Office Properties

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Page 14 — Office Properties Quarterly — July 2015
Market Drivers
I t’s no secret that the modern
workplace isn’t the healthiest
of environments. If you fight
through traffic to get to your
office and then sit at a desk in a
cube all day with no access to a view
of the outdoors and a dearth of options
for decent, nonfast-food lunch, it is not
surprising if you have some associated
health impacts. If
you have a stress-
ful job or a stressful
boss, then likely the
impacts are only
amplified.
If you run a busi-
ness, then this is a
financial catastro-
phe because your
biggest expense is
your people, and
if your people are
sick, unfit, depressed
or overly stressed,
then you are losing
money hand-over-
fist in terms of pre-
senteeism – the pro-
ductivity that is lost
when employees
come to work but,
as a consequence
of illness or other
medical conditions,
are not fully pro-
ductive.Typically
staff costs are 90
percent of a busi-
ness’ operating costs, dwarfing utility,
lease and other expenses, and the cost
of replacing an employee is generally
1½ to two times the lost employee’s
annual salary, according to a Brookings
Institute report. Attracting and retain-
ing the best employees and optimizing
their productivity at work should be
high priorities for any employer, and
healthy workplace design is central to
these goals.
One study that measures the contri-
butions of medical conditions toward
overall presenteeism suggests that the
biggest contributors are depression,
allergies, heart disease and diabetes
– all of which are conditions that are
exacerbated by stress, poor air quality,
lack of daylight, inadequate access to
nature, few options for good food, and
lack of places to walk or exercise.
For other businesses, the key metric
isn’t productivity, but creativity and
collaboration. A business can live or die
by the ability of its people to be inno-
vative, which is why many employers
are moving away from office spaces
that kill productivity and collabora-
tion – the rows of cubes, the lack of
daylight, stifling air, ambient noise,
exposure to toxins, and the paucity of
places to huddle, have conversations
and draw ideas.
If the goal is to locate in work envi-
ronments that embrace human health,
creativity, productivity and collabora-
tion, what do those workplaces look
like?
First, air quality is a basic and funda-
mental element to a healthy building,
and if you’re in an existing building,
you should make sure that you have a
green cleaning program in place and
do regular air quality assessments to
make sure that you have enough fresh
air for people to breathe (per ASHRAE
standards) and are filtering the air
appropriately. People often are sur-
prised at how office spaces fail on this
basic point.The impact is a workforce
that is sleepy, stressed or has difficulty
concentrating. New buildings gener-
ally are better in this category, but also
should follow the LEED indoor environ-
mental quality credits as a measure of
quality control.
Beyond the basics, the first key
component of a healthy workplace is
what many architects and planners
call active design, which is about creat-
ing the infrastructure for people to be
more active. “Sitting is the new smok-
ing,” according to Dr. James Levine,
director of the Obesity Solutions Initia-
tive. So we need to find ways to get
people up and moving.
Active design includes selecting an
office location in an area where people
can walk to work and to places nearby.
Look for locations with a walkscore of
85 or higher. Even better, locate near
public transit so employees can get to
work without their cars – one study
showed that people that use transit are
81 percent less likely to be obese, are
less likely to have a heart attack, and
are even less likely to get divorced.
Active design can include the design
of the building itself, such that people
use the stairs as their default choice
to go between floors. Many new build-
ings are including “active design stairs”
between floors of offices, and locating
the stairs by the entrance so it is the
first thing that people see when enter-
ing the building. And instead of using
every last scrap of land for parking,
buildings are using parking reductions
to create outdoor tranquility areas,
walking paths, community gardens or
picnic lawns.
Other offices include work out areas
or gymmemberships, some are insti-
tuting “walking meetings,” and others
offer standing desks and treadmill
desks to get people up and moving
around as often as possible. As you’re
reading this, when is the last time you
stood up and walked around?
Another key staple of a healthy
workplace is daylight. Access to day-
light reduces stress, helps us sleep
better, reduces fatigue, depression
and overeating, and is associated with
every manner of increased work per-
formance. A recent study found that
workers located near a window slept,
on average, 46 minutes more per night,
while workers without access to day-
light reported sleep and vitality issues
and experienced dysfunction at work.
Another study of employees at the
Northwest University Campus found a
correlation between access to daylight
and 6.5 percent less sick leave taken.
The challenge is providing daylight
access to workers when you locate in a
building with deep floor plates (where
most of the floor area is away from the
windows), or where the few private
offices take up the perimeter and block
access for the rest of the floor. Many
companies are going through interest-
ing introspection and cultural shifts
when they ask the question, how can
we provide access to daylight to all of
our staff? Often it means going away
from private perimeter offices, going
to open plan offices, and rebuilding
the quiet and collaborative spaces
that are still necessary for privacy and
concentration.This means that treat-
ing acoustics is a vital component to a
healthy workplace. Poor acoustics, both
internal and external, is one of the
leading factors in workplace dissatis-
faction and can cause as much as a 60
percent drop in performance.
While daylight is critical, it is just
a part of a broader category called
biophilia, which is the notion that
humans resonate with access and
contact with natural system because
we evolved with nature and are a little
out of touch without it. In addition to
daylight, things like vegetation, natu-
ral sounds and smells, and views of
green, all contribute to reducing stress.
Imagine opening your office window
and feeling a breeze, smelling the rain
or hearing the leaves – these are exam-
ples of biophilia.There is a significant
amount of research that correlates
biophilic aspects with improved overall
health. One study showed that a quick
glimpse of nature could improve over-
all productivity. Another study showed
that exposure to bacteria found in
the soil causes our brains to release a
natural antidepressant – a strong argu-
ment for gardening or playing in the
dirt.
Lastly, it would be hard to claim a
healthy office if everyone was sitting
at their desks drinking soda and eating
Cheetos all day. Giving people access
to healthy food is pretty basic, but
doing it well, and without being too
paternalistic, can be a challenge. Part
of the battle is changing the default
choice, like making the salad bar the
first thing that people see and hiding
the desert tray from immediate view.
You can label foods for calorie content
and other health aspects, and include
signs that encourage people to use
smaller plates, which tend to mean
smaller portions – all strategies used
by Google’s cafeterias. But getting rid of
the traditional vending machines and
giving people some better options dur-
ing the day is an easy first step.
The concept of a healthy work-
place is no longer a novel idea. Many
employers understand that there is an
issue and that they have a responsi-
bility – both ethical and financial – to
take on the issue. And the real estate
and design industry responded with
increasing attention and resources,
including a Building HealthToolkit
from the Urban Land Institute, an
excellently updated Indoor Environ-
mental Quality section in the new
version of LEED (LEED v4), and a
newly launched healthy building rat-
ing system called theWELL Building
Standard, under which buildings and
interiors may be certified as healthy
buildings.There’s still a long way to
get before the default workplace can
be considered truly healthy, but every
conversation about workplace envi-
ronment and workplace culture will
include the question of health.s
Josh Radoff
Principal and
co-founder, YR&G,
Denver
Alan Scott
Director, YR&G,
Portland
Courtesy Stephen Loppnow, YR&G
Active design stairs are prominent at the Community College of Denver Confluence Building to encourage walking.
Courtesy Gensler
The Alliance Center wanted to provide all workers with access to natural daylight.