Wellness Businesses need to focus on building the working environments of tomorrow in order to attract and retain staff. Samantha McClary reports
Wellness is becoming less of a buzzword in real estate and more of a real investment for both developers and corporate occupiers.
With more than three-quarters of businesses questioned in CBRE’s most recent European Occupier Survey having a wellness programme in place, the real estate community has to respond.
For agents, there is a necessity to understand the needs of a workforce if they are to provide good advice to clients; for developers, space has to be delivered in a form that will satisfy the changing wants and needs of occupiers and employees.
A new report from CBRE’s Global Workplace Solutions business examines the growing wellness phenomenon, the drivers behind it and what organisations can do to respond.
The report, published this week, outlines five key trends in the workplace that are driving the push for wellness strategies, including an ageing workforce, declining health, the battle for talent, a growing awareness of stress and the rise of technology.
Five key trends
1. Employees are living longer. Workers aged 50-plus put a higher value on non-financial factors such as flexible work and working from home.
2. Key skills are hard to find. 80% of employees agree that a company’s wellness offering will be crucial to recruiting and retaining them within the next 10 years.
3. Declining health and rising healthcare costs. There is a growing financial incentive for businesses to support and promote a healthy lifestyle with schemes that encourage exercise and healthy lifestyle choices through to onsite medical facilities, lunchtime exercise classes and healthy options in vending machines.
4. Growing awareness of stress and mindfulness. Stress costs the UK economy £10.4m in lost working days a year (more than 10% of the average affected employee’s working year). Costs can be managed and reduced by giving employees flexibility to balance their professional and personal lives in terms of when and where they work. Desk-sharing helped one London business make annual real estate savings of $1m, says CBRE, and reduce its staff churn by 80%
5. Technology is making it easier for people to monitor and manage their health. The market for wearable tech is set to reach $70bn (£54bn) by 2025. It is possible that we will see these tracking technologies introduced and blended into the workplace as progressive employers use the data they produce to create support and desirable working environments, increasing productivity and reducing presenteeism.
“It is these key five trends that are helping to move wellness up the corporate agenda,” says the report. “Business knows that from a competitive perspective it can’t afford to ignore it.”
So how should heads of corporate real estate go about addressing wellness in the workplace? For lasting success, says CBRE, a long-term, holistic approach that involves real estate, facilities management, HR and other functions working together across a business is key.
A “trophy” workplace is fast becoming one of the key characteristics of a wellness programme. Employees and corporate occupiers are increasingly seeking working environments that are designed to help people meet and network with others. However, in the future these will also be places that allow true offline time.
“This could involve time spent in a shielded environment with none of the electromagnetic radiation you get from certain types of lights of communication systems,” says CBRE.
To get wellness right, it is important to adopt a strategy rather than a series of individual initiatives. These should have some defined objectives that are measured and regularly reviewed.
And with more than half of the wellness features employees look for relating to physical space, workspace design should play an important role in this strategy.
“Building management should focus on local control of the environment,” says CBRE. “In the future, traditional workspace success measures will be less about number of workstations, use of space and occupancy per sq ft and more about staff turnover, employee satisfaction and productivity.”
The focus of creating the workplace of tomorrow should be on locating, designing and building social, cohesive and adaptive working environments that will empower and energise people. The right type of workspace helps people collaborate and deliver, says CBRE, and real estate and facilities management teams have an obligation to monitor and improve people’s work experiences by integrating unobtrusive technologies into buildings and spaces to track and record usage.
“Facilities management providers will have to be proactive in seeking out and providing wellness services and being responsive to employees needs,” states the report, adding that in the future landlords and global heads of real estate will have to work together to deliver a very different workplace and different work experience.
So, while wellness is nothing new, the level of workplace demand for it is and as the battle for talent continues to rise it looks set to become a key driver in the growth of progressive occupiers.
Six simple measures to build a wellness programme
1. Use a meeting room to run lunchtime yoga or a low-impact pilates class
2. Offer only healthy options in the cafeteria and vending machines – put the onus on suppliers to make this happen
3. Offer subsidised gym membership
4. Open window blinds to increase natural light
5. Base location decisions on hours spent in the office rather than seniority. Give people who are desk-bound the workstations by the window
6. Make sure that if you offer flexible and remote working you promote these options and encourage managers and employees to trial them
• To send feedback, e-mail Samantha.McClary@estatesgazette.com or tweet @Samanthamcclary or @estatesgazette
