Health + Well-being

European Offices Celebrate Company Day

Our UK + Serbia teams celebrated their first in-person Company Day since the Covid-19 lockdown. Company Day is an annual event where employees come together to celebrate past successes and understand the future focus for the business. This year’s gathering was especially poignant as we celebrate 35 years of operation in the UK. Featuring external presenters such as Lamington Group and Mates in Mind, there were many insightful talks throughout the day, followed by time to connect for some team-building and fun bonding activities.

PERFORMANCE

We recognize that health and well-being is an essential focus within our offices and plays a crucial role in our corporate culture. Health and well-being has also increasingly become a focal point in our design and consultancy work. We have enhanced our health and well-being standards across the company and will continue to engage staff through initiatives such as the Wellness Council and Healthy Heads Employee Resource Group to understand employee interest and priorities. We aim to help our employees create a healthy balance for themselves and reinforce the concept that a life lived authentically allows each person the freedom to show up as their best selves and do their best work. Through global initiatives, policies and benefits, as well as grassroots activities and events within our offices, we are on a journey to be listed as one of the best places to work by 2030.

Just 2.0 Label | Employee Engagement

• Proactively advancing a culture and work environment where employees feel inspired, motivated, and engaged • Creating ongoing opportunities for employees to engage in activities that track towards our sustainability goals. • Level 4 Achieved

Just 2.0 Label | Family Leave

• Enabling employees to fulfill their parental responsibilities, care for loved ones, and themselves by providing comprehensive paid family and medical leave, sick leave and flexible working arrangements • 15 weeks paid parental leave • Level 3 Achieved

Just 2.0 Label | Health Care

• Understanding that employees need point of care medical treatment as well as health and well-being supports. • Providing regionally applicable employee benefits plans which ensure the medical needs of all employees are met. • Level 3 Achieved

Health + Well-Being Performance Dashboard

Employee Recognition Program

Launched in 2021, the Cheers for Peers program: • Allows employees to give kudos to their colleagues • Fosters a culture of recognition and gratitude • Highlights valuable team-based contribution

New-Office Checklist

Ensuring the health + well-being of employees is purposely designed into our workspaces. Managing principals have been provided a checklist to help them provide healthy workplaces that spark collaboration. The checklist incorporates best practices from: • Fitwel guidelines • Living Building Challenge standards • Activity-based workplace design

Mental Well-Being App

Going beyond healthcare and providing preventative well-being resources to support employees to achieve their wellbeing goals, we have provided premium access to meditation apps since 2019. At the start of 2022, Integral switched to Calm.

OUR IMPACT HIGHLIGHTS

Retrofit, Wellness and Smart Features

The office building refurbishment and fit-out project at 15 Bonhill Street, London, provides a new contemporary office space which incorporates multiple health and wellness features and targets Fitwel Certification. With features like greywater harvesting, seasonal vegetation produced on site for consumption, integration of nature, natural daylight optimization, on-site bicycle storage, dedicated wellness spaces, exercise rooms, and a winter garden space, this is a true exemplification of a healthy building.

Burr and Burton Academy Combustion Free in Vermont

Burr and Burton Academy expanded their campus with Founders Hall, a new 25,000 ft2, three-story center for integrated studies. The net-zero ready designed building surrounds a new mass timber library, designed to promote psychological health and wellness among its occupants.

Image Credit: KATO Architects and ZGF Architects

LEED Zero Energy Certified Medical Office Building… A Healthcare First

This all-electric medical office building is measured and verified Zero Net Energy and Zero Net Carbon…all at a first cost savings of over $1M! The concept includes pragmatic design solutions that meet or exceed the LEED Gold sustainability requirement. The project has received a LEED Zero Energy Certification, the first for a medical facility in North America. It is LEED Platinum Certified, earning every available energy credit, and received the 2021 USGBC Leadership Award.

Health and well-being is about providing a safe environment for everyone to do their best work and feel that they can thrive. Employees should talk to their friends and colleagues about the good times as well as the not-so-good in their life. As an engineering firm we solve both simple and complex engineering problems everyday by working together. We must create that same environment for our people to solve life problems while supporting their unique and personal needs.

Brian Goldsmith

Regional Director, UK & Europe

Sonoma Academy | ILFI Living Building Challenge Zero Carbon & Petal Certified

The Sonoma Academy Janet Durgin Guild + Commons project has received the first-ever Living Building Challenge (LBC) Zero Carbon Certification in California and is the first project to be both Zero Carbon and Petal Certified (Energy, Materials, Equity, Beauty) by International Living Future Institute. The project is also LEED Platinum certified and is currently targeting WELL v2. This is yet another testament to the project’s revolutionary sustainable design and operation that puts wellness, sustainability, and occupant comfort at the forefront.

Wellness Council + Mental Health Awareness Campaign

Throughout 2021 Integral Group’s internal Wellness Council, a team made up of global representatives from each of our operating regions, focused in on the topic of mental health, which became more prominent than ever as the world continued to deal with the impacts of a global pandemic. Initiatives launched include our Healthy Heads Employee Resource Group – centered around mental health in the workplace, and a global video campaign featuring leadership sharing their experiences with mental health.

OUR APPROACH TO WELLNESS…

We look at our employee health and wellbeing with a holistic approach, considering all dimensions of health + wellness: physical, occupational, spiritual, emotional, intellectual, social, environmental, and financial.

We believe spiritual health can offer an expanded sense of meaning, purpose, and belonging. Our goal is to create an inclusive workplace where employees feel open to exploring their inner selves and expressing themselves spiritually at work. We believe our employee’s spiritual health is an essential and deeply personal journey. We support them with tools like our meditation app subscription, inclusion programs, and encouraging personal development.

Our quality of life is significantly impacted by our physical wellness especially when it comes to our ability to remain physically active, sleep well, and eat nutritiously to prevent illness or manage chronic health conditions. We offer a range of physical health supports such as on-site fitness facilities, monthly health spending allowances, nutritious snacks, company sports leagues, and more. We take our physical health seriously and have fun while we do it!

Meaningful and supportive relationships are a vital component of human health. Creating trusting, communicative relationships with colleagues can enrich workplace culture and support an individual’s social health. By providing avenues to spark and nurture these relationships, such as teambuilding events, social committees, reinforcing clear boundaries, and more, we enable employees to create genuine connections.

Effectively managing personal finances is a key component of overall health, as financial struggles can often be a major source of stress in life. We offer regionalized and customizable financial benefits such as our company-matched retirement savings plans, flexible and tax-free savings accounts, workplace nursery benefits, life and disability insurance, financial wellness seminars. We want to ensure we meet employees’ unique, present, and future economic needs.

Emotional

During COVID-19, a focus on emotional wellness has proven more critical than ever before in the workplace. We support employees by offering flexible working, providing soft skills training on handling conflict, and Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs), We help employees take care of their emotional health to manage work-related stress and provide the tools they need to adapt to change.

Occupational

With an employee base of sustainably-minded people, we know that aligning one’s workplace mission with their values generates a greater sense of purpose at work. Creating a lifestyle that enables a sense of satisfaction, meaning and reward is supported by working for a company whose own purpose is one to do good things in the world. Our Deep Green mission and our company values aim to do just that. With programs such as our Career Mobility and Mentorship, we love to watch our people grow and succeed within the firm.

Intellectual

Continued intellectual health and fostering creativity is a lifelong journey of ongoing growth. By offering engaging and mentally-stimulating opportunities for employees so they can continue to challenge themselves and expand their existing skills, and creating avenues to share skills and knowledge with others, employees can utilize the workplace to support this dimension of their wellness. We provide additional opportunities for intellectual growth, such as cultural awareness training, professional development funding, and community involvement.

Environmental

As a Deep Green engineering and consulting firm, environmental wellness is an essential dimension embedded in everything we do. With a focus on learning about and positively impacting the planet’s health, we support our employees in living eco-friendly lifestyles, battle issues such as eco-anxiety and provide healthy buildings with natural ventilation, access to daylight, views of nature, and more to our employees and our clients. We deeply value and respect the relationship between our people, communities, and environment and look to nurture it through our mission, work, and internal operations. With programs such as Cycle to Work scheme, enhanced waste diversion, and more, we remain committed to the well-being of our people and our planet.

Dimensions of Wellness Graphic sourced from: https://shcs.ucdavis.edu/health-and-wellness/eight-dimensions-wellness