So what does the WELL Building Standard look like?

The social sustainability lens of WELL has been enhanced with the necessary adoption of new features including a recent addition of a domestic violence credit. This has helped push awareness that domestic violence is not only a social issue, but a public health issue as well.

Other aspects of the standard such as diversity and inclusion, accessibility, universal design and providing spaces for neuro-diverse people are focused on the health of the individual, but also address a wider social aspect.

Another example is modern slavery.

“This is clearly a public health issue because people affected by modern slavery have poor health outcomes. We’re trying to put a lot of these topics on the agenda and gathering information internationally about what best practice and leadership looks like,” Noonan says. “We’re not in the business of just handing out plaques and ratings. That is not what we’re trying to do with the WELL Building Standard.

“Market transformation is about getting organisations to do things differently. If we’re going to really transform the market, we need to demonstrate what leadership looks like in a particular area and get organisations to strive for that leadership.

“We want HR managers, architects, engineers, project owners to shift their behaviour and the way they do things so that eventually best practice becomes standard practice.

“That’s the whole point of a rating tool and why we exist – to shift behaviour.”

The scheme contains 24 preconditions that every project must achieve to cover the fundamentals of a healthy space or building and then organisations can select features that are important to them. These cover concepts including mental health, physical activity, nourishment or air and water quality. In most projects there is a fairly even spread across air quality, water quality, nourishment, light, movement, sound, thermal comfort, mental health, materials and community-building. The focus can also change depending on who is the key stakeholder responsible for the project.

This is a significant advance on concerns from three or four year ago when sustainability managers led activity with a stronger focus on air, materials and thermal comfort, and less on things like mental health and nourishment.

Jack Noonan says, “now we have HR managers in the room so they are more likely to look at the social and mental well-being aspects. There is also the rise of the chief wellness officer so more and more spaces are providing benefits such as sit/stand desks and there are more ergonomics assessments. It is important to have a broad range of people around the table.”