity can have a significant impact on a company’s bottom line.

The WELL Coworking Rating will recognise those coworking and flexible workspace operators that are leaders in health and wellbeing, while giving occupiers of these workspaces crucial information about wellbeing attributes before booking or signing onto coworking space. Prospective coworking and flexible workspace users will be able to search for the new rating and its associated data as they access more than 350,000 flexible workplaces on Instant’s digital platforms.