As the second GRESB Health and Well-Being module submission cycle recently came to a close (July 1, 2017), well-being in real estate is not a fading trend. Rather, it is an investor, tenant, and employee driven consideration for real estate owners and operators.
In 2016, 174 entities (over 20% of respondents) voluntarily completed the GRESB Health and Well-Being module. An interesting data point from the report was that 60% of respondents said that the most senior decision maker for health and well-being issues was different that the senior sustainability decision maker.
At Code Green, we use our own office in a laboratory for testing new technologies and initiatives. In true office-of-the-future, millennial form, we’ve embraced everything from standing desks to yoga balls to mini-elliptical machines. In one of our conference rooms, we are testing out a green wall solution and monitoring the impact on air quality in the space. At the same time, our team is piloting off-the-shelf and self-made standing desk solutions. We also encourage our team to get out of the office and schedule walking meetings.
As sustainability and energy efficiency consultants, we have seen an increasing demand for services and solutions around health and well-being. Though new to the ESG space, we’ve already been a part of project teams helping building owners and tenants across the country pursue Fitwel and WELL certifications. As part of L&L’s 425 Park Avenue project that is pursuing LEED and WELL Core & Shore Certification, we have seen tenants sign record setting leases. We expect that over time, the tenant and broker community will become more familiar with the impact of office spaces on employees’ health and well-being.
It will be interesting to see if health and well-being decisions remain separated from other environmental, social, and governance topics or if they end up following under the control of the same decision makers. We are in the early days of investors and tenants figuring out the questions to ask and metrics to track around health and well-being to inform investment and leasing decisions.
This article is written by Harry Etra, Director of Sustainability.
Related insights
Articles
Efficient Resilience (or how I learnt to love modelling and my FM)
Hot on the heels of wellbeing, resilience is the latest issue to, rightly, grab the attention of the property industry. As with wellbeing, resilience covers a complex range of issues, but a core one is resilience in the face of more extreme whether events. And while these issues are getting more coverage, reduced energy use […]
Target Setting and Buildings: Towards a Net-Zero Future
Setting carbon emissions reduction targets is nothing new. Many companies, including the real estate sector, have already developed many targets and goals in contribution to limit global warming. Also, the conventional target of limiting warming to 2oC is not enough. As the scientific community always emphasizes, to limit global warming to 1.5oC, achieving net-zero global […]
A key new focus area has quickly emerged in the real estate industry, one that prioritizes human health, wellness, and experience as key elements of green building design and operation. There are several reasons for this: For example, there is mounting evidence suggesting that many of our chronic public health problems are the result of […]