Elevating Workplace Health and Wellbeing

There has been a growing emphasis on employee wellbeing in recent years, accentuated by the impacts of the global pandemic, increased flexible and hybrid working policies, and an increasingly challenging landscape for retaining talent.

Through this workplace evolution, employees have developed a heightened awareness and desire to exert control over their personal health and wellbeing, and the factors that impact this, including greater freedom over where they work, the mediums and platforms they use, and a yearning for physical workplace environments that improve and promote health and productivity in unison.

The way in which we approach wellness is continuously evolving. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines health as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. When it comes to ensuring healthy working environments, there are growing calls for companies to own responsibility to adequately protect and support the evolving needs of employees. Organisations have an important role to play in empowering their people to thrive both physically and mentally. Ranging from the design of interior spaces to operational plans and policies, there are many elements to consider that impact employee health.

These benefits include heightened productivity, better collaboration and creativity, a healthier workforce with greater physical and mental wellbeing, and greater employee value propositions which empower people to do their best work. The research and latest data show that enhancing indoor environmental quality increases cognitive function by between 60% and 101%.

But with so many factors playing a part, along with conflicting ideas and new information coming to light so frequently, achieving an optimal work environment can feel like a continuously moving target.

The key to producing healthy working environments is knowing exactly where to focus attention and energy for the best outcome.

The first step is to understand where the opportunities are to improve the workspace, and where investments would be best placed to achieve maximum benefit. To answer this question, it’s important to know how the spaces are currently being used.

Data collection is essential to making informed decisions to improve an environment. This includes data from the people using the space, as well as data captured from the space itself. The data then informs specific actions to enhance the environment.

Which elements of a workplace should we aim to improve?

What are the key stages in the process of elevating a workspace environment?

As part of WSP’s Future Ready program, in the pursuit of evolving workplaces and workplace health and wellbeing, our teams collaborate with clients to plan and implement ESG principles including strategies for decarbonisation, climate resiliency and sustainability, technology and digitalisation, and business growth.                                        

The first step is to begin with a detailed research phase, followed by implementation of solutions and technology to capture data about the environment that will guide the subsequent actions. Data capture technologies measure progress and success, working in a feedback loop to achieve continuous elevation of the environment.

This is where smart technologies in buildings can have the greatest impact

The introduction of smart buildings is useful in enhancing the physical environment, increasing the desirability of a workplace, and providing valuable support for modern workplaces to provide optimal working conditions.

Some of the smart technologies we often see in the market:

There are many more alternative and experimental, yet less well-established kinds of smart technologies on the market too, as vendors are always trying to break the mould in the name of striving for better health.

What will we do next time something throws off the way our buildings are used?

We should always be open to new considerations and enhancements that can be implemented in anticipation of, or in response to, additional issues. The best solutions to protect our health should be long-lasting, with ongoing maintenance and controls in place.

The right technology solutions provide valuable support that can future proof your asset. This will bring far more benefit than technology that is added to a building in reaction to changes. If the options are not properly assessed and selected, you may be left with a redundant piece of technology, should the social fixation and expectations of a building pivot heavily. This is something our team has seen previously, including big changes in trends around what is most important for the built environment, from sustainability, to wellness, and now to technology.

While major global events can occur that have an enormous impact on businesses worldwide, such as the covid-19 pandemic, there doesn’t necessarily need to be an event as large as this to have a drastic and abrupt impact on the way our workspaces and buildings are used.

Have our workplace health and wellbeing standards slipped back to where they were pre-covid?

The covid-19 pandemic enormously impacted the way we work, and the spaces in which we work. For example, many workspaces have adapted to account for new policies allowing hybrid or flexible working, and greater priority tends to be placed on collaborative or meeting spaces now, rather than filling offices with desks. Digital platforms and networks have also been improved to better facilitate remote working.

During the pandemic however, the immediate focus was on health and hygiene, to prevent the spread of the virus. Most workplaces turned to sanitisation stations, mandating of face masks, hygiene reminders and announcements, social distancing, and more frequent cleaning, all of which operated as temporary ‘quick fix’ solutions that are no longer implemented.

to a point where we prevent, control, or adapt to the existing or previous issue, and ensure the same cannot return. The height of the pandemic is behind us, and we have removed face masks, but we must monitor indoor air quality and utilise proper ventilation and purification technologies to avoid slipping back to the previous standards that allowed the problem to occur. We must still maintain the same awareness of and attention to health to ensure optimal conditions and continuous elevation of the work environment. 

Developers and owners are showing increased drive to embed different aspects of health and wellbeing throughout their strategic framework development, or within new and existing built environments. For example, developers are now mandating designers to demonstrate considerations for indoor environmental quality factors like daylighting levels, acoustic performance, air quality, and thermal comfort, whether or not the building is targeting a certification.

More developers are considering material selection within design, too, requiring compliance with low emission targets, to limit emissions of harmful content such as formaldehyde and VOC.

Owners targeting certifications for their workspaces must take a more holistic approach that starts with design considerations, construction supervision and adjustment of operational procedures such as having emergency preparedness plans in place, cleaning strategies, procurement of healthy food options, and policy amendments.

WSP’s teams are qualified in building certifications that demonstrate commitment and compliance to health and wellbeing standards, such as WELL Building Standard, LEED with a focus on occupant health, BREEAM, Fitwel, and SmartScore, and are observing an increase in the uptake of these certifications within workplace buildings. For example, the WELL Building Certification has shown that over 4.5 billion square feet of space is currently,or is in the process of being certified, with over 400 million square feet registered in the UAE alone. A rise in these numbers is expected as we see more successful implementation of strategies and increased benefits both qualitatively and quantitatively.

We research trends, understand existing issues, and foresee challenges, so that we can design and enhance spaces to provide resilience and protection, for our built environment and the people using it.

Being proactive in adapting to our world’s changing social expectations, and the way people interact with their environments, allows us to provide the best end-user experience and create a Future Ready sustainable world, that can continue to thrive for decades to come.