How does your organization measure health and human performance? The answer might vary depending on who you ask. If you direct this question to someone within facilities or real estate, they will point to how their buildings are LEED certified. Several credits for LEED include strategies that improve indoor air quality and access to natural light and views. Facilities might also be pursuing new health-related certifications like the WELL Building Standard or Fitwel. These certifications identify specific ways the built environment can better support health through building location, outdoor spaces, staircases, the design of the indoor environment, and food provisioning.
If you ask someone engaged in health promotion or occupational health, they might tell you about the organization’s participation in the C. Everett Koop Award or the Corporate Health Achievement Award. These awards measure the robustness of an organization’s health programs (i.e., how they are led and how the health outcomes are achieved).
Then there are the metrics that human resources cares about when it comes to organizational health, like the engagement and happiness of employees that are addressed in surveys from the Society for Human Resources Management.
THE ‘HAPI’ TOOL
All of these measurement tools are excellent, but they tend to measure health and well-being in silos, and the data is not connected. Sometimes it can sometimes be difficult to prioritize which metric is most important to focus on across the organization.
Interestingly, there are many new tools and methods that are beginning to look more comprehensively to evaluate organizational well-being. One of these is the Health and Human Performance Index (HaPI), developed by the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard University’s School of Public Health. This tool combines elements of engagement, health, performance, culture, and the physical work environment.
This index was developed in 2012 by Harvard, in partnership with Johnson & Johnson. It is being championed by Dr. Eileen McNeely, Co-Director of Harvard’s Sustainability and Health Initiative for a Net Positive Enterprise (SHINE) at the School of Public Health. EYP is working with Harvard to integrate elements of the built environment into the HaPI tool. Specifically, the tool evaluates:
• Well-being: Provides both affective and evaluative aspects of well-being. Subjective well-being has been associated with overall health and performance.
• Productivity: Measures the number of employee healthy days and a subjective report of work performance.
• Engagement: Captures feelings at work (vigor, dedication, absorption) that have been previously associated with job resources, health, and work performance.
• Culture: Captures the availability of work resources (i.e., supervisor and coworker support, participatory decision making, and challenges) that have been previously associated with health and performance.
• Built environment: Captures the quality of space and access to healthy amenities (adjustable desks, fitness centers, shower facilities, healthy food options).
The intent of this tool is to provide the business community with a universal benchmark, transferable across industrial sectors and global businesses, for communicating how the business impacts employee development and well-being.
What we’ve learned
EYP piloted HaPI with staff across all offices, and it is helping us better understand our work and our well-being. Here are five high-level findings, and the actions we are taking as a result:
1. Exercise is connected to office location. Our employee data shows a correlation between the amount of exercise employees are getting and office location. Employees assigned to an office with a shorter commute, in an urban location, with access to public transportation and parks, and views to the outdoors were more likely to exercise.
2. Lack of sleep is connected to commute and workload. Lack of sleep was attributed to heavy workloads, increased stress, and longer commute time. The demographic of employees who sleep the least (and reported being the most stressed) are women, particularly those under 45. This falls in line with nationally reported data.
3. Stress impacts performance more than physical health issues. Overall, employees claimed mental health issues (stress, anxiety, or both) were more impactful to presenteeism and absenteeism than physical health issues. This number went up for women and younger staff. There are many reasons employees might feel anxious: lack of sleep, lack of exercise, heavy workload, overall feeling of a lack of control.
4. Culture greatly impacts performance at work. When Harvard tested questions about culture, the work environment, amenities provided, and workplace flexibility and then compared them to job performance and life satisfaction, their analysis confirmed what we suspected: Culture has a stronger impact on our health outcomes than the other factors by a long shot. Organizational factors like trust, respect, fairness, vibrant atmosphere, and authenticity were correlated with job productivity and life satisfaction more than anything else. Though not as highly rated as culture, there are some physical workplace elements that more strongly correlate with job and life satisfaction than others. These include: a place to lie down at the office, a place to meditate, bike storage, and showers.
5. “Job control” is the most influential factor when it comes to job engagement. Factors like autonomy in decision making, learning new things, using creativity, and “having a say in what happens with your job” impact engagement more than other factors.
Taking action
EYP is sharing these results with each of our offices and engaging in a conversation about our culture, operations, and the physical environment in our offices. We also see this research as important to helping us shape our thinking when it comes to workplace strategy and how we support our clients.
We are using this information to:
• Develop location criteria and prioritize amenities and features that encourage movement for building occupants.
• Dig deeper into how space can help reduce stress and positively impact mental health for different population groups in our buildings.
• Integrate cultural factors more robustly into the workplace development process, and determine ways the workplace can facilitate a desired culture.
• Further develop workplace flexibility strategies and policies to enable more job control and sleep for workers, particularly younger women who are typically juggling life and work responsibilities.
Related Stories
Architects | Jul 5, 2023
Niles Bolton Associates promotes Jeffrey Smith, AIA, to President and C. Cannon Reynolds, AIA, to Managing Director
Niles Bolton Associates (NBA), a leading architecture, planning and design firm, announces leadership changes as a part of its ongoing commitment to future growth. Current Executive Vice President, Jeffrey Smith, AIA, has been named President and C. Cannon Reynolds, AIA, has been named Managing Director effective June 30, 2023.
Mixed-Use | Jun 29, 2023
Massive work-live-play development opens in LA's new Cumulus District
VOX at Cumulus, a 14-acre work-live-play development in Los Angeles, offers 910 housing units and 100,000 sf of retail space anchored by a Whole Foods outlet. VOX, one of the largest mixed-use communities to open in the Los Angeles area, features apartments and townhomes with more than one dozen floorplans.
Office Buildings | Jun 28, 2023
When office-to-residential conversion works
The cost and design challenges involved with office-to-residential conversions can be daunting; designers need to devise creative uses to fully utilize the space.
Architects | Jun 28, 2023
CSHQA hires first CEO in company's 134-year history
The Board of Directors of CSHQA announced the appointment of Ryan D. Martin, AIA NCARB as Chief Executive Officer.
Multifamily Housing | Jun 28, 2023
Sutton Tower, an 80-story multifamily development, completes construction in Manhattan’s Midtown East
In Manhattan’s Midtown East, the construction of Sutton Tower, an 80-story residential building, has been completed. Located in the Sutton Place neighborhood, the tower offers 120 for-sale residences, with the first move-ins scheduled for this summer. The project was designed by Thomas Juul-Hansen and developed by Gamma Real Estate and JVP Management. Lendlease, the general contractor, started construction in 2018.
Architects | Jun 27, 2023
Why architects need to think like developers, with JZA Architecture's Jeff Zbikowski
Jeff Zbikowski, Principal and Founder of Los Angeles-based JZA Architecture, discusses the benefits of having a developer’s mindset when working with clients, and why architecture firms lose out when they don’t have a thorough understanding of real estate regulations and challenges.
Apartments | Jun 27, 2023
Average U.S. apartment rent reached all-time high in May, at $1,716
Multifamily rents continued to increase through the first half of 2023, despite challenges for the sector and continuing economic uncertainty. But job growth has remained robust and new households keep forming, creating apartment demand and ongoing rent growth. The average U.S. apartment rent reached an all-time high of $1,716 in May.
Apartments | Jun 27, 2023
Dallas high-rise multifamily tower is first in state to receive WELL Gold certification
HALL Arts Residences, 28-story luxury residential high-rise in the Dallas Arts District, recently became the first high-rise multifamily tower in Texas to receive WELL Gold Certification, a designation issued by the International WELL Building Institute. The HKS-designed condominium tower was designed with numerous wellness details.
University Buildings | Jun 26, 2023
Addition by subtraction: The value of open space on higher education campuses
Creating a meaningful academic and student life experience on university and college campuses does not always mean adding a new building. A new or resurrected campus quad, recreational fields, gardens, and other greenspaces can tie a campus together, writes Sean Rosebrugh, AIA, LEED AP, HMC Architects' Higher Education Practice Leader.
Standards | Jun 26, 2023
New Wi-Fi standard boosts indoor navigation, tracking accuracy in buildings
The recently released Wi-Fi standard, IEEE 802.11az enables more refined and accurate indoor location capabilities. As technology manufacturers incorporate the new standard in various devices, it will enable buildings, including malls, arenas, and stadiums, to provide new wayfinding and tracking features.