As the mercury rises, Wimbledon gets into full swing and Britain basks in glorious sunshine, spare a thought for the thousands of employees stuck in hot and stuffy offices, with little access to the great outdoors.
But as we plan for the future, such summer days don’t have to mean misery for workers, and falling productivity for employers.
In this week’s Estates Gazette, Laura Jockers, JLL’s associate director of upstream sustainability services, offers her thoughts on how employers should be thinking about ways to bring the outside in, in order to keep productivity high in lazy summers.
“There is increasing recognition of the need to bring the fresh air, daylight and uplifting natural features of outdoors, indoors,” she says. “There’s a need to focus on the interior environment and the ‘human dimension’ of buildings.”
One of the key sustainability questions these days, she says, is not how office buildings affect our environment, but how the office environment affects us.
Jockers says that clever and thoughtful design – taking in factors ranging from air quality and lighting to views of nature and interior layout – can boost employee morale and loyalty, reduce sickness and absenteeism, and produce considerable financial benefits.
For more of her thoughts, including on the world’s first building standard to focus on enhancing people’s health and well-being through the built environment, see the Practice & Law section in this week’s Estates Gazette.
