December 22, 2017
Sustainability Roundtable Inc. (SR Inc) was pleased to host dozens of Member-Clients at the ART Hotel in Denver, CO on December 7th and 8th to discuss the Sustainable Business & Enterprise Roundtable (SBER) 2017 Chartered Research, and topics central to developing and driving progress towards greater sustainability and health in corporate operations. SR Inc’s 6th Summit for Sustainable Operations focused on three topics of ever-increasing importance: Renewable Energy, the Internet of Things (IoT), and Sustainably Healthy Workplaces. While later blog posts will summarize discussions on both Renewable Energy and the IoT, this post focuses on the Sustainably Healthy Workplace sessions.
Throughout the day, Member Executives heard from experts and each other about what breakthrough success in Sustainably Healthy Workplaces (SHW) will look like in two and five years. Delos, a research organization focusing on health and wellness in the workplace, (and providing the science behind the WELL Building Standard), is a 2017 SBER Premiere Thought Leader. Delos’s Dr. Whitney Austin Gray, Executive Director of Research and Innovation, kicked off the discussion with an overview of industry research clarifying the business benefit of improving the health impacts of buildings. This science-based evidence serves as the underpinnings of the SBER Playbook for Sustainably Healthy Workplaces, which was shared with Member-Clients at the Summit.
SR Inc developed the Playbook for Sustainably Healthy Workplaces: Making the Business Case for Integrating Health & Wellness into Portfolio-wide Sustainability in accord with the SBER 2017 Charter Research Program working with multiple Member-Clients and collaborating with Dr. Whitney Grey and other research scientists. The Playbook provides executives responsible for large real estate portfolios with the information and tools necessary to demonstrate the benefits of healthy workplaces and build the business case for corporate investment in more sustainable, healthy workplaces portfolio-wide.
Breakthroughs in research techniques and technologies have allowed more accurate measurement of the impacts of the workplace environment on the health and productivity of workers. The SR Inc Playbook leverages these advances in evidence-based research and offers Member-Clients guidance and tools to integrate health and wellness strategies into their portfolio-wide sustainability programs.
Following Dr. Grey’s presentation of the evolving relevant research, SR Inc’s Director of Research and Consulting, Peter Crawley outlined how the Playbook provides an innovative system to help Member-Clients address the challenges of designing, implementing, measuring and reporting on workplace health and wellness programs for the built environment. The Playbook, for example, has guidance and tools addressing Best Practices for establishing cross departmental governance structures, developing shared strategic goals and KPIs, performing a portfolio-wide health & wellness gap analysis, quantifying benefits and calculating ROI, and on-going performance tracking and reporting. A key theme of Peter’s presentation (and the Playbook), was a re-frame to a “human-centered’ approach to managing and measuring workplace programs. Peter reminded executives that the largest cost component for knowledge industry companies is their employees, and that improving their health and productivity quickly drops to the bottom line.
Peter also explained how the Playbook enables Member-clients to integrate their efforts towards Sustainably Healthy Workplaces with the 5-component process (illustrated below) that SR Inc has, for many years, used to help Member-Clients to implement their Corporate Operations Sustainability Strategies.
To learn more about the various tools and guidance provided in the Playbook, see this blog post from October dedicated to the subject. SR Inc is currently working with Member-Clients and industry experts to pilot the Playbook tools and guidance and encourages executives interested in implementing any aspects of the Playbook in the near term to contact us to develop a workplan.
Following both Whitney’s and Peter’s remarks, Member Executives shared their own visions for what great success in the area of SHW might look like at their companies 2 and 5 years down the road. Lenovo’s Director of International Real Estate, Deidre Buzzetto,
envisions workplaces with minimal assigned seating and a diversity of workspaces dedicated to specific work types and activities. In this activity-based workplace, employees will be able to select the workspace that most effectively promotes productivity for the task at hand. She admitted that it takes considerable time and energy to get people on board globally, and that a key to achieving this vision will be to ensure HR understands the clear and well-researched correlations between healthy workplace features and improved employee performance.
Hakon Mattson, Anthem’s Director of CRE Sustainability, prefaced his long-term vision for sustainability and health in the workplace by noting that he has a lot of support from Anthem’s leadership in this space, which has been a key to the success of the program. Currently, Anthem has a dedicated committee of employees tasked with determining how to make Anthem the choice employer for talent seeking jobs in the health insurance industry. Key to that effort is deciding how to most effectively report the features of Anthem’s sustainable and healthy workplace program and its benefits to employees. Ultimately, Hakon envisions Anthem providing consulting services to its customers and the public at large on how to set up a comprehensive workplace wellness program. Shorter term (i.e. in the next 2 years), Hakon hopes to achieve 3rd party health and wellness certification for all buildings in the portfolio over 25,000 square feet. Anthem recently committed to certifying all its sites under the Fitwel certification scheme, which is administered by the Center for Active Design. Furthermore, the company is considering pursuing WELL Building certification – a more comprehensive, performance-based certification – for new buildings.
T Rowe Price is in the process of implementing a number of health and wellness activities including subsidizing healthy food options and promoting use of onsite fitness centers. Similar to Deidre Buzzetto’s five year vision for Lenovo, Brian Dean, T Rowe Price’s Head of Corporate Real Estate and Workplace Services, told the audience that T Rowe Price aims to provide human-centric work environments to all employees by ensuring that every workspace is built to support the specific tasks employees are asked to do. The goal, he explained, is to make employees’ work “friction-free” by providing the amenities, services and environment that promotes productivity and eliminates stress, distraction and other inefficiencies in the workplace. Five years out, Brian hopes his team is receiving no hot or cold calls anywhere in the portfolio. This lack of complaints, he explained, says a lot about the environment his team is providing to T Rowe Price employees – a highly customizable workspace that enables a high-level of flexibility and occupant adjustability. In the shorter-term, Brian aims to make the workplace an enabler for greater work/life integration; for instance, making available onsite services to employees such as car detailing, dry cleaning, medical services, etc.
Contributions from several other participating executives throughout the Session brought to light key concepts central to the evolution of workplace health strategies. One common theme that came up several times in discussion was the imperative for understanding specific workplace design features that promote happiness and performance, and specific metrics for evaluating their impact on healthcare costs, employee productivity, absenteeism, turnover, etc. One bold iteration introduced by Member Executives at the leading edge of this conversation is, not only to include wellness metrics such as employee satisfaction or healthcare costs in the cost/benefit analysis of a program, but to set aspirational goals specific to these metrics, such as achieving a “100% happy workforce within 5 years” or “reducing workforce obesity 5% in 5 years.”
Another theme prompted by current events was the importance of considering social issues and unconscious bias in workplace design to create spaces that promote equity and safety for a diverse workforce (e.g. promoting accessible workspaces that consider varying experiences among employees of different races, genders, etc. while still protecting against heightened security challenges.) Another popular topic of conversation centered around leveraging IoT to create a user-centric design that fosters a workplace that remains consistent and seamlessly integrated across a global portfolio. In general, the conversation brought to light the tension between a need to prove financial justification for investments in SHW while maintaining an openness to more qualitative, but still powerful, benefits of such investments.
SR Inc looks forward to convening with Member-Clients early in the New Year to propose a 2018 Research Charter, which is based on the Summit discussions described above and the extensive feedback we’ve received from Members regarding their needs and preferences for rolling out and implementing an effective SHW strategy in 2018. In the meantime, from the SR Inc team to yours, we wish you a happy holiday season and best wishes for the New Year.
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As a Senior Manager of Research & Consulting at SR Inc, Kelsey Wallace supports research, development and implementation of enterprise sustainability strategies for companies that recognize the business imperative of more sustainable operations in the face of climate change and an increasingly resource-constrained world. Prior to joining Sustainability Roundtable, Inc., Kelsey worked for an environmental/engineering consulting firm where she supported clients including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Green Buildings Council to promote sustainable buildings, clean energy, and safe drinking water. Kelsey also devoted a year to national service with the AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps, where she worked on team-based conservation and community development projects throughout the Southwest United States. Kelsey has her B.A. in Environmental Studies from Connecticut College.
Peter Crawley, Director of Research & Consulting at SR Inc , has led at the intersection of strategic consulting, real estate and sustainability for more than 15 years, serving as the principal advisor to top real estate owners and scores of operating companies. Peter has helped the executive teams at these enterprises develop and implement highly profitable Sustainability Strategies. Prior to joining SR Inc, Peter served as the Director of Sustainability Services at the environmental engineering firm EBI Consulting. Peter is LEED accredited and has deep experience working on energy efficiency issues, product life cycle improvements, and greenhouse gas measurement, reduction, and reporting. He has worked on numerous LEED certification and high-performance building projects, and designed and implemented company-wide behavioral change programs to advance sustainability goals and enhance employee engagement. Peter received his BA from Amherst College, his MS in Real Estate from Columbia University and his MA in Sustainability & Environmental Management from Harvard University.
