People & buildings
Workplace Wellbeing
Healthy workplaces are measured, not assumed. We investigate the indoor environmental quality that drives staff energy, focus and absenteeism — and give employers the evidence to act.
The wellbeing case
Healthy workplaces start with the air people breathe
Workplace wellbeing has moved from a soft HR initiative to a measurable, board-level operating cost. Sickness absence, presenteeism, attrition and recruitment difficulty are all influenced by the quality of the indoor environment occupants spend roughly a third of their adult lives inside.
The single largest physical wellbeing lever an employer holds is indoor environmental quality (IEQ): how much fresh air reaches each workstation, how steady the temperature is across a working day, how clean the air is of volatile organic compounds and fine particulates, and how loud and bright the environment feels. The Harvard CogFx studies and the WELL Building Standard have established that improvements in these parameters produce measurable gains in cognitive performance and reductions in symptom reporting.
Wellbeing programmes that bypass the building — focused only on yoga, fruit bowls and EAPs — leave the largest cost driver untouched. A workplace wellbeing strategy grounded in measured IEQ data is defensible to finance, credible to occupants, and durable across leadership change.
The wellbeing stack
Six measurable dimensions of a healthy workplace
Ventilation rate
Litres per second per person actually delivered to each zone — not the design value on the O&M drawing.
Air cleanliness
VOCs, formaldehyde, PM2.5 and PM10 measured against WHO 2021 and WELL Air thresholds.
Thermal comfort
Six-parameter PMV/PPD to BS EN ISO 7730 — the single most-reported complaint category.
Symptom mapping
Validated occupant surveys (BUS, ASHRAE) linking reported symptoms to measured exposures.
Density & occupancy
CO₂ as a tracer for fresh-air-per-person under real occupancy patterns, not assumed ones.
Standards alignment
Reporting against BS EN 16798-1, CIBSE TM40, WELL v2 and BREEAM Hea 02.
Method
From complaint to evidence-based wellbeing plan
- 1
Stage 01
Listen
Confidential occupant survey, complaint log review, HR absence data and facilities ticket analysis.
- 2
Stage 02
Measure
Multi-week instrumented monitoring of CO₂, VOCs, particulates, temperature, humidity and ventilation rate across affected zones.
- 3
Stage 03
Diagnose
Statistical correlation of exposures against reported symptoms; benchmarking against BS EN 16798-1, WHO 2021 and WELL v2.
- 4
Stage 04
Act
Ranked remediation plan with cost-banded interventions, communicated to occupants and finance in language each can act on.
The business case
What healthy workplaces return
The Allen et al. (2016) double-blind crossover trial measured 61% higher cognitive function scores in green-certified buildings and 101% higher scores in green-certified buildings with enhanced ventilation, compared with conventional buildings. WGBC's 2014 review of post-occupancy data found ventilation rate, temperature stability and individual control consistently emerged as the strongest IEQ predictors of productivity.
UK employers commissioning workplace wellbeing investigations typically report reductions in short-term absence, reduced complaint volume in facilities tickets, improved post-occupancy survey scores, and — when paired with WELL or BREEAM certification — measurable uplift in rental and recruitment metrics.
FAQ
Workplace wellbeing — common questions
Make workplace wellbeing measurable
Commission an independent workplace wellbeing investigation. Call 01322 555566 or email info@sickbuildingsyndrome.uk.
Request an investigationInvestigations