In 2022, the workforce is more concerned than ever with health, safety, and wellbeing. And with companies returning to offices and the hiring market heating up, employers can no longer afford to ignore these concerns.
If you're exploring ways to enhance your workplace experience through improved indoor air quality, you'll want to read our FREE comprehensive guide
Companies that understand and apply healthy building principles can ensure a confident return to in-person work in a post-COVID world, increase employee satisfaction and retention, and most importantly - minimize potential health hazards and sick building syndrome.
In this guide, we’ll cover key concepts in healthy buildings, and explain how to start turning your facility into a healthy building by focusing on monitoring and improving indoor air quality.
1. What is a Healthy Building?
2. The Benefits of Healthy Buildings
3. How to Make the Business Case
A healthy building is a commercial, residential, or public building which is designed in ways that promote the health, safety, and wellbeing of its inhabitants. Healthy buildings combine principles and insights from the fields of engineering, construction, medicine, and psychology, in order to improve the indoor environments in which people spend most of their waking hours.
Green vs healthy buildings: Architects, city planners, and engineers have been concerned with green or sustainable buildings since the 1970s, often as a reaction to rising energy prices. But while green buildings focus on the way buildings interact with their environments, in recent years there has been a growing interest in understanding and improving indoor environments within buildings as well. This has shifted the focus from green to healthy buildings.
With almost 90% of our time spent in buildings, it’s now clear that the air that we breathe, the water we drink, and the amount of physical activity we get in these spaces can dramatically improve our lives. Healthy buildings promote the health, safety, and wellbeing of occupants by improving these and other elements, which we will cover in the next section.
Healthy buildings can encompass a broad range of design patterns - from fundamental health and safety measures to dedicated yoga and meditation rooms. However, in the oft-cited 9 Foundations of a Healthy Building (PDF), researchers from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health highlight 9 key areas to focus on:
Read our full summary of the nine healthy building foundations.
While much of the last few years’ discourse around healthy buildings has centered on public buildings such as schools, the field also has a lot to say about commercial properties. There are many steps that facility managers or HR departments can take to promote healthy building best practices - as long as they have buy-in from senior executives.
Employee wellbeing is doubtless a lofty goal, but it also requires time and money that can be difficult for companies to allocate. It’s important to be aware of the benefits of healthy buildings and to weigh them against the true cost of the status quo: unhealthy buildings lead to lost productivity, frequent employee churn, and reputational damage.
Learn more about the ROI of indoor air quality.
As we’ve covered above, there are many different ways you can embark on the journey to healthy buildings - from ventilation to water quality to noise. But from our experience, the best place to start would be with indoor air quality (IAQ). Here’s why:
Improving IAQ can provide better ‘bang for your buck’ compared to other healthy building optimizations. A study conducted in the Netherlands, in which 70% of a company’s workforce was relocated to a different building with better perceived environmental conditions, found that improvement in air quality had the largest effect on reducing employee dissatisfaction (you can read the full study here).
In a recent survey, 82% of millennial workers reported that they would feel safer returning to the office if they would receive timely and transparent IAQ data. Many are understandably still apprehensive of spending prolonged time in enclosed office buildings in the wake of the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic; taking steps to reduce airborne transmission of viruses will make the return to offices easier for these employees.
We’ve already mentioned the staggering costs of absenteeism due to illness. Since many viruses and pathogens are airborne, improvement in air quality plays a significant factor in reducing these. But there are additional costs to poor IAQ: exposure to pollutants can impede cognitive functions and decision-making capabilities, negatively impacting productivity. A 2015 study (summarized here) by Harvard assistant professor Joseph Allen estimated that the productivity benefits of improving air quality through ventilation are around $6,500 per person per year.
To understand how you can improve IAQ, you should start by considering the factors that can affect it. Some of the main causes for poor IAQ that you should be measuring include:
There are many ways to improve IAQ in an office building, and some might be more applicable than others in your particular space. Opening windows sounds like a no-brainer, but for an office located on the 57th floor, it isn’t always safe and simple to do so.
If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.
- Peter Drucker
Peter Drucker's famous quote stands true for IAQ. The first step towards any kind of solution is understanding the scope of the problem. For this purpose, you should look into air quality monitoring technology that can give you a good reading on different factors that affect IAQ, including PM2.5 & PM10, TVOC, CO2, temperature, and relative humidity. Monitoring will help you understand both the scale of the problem and your progress towards solving it over time.
Some key strategies you can use to improve air quality are:
Rather than relying on periodic spot testing, continuous air quality monitoring will help you understand both the true scale of the problem and your progress towards solving it over time. Once you have the data, you can pinpoint the areas or times of day when air quality needs to be improved, and then take steps to do so.
Learn more about choosing commercial air monitors.
Fresh air is key to improving indoor air quality. In some offices, it’s possible to increase natural ventilation through vents and windows, while others need to rely on mechanical means. Modern HVAC units can help by bringing fresh air into the building as well as moderating temperature to prevent moisture from accumulating.
It is important to conduct periodic HVAC audits to ensure systems are working properly and to maximize energy efficiency. Degradation in air quality can hint at issues with HVAC systems, which further highlights the need to continuously monitor IAQ.
Learn more about indoor air quality and HVAC systems.
A healthy building requires building owners, site managers, HR departments, and facility managers to work together to ensure that best practices are maintained over time, that hygiene standards are maintained, and that IAQ is being considered when dealing with issues such as pest control. Establishing procedures, sharing air quality data, and maintaining regular communication channels can all help identify and address problems when they’re still small enough to handle.
As we’ve covered in a previous guide, high-efficiency air filters (MERV 13 / HEPA) can help remove some virus particles from the air circulating in the building. Investing in a UV light purifier can also help eliminate viruses through germicidal irradiation, which is relevant for COVID-19 as well as other microbes, including molds and bacteria.
If you’d like to get more inspiration for how to improve IAQ in your buildings, you can read about the top indoor air quality strategies for healthy buildings, or listen to a recent podcast with Kaiterra CEO Liam Bates on Matt Morley’s podcast:
Our understanding of healthy buildings is evolving rapidly. Facility managers, HR departments, and senior stakeholders need to align in order to ensure that employees’ wellbeing is prioritized and avoid operational disruptions
Within the wider context of healthy buildings, the importance of indoor air quality cannot be overstated - both as a key contributor to preventing illness and absenteeism, and as a means to increase employee satisfaction, reduce churn, and drive productivity gains.
You’re in luck - we’re offering a free, no-strings-attached consultation with our air quality experts. Click below to schedule a quick chat to understand how you can implement better air quality monitoring and the expected benefits you can expect to see:
Kaiterra provides air quality monitors and an IAQ analytics dashboard for healthy buildings and offices, helping workplace leaders and healthy building pioneers assess and improve their indoor air quality. Our indoor air quality monitors like the Sensedge and the Sensedge Mini can be found in many of the world’s most iconic buildings and workplaces, such as the Empire State Building and the Burj Khalifa.