The focus of the first two surveys covered Carbon and net zero and circular economy, with the final one considering wellbeing. I have to declare an interest here, as not only was I chair of the sustainability SIG at the time but led on the wellbeing survey.
As would be expected in the current environment, the survey found most organisations (75%) gave “high significance” to wellbeing management. There was also a consensus between both end users and service providers as to the prevailing reasons for this commitment, including:
- Staff retention/attraction;
- Better business/more productive staff/better resilience;
- Greater employee awareness; and
- Brand image/reputation/ responsible business.
From the perspective of developing wellbeing strategies, there was much less consensus however, with a host of issues from lack of clear targets to difficulties in quantifying cost v benefit identified.
From a workplace and FM perspective three of the top five specific initiatives covered were air, water and occupancy comfort. This ties in very closely to what we are finding as an organisation too. Bearing in mind such activities also contribute actively to ESG, the odd test or a few monitors (often not calibrated to any great degree) here and there may not stand up to scrutiny, particularly with a better informed, more interested cohorts of employees too.
To add a meaningful contribution, as well as stand up to any scrutiny, you need trustworthy (independent, credible, accredited and verifiable) information on your workplace environmental performance. Well managed, well maintained indoor workplaces offer significantly improved and productive environments to work in, where the air is demonstrably better than that immediately outside. Having the right information to hand to confirm that, benefits all building users (and we’ve being doing precisely that for the last 36 years). If you would like more information on these topics, please contact us.
A link to the IWFM survey can be found at: