ESG strategy - real estate development fund

how to create a real estate esg plan for real estate developers and investment funds

PHASE 1 / REAL ESTATE SUSTAINABILITY INVESTOR PACK (SIP)

Objective - Deliver an investor pack detailing the company’s existing sustainability credentials, how the business will limit its environmental impact going forward and promote human health both internally in its factories and in its modular properties.

This phase is about capacity building and setting a baseline for the work to follow in Phases 2 and 3. It is both a snapshot of the business’s existing sustainability credentials and a statement of intent for what is to come.

Key activities -

• Internal stakeholder soundings: over the first two weeks we will e-meet with relevant stakeholders within the company to take stock of the current sustainability context and evaluate opportunities for future strategies, this will also lead into building the supply chain map

• Environmental decision making: creation of a Sustainability task force, appointment of a senior Sustainability decision maker and consideration for personnel Sustainability incentives to foster a company culture of sustainability

• Environmental policy development: a strategic document that outlines your environmental principles, priorities and objectives over the short (Phase 2), medium (Phase 3) and long-term. To align with GRESB best practices this SIP will consider the following: biodiversity, climate change, energy consumption, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ), material sourcing, pollution prevention, renewable energy, resilience, sustainable procurement, water consumption, waste management, the sustainable workplace and other CSR activities. 

• Making the sustainability case for this particular business model: a robust business case for why this particular business model comes with distinct sustainability credentials, as well as what metrics can be used to quantify the future impact and value created by the company in this regard. 

• Sustainable supply chain material map: a blueprint for further due diligence and opportunities to introduce sustainable building materials while maintaining existing quality / price expectations, including LifeCycle Assessment (raw material production, transportation, in-use, end of life). The resource will include a material map, proposed supplier compliance standards aligned to industry frameworks, identification of supplier engagement opportunities to enhance environmental and social impact. A map of raw material suppliers’ GHG emissions estimates (Scope 3 emissions = value chain impact). NB: this work will be further refined in Phase 2.

• Product design enhancements: having reviewed your current modular product, we will make an initial set of recommendations for alignment with sustainability best practices, e.g. USGBC LEED Multifamily

• Environmental baseline & capacity building: establish a baseline for measurement once the company is operational (factory and construction site), building the capacity and processes for capturing the environmental impact in Phase 2.

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PHASE 2 / REAL ESTATE SUSTAINABILITY PLAN ROLL-OUT 



Objective - Implement and iterate the environmental policy laid out in Phase 1, establishing the company’s environmental responsibility program to conserve natural resources and reduce waste while promoting planetary and human health at each stage of the design, manufacturing and construction cycle. Begin initial tracking of operations.

KPIs - Carbon footprint reduction; embodied carbon reduction; energy reduction; water reduction; waste reduction; renewable energy use (?), sustainable supply chain enhancements, product design enhancements

Key activities -

• Stakeholder engagement: Connect with facilities management, architecture, design and MEP teams, construction team, external suppliers

• Energy, water and waste efficiency: Ongoing data collection, this would include office metering, factory metering and construction site metering, as applicable during this 6-month phase, leading to efficiency measures in line with USGBC LEED green building guidelines

• Carbon footprint & embodied carbon: Map Scope 1 and 2 emissions for the manufacturing facility energy / water / waste consumption once operational, review machinery efficiency certifications, then implement an initial range of embodied carbon reduction measures (focused on the dominant construction materials in the case of embodied carbon), evaluate carbon offset options for other emissions. Identification & tracking of GHG (Scope 1 & 2) operations via energy bills, property, transportation fuel, machinery/equipment

• Sustainable Supply Chain Materials: Life Cycle Assessments of materials with greatest impact, research into alternative building materials; evolution of a sourcing and procurement plan that prioritizes proximity and minimal environmental impact (with due consideration for quality and price expectations) - please note there is the opportunity to build upon this Environmental-oriented work with additional Social / human wellbeing and Governance / policy criteria here (for example in an eventual Phase 3, if appropriate) 

• Product design enhancements: Ongoing proposals for environmentally-friendly design features in line with USGBC LEED guidelines that will enhance the sustainability credentials of MLS and each of its development projects

• Sustainability management software: In the second half of Phase 2, there may be sufficient data pulling through each month to warrant a sustainable data management software subscription, initially we plan to manually collate GHG data, for ongoing data management efficiency however we would recommend evaluating / testing a software solution such as Planetly or Sustain.Life, for this allow approx. US$1k per month

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environmental policy in esg real estate

Objective - effectively managing the company’s environmental responsibility, conserving resources and reducing waste while continuing to deliver the highest-quality sustainable products to customers 

KPIs - carbon footprint reduction; embodied carbon reduction;; energy / water / waste reduction; renewable energy use; # of homes built with a certified HERS® Index Score; % of installed water fixtures certified to WaterSense® specifications; # of homes delivered certified to a third-party multi-attribute green building standard

Key activities 

• Data collection: GHG emissions inventory; energy / water / waste management; 

• Life Cycle Assessment: Sourcing of building Materials 

• Environmental impact assessment / ecological impacts 

• Sustainability initiatives: Energy / water / waste reduction; carbon footprint & embodied carbon reduction; materials selection; product design ; climate change mitigation 

• Environmental policy development 

• Certifications: WGBC Net Zero Carbon Buildings Commitment, USGBC LEED Commercial Building Operations & Maintenance (costed separately)

• ESG management software / resources - Measurbl (approx. US $17k per annum) ; emissions calculations, certification support, target setting, reporting aligned to Task Force on Climate Related Financial Disclosures / TCFD, GRESB, Carbon Disclosure Project / CDP 

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social policy in esg real estate

Objective - creating a diverse, inclusive and safe workplace that empowers employees to deliver the best results for our customers. Increasing access to high-quality, affordable sustainable homes . Leveraging the company’s talent and resources to support social impact and community development work. 

KPIs - workforce demographics, Total recordable incident rate (TRIR) and fatality rate, employee satisfaction, $ invested in social impact, # of volunteer hours, # of beneficiaries of social impact work, # of homes sold to qualified low-income customers, average # of training hours completed, # of employees trained  

Key activities 

• Human capital management strategy - Diversity, Equity & Inclusion,  talent acquisition, career development & training, employee engagement & recognition 

• Health & safety strategy - education, training and auditing, including Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ)

• Social impact strategy - partner selection, impact measurement, employee volunteering, corporate giving,  examples: partnership with Habitat for Humanity provide products + employee volunteering; special financing for low-income qualified customers 

• Employee engagement survey 

• Stakeholder engagement - materiality assessments, impact assessments, stakeholder consultations and discussions 

• Building Certifications -  e.g. WELL / FITWEL / RESET AIR (each costed separately)

• ESG management software - e.g.Brightest Platform - impact measurement, stakeholder engagement, volunteering, supply chain environmental management (approx. Us $6k per annum)

governance policy in esg real estate

Objective -  promoting the highest standards of transparency, integrity, and trustworthiness while maintaining a culture of ethics

KPIs - # of employees trained on ethics, # of security breaches, total diverse supplier spend, total hours of training provided to suppliers 

Key activities 

• Policy development - corporate governance guidelines, code of conduct, supplier code of conduct, data privacy and security, procurement strategy 

• Enterprise risk management program - include climate risk associated with the business 

• Responsible supply chain management program - supplier conduct, ESG requirements, supplier diversity, auditing, sustainable material sourcing 

• Compliance training and monitoring 

• Data privacy and cybersecurity - customer data protection 

• Reporting to stakeholders - annual report, ESG report (GRI US$6k, SASB, TCFD-aligned), GRESB benchmarking (costed separately)

• ESG management software - Workiva for compliance reporting and policies (US $1k / annum per user)
  
  

Biophilic design in the WELL Building Standard

what role does biophilic design play in the well building standard for human health?

The verdant rooftop courtyard of Montoya co-working and event venue, Barcelona, Spain, exemplifies a biophilic environment as outlined by certification standards like the WELL Building Standard. This approach addresses health and wellbeing issues in urban environments by integrating natural elements to improve overall quality of life.

What is the definition of biophilic design?

Biophilic design is about combining nature, sustainability, and well-being interiors by integrating the natural world into our built environment to create spaces that are better aligned with our evolutionary history, that offer some kind of nature connection rather than turning their back on Mother Nature completely. Biophilic design principles emphasize integrating natural elements into designs to enhance well-being, sustainability, and the human-nature connection.

Biophilic elements play a crucial role in enhancing well-being and sustainability by incorporating natural elements into architectural and interior designs.

Tools available to us include indoor and outdoor landscaping, vertical garden walls, air-purifying plants, natural aromatherapy, natural soundscapes, circadian lighting strategies, providing views of nature, creating scenes of natural beauty, the deliberate use of natural patterns, colours, textures, materials, fabrics, and natural elements - to name just a few.

what is the well building standard?

The WELL Certification process for WELL V2 is now widely established as the leading healthy building and wellness real estate standard in the world today. It is essentially a series of guidelines backed by rigorous scientific research and sustainable design principles, that when taken together, will guide a real estate project, whether new build construction or refurbishment and fit-out, towards a final product that is aligned with human health and wellness.

To gain in-depth knowledge about integrating biophilic principles into WELL-certified projects, consider enrolling in a biophilic design course or an online course. These courses provide comprehensive guidance on incorporating nature into architectural and interior designs, focusing on residential spaces, workplace environments, and public spaces.

Sections of the V2 standard are dedicated to Air, Water, Nourishment, Light, Movement, Thermal Comfort, Sound, Materials, Mind, Community & Innovation.

What services do WELL Building Standard consultants offer?

Consultants specialising in the WELL Building Standard for real estate are likely to come from engineering, architecture & interiors, sustainability and/or real estate development backgrounds.

In our case as Biofilico, we have a combination of creative design and real estate development experience, we also have a niche in biophilic design consultancy as well as integrating health and fitness into the built environment.

This means we approach projects from a very different perspective compared to say, a team with an engineering background.

Although we have a wellness architect on our team, we are consultants first and foremost, meaning we are accustomed to working alongside and advising large-scale architecture studios, project management teams and developers on wellbeing design, healthy interiors and biophilic design. We also help clients implement biophilic design principles effectively in their projects. Consultants can benefit from biophilic design online resources to stay updated with the latest trends and practices.

Does the WELL standard favour biophilic design with natural elements?

The short answer is ‘yes’ it does, and likely in more ways than you might think as there are both direct and indirect references to ‘nature’ and ‘biophilia‘ in the standard, just as there are ‘direct‘ and ‘indirect‘ forms of biophilia at our disposal when designing an interior space.

Knowing how to make the most of biophilic design strategies therefore requires in-depth understanding not just of its breadth and depth as a design concept, but a combination of creativity with rigorous knowledge of the standard itself.

Fundamentally, biophilic design contributes to a wider healthy building strategy by benefits on air quality, mental wellbeing, healthy materials, nature connectedness and more, just as it contributes to a green building strategy in terms of sustainability, and so on. The WELL standard encourages designers to incorporate biophilic design to enhance these benefits.

What credits can biophilic design principles help with in the WELL standard?

There are obvious places to go hunting for credits in the WELL building standard as a biophilic design consultant, most notably in the MIND section where connection to nature is referenced in Precondition 02 Nature and Place as well as M09 Enhanced Access to Nature. So, let’s address these before moving on to the arguably less obvious credits that biophilic design can contribute to in the standard.

MIND / Precondition 02 Nature & Place

Here we are on our home turf, this is the main biophilic design credit for all intents and purposes, as it rewards the use of natural materials, patterns, shapes, colors, images or sounds as well as the integration of plants, the presence of water features and nature views into the project.

Part 2 of this WELL Standard Precondition is a more cerebral concept yet also provides considerably more creative freedom for architects and designers to interpret the brief through the lens of biophilic design as we are tasked with creating design elements that celebrate company culture or that of the local community, a celebration of place (connecting to the location in other words), elements of art and, wait for it, ‘human delight’.

MIND / Enhanced Access to Nature M09

M09 is then a continuation of this as it gives specifications of what percentage of workstations on each floor of the project should have direct views of indoor plants, a natural landscape or indoor water feature. If we play that one through to its logical conclusion, the extent of the indoor biophilic design interventions will depend greatly on the availability of external views onto natural landscapes.

If none are available as the project is in a densely populated urban area such as a business district, then the focus will of necessity have to be on bringing the outside world in, if the project is to secure these two credits for M09 by integrating natural elements.

MIND / Precondition Promote Mental Health & Wellbeing and MIND / M07 Restorative Spaces

One possible component of Part 1 in the MIND Precondition is a dedicated restoration space or recharge room.

We specialise in creating biophilic, nature-inspired restorative spaces such as the one above that we created for the HERO Group headquarters in Switzerland in 2019.

One restorative space can then double-up for credit scores in the M07 credit as well, provided it adopts a multi-sensory design covering lighting, sound, thermal comfort, seating, biophilia and ‘calming colours, textures and forms’ (this is clearly open to interpretation but a biophilic approach is always going to be a winner in this regard, with proven science behind its calming properties).

In 2017 Biofilico carried out a own scientific research study into this very subject for EcoWorld Ballymore in London for their Wardian Residences:

NOURISHMENT / N01 Fruits & Vegetables

Part Two: Promote Fruit & Vegetable visibility - create enticing displays in an office canteen or kitchen area that takes on near sculptural form, just a little creativity can go a long way here.

NOURISHMENT / N07 Nutrition Education

A hydroponic garden wall or individual hydroponic towers of edible lettuce leaves and herbs for example can provide opportunities for gardening / planting workshops with staff as well as additional biophilic decoration for the office on an ongoing basis. This strategy also doubles up as a solution for N12 Food Production, see below, as well as N13 Local Food Environment - contributing food produced on-site back to the local community.

NOURISHMENT / N12 Food Production

The provision of a gardening space within 0.25miles of the project can be easily solved either with a hydroponic farm set-up in the lobby or with an urban garden on the rooftop of the building if feasible. Such a facility needs to be accessible to regular occupants during. the daytime and be between 200ft2 and 1500ft2 in size according to the number of regular occupants in the project.

LIGHT / L03 Circadian lighting design

Circadian lighting is a foundation of biophilic design as the key aim is to align our body’s clocks with the regular cycle of dawn and dusk. We have written elsewhere on circadian lighting strategies and how to implement them. L03 in WELL specifies “appropriate exposure to light for maintaining circadian health and aligning the circadian rhythm with the day-night cycle”.

MOVEMENT / V08 Physical Activity Spaces & Equipment

Here WELL are looking for evidence that there is a gym or fitness facility available at no cost for regular building occupants to. use, either in the building itself, nearby or in a nearby outdoor space such as a park.

We specialise in designing green fitness spaces that secure additional points within the WELL certification for MIND M07 Restorative Spaces and MIND M09 Enhanced Access to Nature (using biophilic design that brings the outside world in).

MATERIALS / X06 VOC Restrictions and X07 Materials Transparency

To secure these credits requires an understanding of healthy materials and indoor air quality as well as biophilic design.

The key concept is that all natural materials such as stone, wood, bamboo and cork do not contain any VOCs and come with their own material transparency.

Our main issue here is ensuring that we specify the finishes and fit-out substances such as primers, glues and adhesives as these can inadvertently carry chemicals containing VOCs, thereby negating the good work done by specifying an organic materials in the first place!

To enquire about our services as biophilic design consultants for WELL certified projects, contact us here.

Biophilic Design and Wellbeing Interiors- an evolutionary perspective

A lot of the same principles are at the root of biophilic design, wellbeing interiors and healthy buildings. Here we explore the synergies between these distinct but ultimately complementary concepts.

Q. What is your personal background?

Matt Morley: I come from a real estate development background. I was a creative director for real estate developer for many years, from there grew a passion in what we could call healthy buildings or what's often described as wellbeing design in the real estate sector.

In parallel with that I was always heavily into nature and spending time outside and looking for natural alternatives to what I was doing indoors, so if we put that all into a shaker, the cocktail that comes out is this company Biofilico.

I started with gyms under the Biofit moniker, that remains a highly specialized business providing consultancy services to hotel groups and real estate businesses on creating green, healthy gym spaces with style.

It's a very niche market, but there's a market for it, and it's been growing steadily over the last five or six years I’m glad to say.

Q. How did you move into the workplace and residential sectors?

I noticed that there were adjacent categories where applying the same principles of how you to create a healthy building or biophilic space could be of value.

So I soon started working on office projects and more recently residential, as well as hotels.

Q: How do you think about healthy interior spaces?

For me it all goes back to our evolutionary history which is obviously so much longer and more extensive than the history we have of living indoors in centrally heated, air conditioned, electrically illuminated environments.

This post-industrial age is just a tiny blip in our evolutionary history over the last call it three and a half million years or 200,000 years if we're going back to the start of Homosapiens. No matter how you look at it, our ancestors spent a long ,long time surviving out in nature, that's our DNA, that’s what our genetic make-up is still equipped for but contemporary lifestyles are largely disconnected from that. For better or worse.

For me, that's where biophilic design comes by in trying to realign our indoor environments with the natural world and our evolutionary past.

Q: How do you define biophilia and biophilic design?

There are two versions for that. There's the version that you will read online that says either Eric Fromm or E.O. Wilson coined the term but for me all they were doing was giving a name to the innate connection that we all have as human beings to nature. They didn’t invent anything as such.

Biophilic design then takes that a step further by bringing it indoors, into the modern world and the realities of life today where we spend most of our time in some form of built environment.

When I talk about it I'm very much pushing the idea of biophilic design bridging two worlds, between green buildings and healthy buildings.

A lot of the work for LEED or BREEAM building certifications is focused on the environment while WELL and FITWEL building certifications zero in on the human aspect of buildings and interiors, the health and wellbeing side. Together, that gives us people and planet.

Healthy spaces are more to do with the people, the inhabitants or occupants and the users while the planet angle is more related to impact on raw materials, pollution, and so on, Biophilic design combines elements of the two, so a natural environment that is both healthy for the people who spend time in it but also healthy for the planet in terms of its impact on the world around us.

Biophilic design joins the dots between nature, human health and environmental wellbeing.

Q. What are the key principles of wellbeing design?

One key component is indoor air quality - here we are working to purify the air via enhancements to the ventilation system’s filters for example but it is also about the materials and finishes introduced into that space during the fit-out. Are they natural, non-chemical materials or are they materials containing plastics of chemical treatments for example, such as flame retardants?

There's a lot of interesting research out there about the mental aspect as well so if air quality is about physical wellbeing in one sense it is also a way to boost mental performance, through productivity and concentration levels. It is a way to improve how office workers perform during the day or how residents sleep at night. So producing in one sense and recovering in another, both linked to the indoor air quality.

Then we have light quality - having a connection to nature with a view out onto plants, greenery or a landscape will serve to exposure you to certain color spectrums of light at certain times of day. This can be supplemented with smart lights indoors that produce the ‘right kind’ of blue-white light during the day time before softening to a more amber tone towards the end of the day.

Philips Hue bulbs are great. I've been using them for a few years, but there are others out there now too. It's a relatively simple system, you don't have to have it set up to your Wi Fi network if you decide you want everything grounded and you want to avoid EMF risks, but that's a separate topic!

These lights serve as my alarm in the mornings so I wake with a replica of sunlight that slowly increases over a 30-minute period in what is hopefully my pitch black bedroom - to promote deep sleep and recovery.

Q: What air-purifying plants do you recommend?

It's relatively easy to find air-purifying plants that can be kept indoors with indirect light and they'll do a lot of good in terms of taking out the bad stuff, and pumping oxygen back into your home, for more Oxygen and less CO2.

Air-purifiers simply enhance and improve that same process, as plants can only do so much alone given the quality of inner-city air nowadays! The key is to go big, don’t hold back on your plant strategy, aim for six to eight plants per person in a room of say, 25m2

If you live in a remote location, if you're living in the middle of the woods or mountains, that's one thing. If you're in the middle of a city then I tend to hack that scenario a little bit with an air purifier running during the night. In other words, a combination of wellness tech and natural solutions is best.

In terms of plant species, my go-to species is the ‘ZZ’ plant as they're really resistant. They do a lot of good for you as well so I recommend those in your home especially.

For a home gym, garage gym or garden gym, space is probably limited so your floor space is at a premium, here I'm looking for low maintenance plants while keeping my floor space free for training activities like crawling, running, jumping, and so on. Generally, potted plants on the floor in your gym is a bad idea, especially if cats and dogs are in the mix as well.

Q: How do you use wabi-sabi design in wellbeing interiors?

This is a Japanese philosophy of finding beauty in imperfection. So imagine an organic apple, perhaps not the best looking, it may not be perfect but it is going to taste 100 times better than one that has been genetically modified to look ‘perfect’. The organic apple is full of vitamins and is far closer to an apple as nature intended it to be.

So wabi-sabi design can have a patina of age, curves instead of right angles, or a wobbly edge to a handcrafted ceramic plate for example.

Q: What healthy materials do you work with most often?

I always try to recommend a non-toxic, chemical and VOC-free paint for interior walls. There's this whole world of eco-friendly paints out there now, for example from the likes of Graphenstone or Lakeland, both fine examples of what is possible today from a sustainability perspective. Some paints can even absorb unwanted gases and chemicals that might be coming out of the plastics in your furniture.

Flooring is another key area to focus on for healthy materials. There's lots of high quality rubber and cork gym floor options out there that are generally much better than some of the cheaper flooring tile solutions, if natural wood, bamboo or stone is not within the realms of possibility budget-wise.

Q: What segments of the real estate market do you expect to see biophilic design impacting in future?

At the moment I'm looking at example at two different projects around the ‘senior living’ space. So, what I see is that post-COVID there's a huge spike in demand in advisory services on healthy materials as well as projects aimed at creating healthy indoor environments, and where better to do that than in a health clinic or residential development for seniors?

There are different concerns according to the specific project type but what makes it interesting is that they all join up and overlap in the end, at least in terms of my consultancy briefs.

a guide to workplace wellbeing design

What is workplace wellness design?

For us the concept of workplace wellness is about using wellbeing interior design combined with a number of strategies to ‘hack’ an office environment for productivity, concentration, collaboration and a range of both physical and mental health measures.

Tools at our fingertips range from active design, lighting, recharge rooms, improved air quality, flooring, decor, furniture, space planning, signage, food and drink, wellness programs and more.

Company culture and workplace wellness

You can go a step further by fostering a company culture that, for example, accepts standing meetings as normal, or that encourages up to two person walking meetings if there's a courtyard, garden, rooftop or park accessible nearby.

This starts from the C-suite down in terms of what is deemed acceptable or even admirable behavior, and then recognizing that there are many other ways to approach the work day now, for example by using a standing desk to stay upright for most of the day instead of slouched at a desk.

That can be a game changer especially for anyone who's ever experienced back pain, just by being on your feet, and having a small mat under your feet makes a massive difference, such as avoiding the mid-afternoon energy dip.

What is Wellness Lighting?

Increasingly easy to integrate into our home and work spaces, wellness lighting can be something as simple as a desk light that pumps different colored tones of light in your direction during the day to ensure you have adequate amounts of blue-white light during the day and, equally, a more amber hued light after dark, whilst still maintaining the necessary energy levels and promoting deep slight at night.

Circadian lighting systems follow this same routine every day, mimicking the rising and setting of the sun in tune with the seasons, rather than trying to create an ‘always on’ interior environment that can mess with our sleeping patterns.

Productivity and workplace wellness

When we talk about workplace design or healthy co-working office design and its impact on worker productivity we are typically talking about productivity improvements arin the 5%-6% changes although it can often feel like a lot more for those who manage to side-step the afternoon energy crash.

Acoustics and focus in the workplace

Flooring can make a real difference both in terms of acoustics as hard surfaces reflect or ‘bounce’ noise around and reduce the acoustic quality in a workspace, for example magnifying conversations between colleagues on the other side of the office.

So putting in an acoustic underlay, with a flooring tile that perhaps has a visual connection to nature, is recycled or upcycled, and is installed with a natural adhesive, and can eventually be taken back by the the flooring supply company at the end of its life in 5-10 years time, all of this can complete change the acoustics in an office whilst fitting in with a sustainability strategy as well.

If there's a rebound in terms of echo in your workplace, then look at the flooring first of all and try to cover it with rugs, then consider more soft furnishings, acoustic paint or acoustic ceiling panels, for a complete acoustic strategy.

Sustainability and wellbeing in workplace design

Integrating elements of sustainability and human wellbeing in interiors for a workplace is now the holy grail of design for us at Biofilico. It's also like a Pandora's Box once you start looking under the hood of everything. How do you prioritize what matters most? Sometimes there are compromises to be made, in fact, most of the time but that doesn’t mean we can’t keep trying!

For example having a work desk positioned next to a window that attracts plenty of natural daylight is a real help in terms of resting the eyes, boosting energy levels, provide access to fresh air outside, perhaps combined with a smart desk light for the evenings, while using a standing desk with a sustainable bamboo desktop, such as one from FULLY.

Standing desks in a healthy office

A standing desk can promote movement and reduce sitting time obviously but it is always best to pair it with a stool, in order to take some weight off the feet from time to time, giving us an option to take a call on our feet while moving around the office, then come back to sit down briefly while writing an important email, before returning to standing position again to complete some more administrative or creative tasks.

For more details on the role of ergonomic furniture in a healthy workplace interior see our blog post here.

Indoor air quality at work

We all know how important it is to bring plants into our work spaces and there are half a dozen that are especially good for this purpose, they are air-purifiers approved by a NASA study. It is recommended to combine them with an air purifier at home, or enhanced carbon filters in a commercial HVAC system in a shared office scenario.

Healthy materials are another key component in an indoor air quality strategy at work. Wellbeing interiors specify healthy, non-toxic materials such as wood, bamboo, cork, linen, wool, leather even recycled materials with health product declarations (ingredient lists showing they contain no harmful chemicals).

What is active design in the workplace?

Today there is an increasing understanding amongst workplace consultants, healthy building experts and HR specialists that sitting at a desk all day long without moving, with your hips at a 90 degree angle, your back hunched over, is simply no longer adisable. There are other options out there now, workers do not need to put their bodies (and minds) through that.

Part of the answer is in fostering incidental and frequent movement during the work day. Another response is creating different workspaces designed for different tasks around the office, implicitly encouraging movement between those spaces during your workday.

It’s all about understanding that connection between your sleep and your mental performance, your nutrition, and your, your performance at work and also what you're doing with your body during those hours of work so even if it's just getting outside or finding a bit of space to have a stretch, getting out your yoga mat or rolling out some stiff muscles on a foam roller, or even five minutes of burpees, bodyweight squats and press-ups, it' doesn’t really matter but staying active is the key. Keep your blood flowing and your energy levels high. It may just be a quick movement snack but it can be as good as a shot of coffee for some people!

Employee health wellness with Wellable

The ‘Green & Healthy Places’ podcast series covers sustainability, wellbeing and community in office, residential and hotel real estate today.

Welcome to episode 030 of the Green & Healthy Places podcast in which we explore the themes of sustainability and wellbeing in real estate, workplaces and hospitality today.

I’m your host, Matt Morley, Founder of Biofilico wellbeing design and Biofit Health & Fitness.

This time in Boston in the US to talk to Nick Patel, CEO of Wellable employee wellness.

We discuss how Wellable are aiming to be the Netflix of wellness content, how existing trends in workplace wellbeing have simply been accelerated by COVID, how mental health at work has become less taboo than ever before, his views on healthy building certifications as a communications tool for brands that care about employee wellbeing and his thoughts on the role technology, culture and physical spaces play in creating a truly healthy workplace experience.

GUEST / NICK PATEL, CEO

• https://www.wellable.co/home

• https://www.linkedin.com/company/wellable-inc-/

• https://www.facebook.com/GetWellable/

HIGHLIGHTS FROM OUR CONVERSATION

Being healthy to the earth often equates to being healthy to yourself

Companies are starting to invest in community health initiatives, so not just helping their employees who are living in those communities, but helping all local citizens

There's a shift happening from ROI, return on investment, to VOI value on investment

Healthy people are typically still very active and alert in productivity terms at 4pm

No one ever asked us to create content, on the health benefits of gratitude for example, the health benefits of finding purpose in your life, or the science of happiness, but we did it!

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Talking workplace wellbeing with Wellable

FULL TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS COURTESY OF OTTER.AI (excuse typos!)

Matt Morley

Nick, thanks so much for being here with us.. I want to start with how you’d pitch a real estate developer landlord or a corporate executive to describe the problem you're solving.

Nick Patel

Yeah, fundamentally, we're in the business of making individuals healthy, happy and more productive, not just professionally but in their personal lives as well. And so our goal in terms of fulfilling that mission is working with employers on a health plan for their properties, really they’re the sponsors, who can support tailored wellness programmes for their constituents, whether that's their employees, or their tenants, whoever that may be.

Now, if we're talking to an employer, I usually always open with the fact that having a wellness programme is the right thing to do for a number of different reasons. There are benefits in terms of business success,. So having a thriving workforce is also associated with having employees who are excited about coming to work every day, excited about giving 100% of themselves into that job, that results in more creativity, more engagement, more retention, all these things will translate into the bottom line for those companies.

When we're talking to a property manager or building owner, it's the same concept, it's just a different channel to that individual. In that case, if you're a property manager, or building owner, your client is the employer. So assisting them in critical things for their business is helpful to attract and retain those tenants, garner higher rents, things like that. So implementing programmes that help their employees lead healthy lives, takes one thing off their plate or supports them in their own personal initiatives or company initiatives, all of which results in just better business success.

Matt Morley

Very cool. I like the way you're presenting it not just as as filling a gap or reducing a negative impact. But in fact, spinning on the upside, which is adding to the business and generating positivity, generating revenue, whatever it might be, rather than just preventing bad things from happening. I think that's a fundamental point on that topic.

We’ve just been through a roller coaster of a past 16 months, how have you at Wellable had to adapt within that employee wellness space? And how have you had to adjust your products and services in line with what's been going on?

Nick Patel

Great question. I think, depending on when you would ask me this question, during the last 18 months, the response would be somewhat or significantly different. I think right now, we're in a place where we're looking backwards, and kind of reflecting on these moments, for us least in America, the vaccine rates are high, we're feeling people coming back to work, things like that. And so as I look back, even coming into March until today, I felt like we're going through three different phases.

I think most businesses went through this in some way, shape, or form, even ones that were thriving in a digital world, and ones that were heavily impacted in the sense that they were on site, or had to be physically present. But they all had this element that no one escaped this. And so there's this recovery phase, right, there's a response phase, and there's reimagined phase.

The recovery phrase for us specifically, we are a comprehensive wellness provider. So what that means is that we are offering a number of different solutions, all independently, that employers or properties can implement in their programme. So that includes software, and that includes services, which were at least pre COVID, delivered primarily on site.

So for us, our recovery phase dealt with helping our clients transition to digital solutions. We had an airline as a customer and as you can imagine, every aspect of their world was turned upside down. I couldn't imagine being in the call centre for that company. And so, they were concerned about health and workplace wellbeing, they're doing it for all the right reasons. But practically, it was something that they could not even think about addressing in the month of March, April, May.

There's a response phase once we realise what was happening, and how we're going to respond. We tried a number of different things. We launched a programme almost initially. So it was very impressive that by mid March, we're launching a new product, we called at the time Wellable LIVE and it was the alternative to our on site services business. It was a streaming service. We were doing effectively Zoom fitness classes, Zoom webinars and things like that, that were throughout the day, five days a week that anyone can watch recordings of.

We were concerned about bandwidth, internet, microphone access, and we're sending out iPads to improve their quality because they were using home computers and things like that. At the end of the day, I think we're proud of that product. But it wasn't something that we saw that was going to be long term.

Now we're entering that reimagined phase of what the world is going to look like, in the short term being 12 months or so also in a very long term. So pretty quickly by May we said, we think the solution if you're going to do digital products, or data content, ‘live’ is nice in many ways, but you are missing out so many the benefits of being able see someone's yoga posture, for example, in a live session, right? So we end up launching what we call Wellable on demand. It is our version of what we think is going to be the future, like most products that are in this early stage, it's still in its infancy, and it's still growing and changing. But really, it's thinking about Netflix for wellness content.

So for us, we initially launched in July, a full library of high quality, you know, multiple camera angles, miked up instructors, things like that of all fitness classes for everything Pilates, yoga, prenatal / postnatal workouts, things like that. And from there, we're exploring additional content, is it healthy cooking, is it just written content in terms of recipes, we already launched a mindfulness and meditation series as part of that. And that's what we're thinking the future of like this digital concept, because what we're seeing is a lot of our clients mainly are still trying to figure out permanently what it looks like. But for the most part, in general, there's going to be more remote work than there was before. And whether that's employees in the office only three days a week, full time remote, every wellness programme is going to need some type of digital element and content delivery. And I think that's what the future for on demand product is going to be.

Matt Morley

So with the shift then to to a largely digital platform in terms of the interface itself, how are your different audience groups interacting with Wellable? Is it via a specific app? Is it essentially online?

Nick Patel

Yes, that's a tough question to answer, because for our perspective, how we deliver health and wellness solutions, is that structurally, we offer a number of different products and offerings, all of which can be purchased independently, and mixed and matched. And so the way we think about is that every employer is unique culturally, you know, where are they based, geographically, the physical space, things like that. And they're comprised of very unique individuals. And in most cases, it's a very diverse subset of people, all of which want different things right.

For some people, having group fitness classes is a great opportunity. Others prefer a digital engagement experience and mobile app, and we try to offer all those independently of each other. So if you look at 100 of our customers, and look what they're doing broadly with Wellable, for the most part, they're doing things that are at the very least, different in small ways, and in some cases, very significantly different. No one's right or wrong. There's not a wellness programme that's perfect for every group or every building. And so that's what we're experiencing.

When you think about how people are interacting with our our solutions, in general, it's not always necessarily a digital interaction. Although that is our primary product, we are known as a software provider, but it could be, you know, pre COVID groups that are just doing things on site, that was everyone, whether it's a warehouse company, or things like that everyone was always on site. And that's the way they felt the best opportunity to deliver was. And so it's just terms of how we communicate our programmes and things like that. It really again, depends on the programme for us, we are an end to end provider so that includes the promotions of the programme , the delivery execution, capturing and responding to feedback.

So to the extent our clients give us that authority to message and communicate directly with the employee, we take advantage of that with tailored messages for people who aren't even participating to people who are very active and we don't want to disrupt their way they're interacting with that programme. For our best clients. Like I said before, they're individuals or their employees are very unique and different. They all want different things. They offer a very diverse mix of our solutions to their clients, or their employees, knowing that someone gravitate to some type of solutions other gravitate to others. And so our communication strategy kind of matches that depending on what it is, depending on who that demographic is or trying to a diverse set of outreach and things like that to capture just a broad audience and then hopefully allow them to self identify what makes the most sense for them.

workplace wellness trends

Matt Morley

I think it connects very neatly with the idea that workplace culture and to some extent the brand itself, as in how the individual company's brand values and mission statement is reflected in terms of how they operate at a corporate or other employee level. So that makes sense.

There's there's just so much happening in this workplace wellness space right now. And there's there's a lot of players emerging, a lot of content being created. You've been in the game since 2012. How have you seen the workplace wellness scene evolve? Obviously, there's sort of there's going to be presumably a pre COVID and a post COVID. Right. But I mean, like just sort of looking at it or bigger scale over the last decade, like what have been the major shifts that you've seen that you're perhaps at a strategic medium term level tapping into?

Nick Patel

Yeah, there’s clearly a pre COVID, post COVID narrative there. The one thing I'll say about COVID, I think everything is still settling a little bit. But I think the long term takeaway from COVID, from our perspective, and I think it kind of makes sense in most industries, is that it didn't necessarily change the world, it really accelerated what was already happening, right. And so remote work, was becoming more and more popular anyway but companies were hesitant, but due to COVID, they were forced to do it. Then they realised there are some growing pains, especially when you're doing it unplanned But they're realising their sales teams can be productive while not travelling, which some groups are already experiencing, and experimenting with.

I think the wellness industry in general, is similar. The trends that we are experiencing, we're just accelerated. It's been eight years since we were founded, so much has changed. You know, the funny little story when we first started, Fitbit had just created their Fitbit zip. So if you remember that, it's like the one that you clip on your belt. And their real selling point was, Oh, it's Bluetooth oriented, and you have an app, it wasn't anything about being wrist worn, or anything of that nature. And at the time, when we first started, you know, the iPhone was one or two years old, we thought the future of health and wellbeing from a digital perspective, that is what's going to be with these consumer apps and technologies. And so rather, you know, we view ourselves, you have to distinguish between the two, there's consumer technology, there's a direct and individual, there's enterprise wellness technologies. And that's when you're going to go to a property and employer health plan and asked them to be the sponsor of a programme.

Back in 2012, we thought the future was going to be connecting all these consumer technologies and the consumer grade solutions, let that market determine who the best products were, aggregate that to a single platform and expose that to employees, or tenants, whoever it may be. And that was a big differentiator. I remember going to employer groups trying to talk to them as a small company, and made the comment, look at this Fitbit, it's going to be great. People are using it. And they're asking the question, are people really going to use a Fitbit or activity tracker? So that was a story in 2012. Now, if you didn't connect to a Fitbit, like at the time, our competitors weren't doing that, that was like the novel. And that was our biggest key differentiator.

Now, if you don't connect to Fitbit, Apple Watch, Garmin, these technologies, it's a non starter. So in eight years, what became our biggest differentiator is just table stakes.

Mental health in the workplace

Just in general, I think the two biggest trends that were always happening pre COVID, were accelerated due to COVID. And we were experiencing these changes at different rates, certainly early years was a move to holistic wellbeing and considering mental health, certainly pre COVID it was still taboo in the workplace in terms of a conversation. Less so now, we’ve made a lot of progress due to COVID, for sure.

But it was always something that was gaining momentum. Now when we talk to employers, they're asking, How does Wellable address mental health in the workplace? They've asked us about financial wellbeing things of that nature that just weren't nearly as popular even five years ago.

the shift away from biometric screenings

The second big takeaway, at least in the US market, for sure, is that the original wellness programmes first introduced in the 1970s, and became really popular in the 90s and early 2000s. Effectively had I'm oversimplifying here, two big elements - a biometric screening and a health risk assessment. If I draw your blood of all your employees or tenants, I can capture information that data is good for you. And my argument be just because you have data doesn't mean it's good, right? There's gonna be some actionable intelligence from that data that makes it valuable, but data in itself is just attribute. And then the same thing to health risk assessment, it was heavily clinical focus. It was a self assessment. So you're often asking clinical questions to an employee who doesn't necessarily know the answer, and just feels like they want to get to the assessment and answer the questions.

Tonnes of research has always questioned those, even though for decades, but they have this element of stickiness to it. Employers like Safeway is a very famous case study for employee wellness programme here in the United States. And their whole programme is built off biometric screenings. And if you're Safeway, it's hard for you to walk away from a programme that you built the head, a case study on it that's been very widely touted and things like that.

But new programmes aren't adopting the solutions. And we were found find the old programmes, were willing to slowly peel them away. COVID certainly accelerated that in the sense that you couldn't do biometric screens anymore. So a lot of companies suspended that for the first time in a decade or so. And now they're ask themselves, well, we didn't have it before, our wellness programme is still showing positive results. The biometric screening doesn't cover certain holistic elements like mental health and things like that. And I think they're slowly moving away from those. So those are the two big things I find are trends that are happening or celebrate COVID or continue happening. It's a transition to holistic wellbeing, and moving away from things like biometric screenings and health risk assessments.

Healthy building certifications & wellbeing interiors

Matt Morley

So a lot of change, a lot of movement, an industry that's in full evolution. So let’s shift onto healthy building certifications, where you're dealing not just with wellbeing interior design, but also operational and facilities management processes. So these third party standards like WELL and FITWEL. Now, that can either happen at the owner level, or it can happen at the employer level. how does Wellable connect with tall that?

Nick Patel

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I would even ask why do we have these certifications, I think it helps people hit certain standards and goals. But I think for really, it's a good way to communicate. If you're in a building, for example, it's a way for you to communicate that we are investing in the health and wellbeing of the tenants. And for most companies who value health and wellbeing that may impact their decision in terms of where they want to set their office and things like that.

It's similar to the ‘healthiest places to work’, companies often strive for that, because the recognition of that healthiest place to work, attracts the right talent, emphasises your values, in terms of caring for the employees and things like that. So it ends up being the end product.

In many ways, I have a number of things that you're engaging with, prior to ever getting that certification. And so as it relates to healthy spaces, especially this new normal, or this kind of post COVID normal that is still kind of unfolding and figure out how it all shakes out. We found or we find I think that promoting health and well being in general, across three buckets is where employers should strive. And we help in many of those areas, but not all of those areas. And by engaging in kind of these three areas or buckets - technology, culture and physical spaces.

Tech, culture and designing physical space for wellbeing

Technology, we always talked about this even prior COVID remote work was increasing, people are looking to be healthy, not just you know, when they're in eight hours a day, in their offices and things like that. And to be able to have a distributed health and wellbeing strategy, there has to be a technology element, there's no real way to do that well outside of that element. And so investing the right technologies, and we're a technology company, as a relates to health and wellbeing is really important. And we offer a number of solutions, depending on the type of wellness programme that you want to offer.

Culture. I always talk to a talk about properties in this way is that people forget that properties have culture to culture, something that companies often associate what's your company culture, but properties have culture too. And it's from you know, is it inclusive? How is it dynamic in the public spaces, all those things are pervasive. And people gravitate to the culture. I mean, that's what culture has is what people are doing when someone doesn't tell them what to do in some ways, right. And so buildings have cultures, employees have culture. And where we've always said is we provide content, we blog a lot, we have thought leadership, we actually have a group within our company that does proprietary research on a number of things, including culture. And that's something that we try to improve, but it's really something outside the scope of what our company does, outside of like guidance and consultation. So we know it's one of the key pillars. And, you know, we're actually personally focusing a lot on diversity, equity inclusion right now in terms of just research and understanding what that means.

We read an article from a professor at Harvard that that summed up pretty well, she said - there's no amount of employee wellness programmes, or company benefits that can offset racism in the workplace. That hit the nail on the head as relates to how important culture is as relates to health and wellbeing.

So then we have physical spaces, whether it's on site gyms, healthy food options, air quality, things of that nature.

As companies or buildings kind of pursue health and wellbeing in the lens of these three areas, I find that they typically can sail through the certification process. And the certification process, in our view, is really getting recognition for all the work you're doing as it relates to health and well being.

Matt Morley

I think that's a crucial insight that to unpack and in a sense demystify some of these healthy building certifications that can seem quite imposing and really a mountain to climb. When you're coming from a standing start. I think the point you're making very clearly, and it's a powerful one, is that if you're active in this space, if you're already engaging with the idea of workplace wellness, and you're looking after your employees, a healthy building certification should be within reach. It's a subtle point, but the certification is really kind of like doing the exam, having done the hard work, right? And Wellable is there to help with some of the hard work. So you can, in a sense, do all of that first, and then the certification just comes later, rather than starting with that and having to roll all of this out, because there's a lot to do.

ESG - Environmental, Social and Governance

So how does Wellable’s work contribute to ESG?

Nick Patel

What's interesting about ESG is that the definition is continuously expanding. So for I think, ESG, when people often associated with this, several years ago, it was around largely a sustainability movement, about going green. And what we found actually, by the requests in demand of our clients, both current perspective is that they often lump that sustainability element into health and wellbeing. And so the general concept being that you know, being healthy to the earth often equates to being healthy to yourself, walking to work or biking to work has both of those benefits. And they're deeply, deeply connected, clean air, good for your body, it's good for the earth, deeply, deeply connected. And so we find that that definition, I would have told you when we first started this company, that we would never be in the concept of sustainability risk broadly. And now we find that they're overlapping very heavily. And so that's where I think our biggest splash happens as a relates to the ESG movement.

But to your point, we often talk to companies, when we think about community health initiatives. And as a public health level, government, especially local governments are doing a really good job about driving Community Health had done an extremely good job of connecting with the private sector, off the concept of Yes, this is the right thing you should do. That is what ESG is about. In many ways, these are the right things you should engage in similar to you should have an employee wellness programme for the right reasons. But by the way, there are all these extra ancillary benefits that come from it.

Community engagement in ESG

In the case of the ESG movement, where we're seeing really big changes and impacts on public health at the local level, it's the private sector, recognising something that was when you would think is fairly obvious is that you recruit and retain employees from the community that you operate in. So if you're in whatever town or city may be, having healthy, happy, healthier citizens of that town or city is going to translate into your company benefits as well. Obviously, your wellness programme can help accelerate those type of things. And we're finding that companies are starting to invest in community health initiatives, so not just helping their employees who are living in those communities, but helping all local citizens is where the wellbeing movement is most deeply tied as relates to ESG.

We started originally, just as employer focus, we've started expanding to properties. And now we have a number of groups, from public health departments and things looking to run community programmes. And largely this is driven by this ESG movement.

Matt Morley

I've seen that very much there's been this kind of kicker in that particular piece of ESG. Around community. Suddenly, the Black Lives Matter moment, I think was a was a turning point in that and it really then suddenly put community up there not just in terms of ethical business practices, or ethical procurement policies for business, in line then with how you look after employee employees, but then there was this piece in between around the community. I think that's, that's a strong point dimension.

Now, but underlying all of this, then is that discussion with the CFO where the saying, okay, but that all sounds great, but you know, show me the data, show me the evidence of how this is having a tangible impact on our staff and on our business. So how does wearable play into that conversation around generating hard data? And if you like, almost analytics around the impact of of working with you?

Nick Patel

Yeah, there's a transition to a couple of questions. Previously, you mentioned about what's changing in the employee wellness space. And I didn't mention this, but this is something that certainly was happening, it's top of the list as well, is that there's a shift from ROI, return on investment, to VOI value on investment.

So the classic model, going back to the, you know, original, old school wellness programmes was that I could invest $1, into an employee wellness programme, and I would extract $2 in savings. You know, if you're in the United States, where you're uncovering your health insurance for all your employees, that would most likely show up in your health care costs. And that's why you did the investment was a strictly financial decision. And what we've transitioned from that, and a couple ways, one, a, that's really hard to measure, right, there are all these external factors that are in play there outside your control COVID. Being a great example, more commonly, you know, a high flu season one year, also has an impact on your claims and things that day to day or year to year, but doesn't necessarily show doesn't always get removed from a wellness programme, per se. Vi, for example, says let's consider those financial benefits, let's consider all these other things to have financial outcomes, but don't show up in a certain hard dollar.

So things like employee retention, depending on the near the number you use, it can be you know, the cost of someone's full salary for a year to just recruit a new employee. So it's always cheaper, like it is in business to retain a customer than find a new one. Same thing with keeping an employee who is familiar with your processes. You don't have to go through the training or the finding that talent, things like that greater productivity, so less sick days, greater productivity in the sense that people have fatigue at the end of the day. And Healthy People are typically still very active and alert in productivity terms at 4pm when they're working and things like that.

So there's a long list of what those value on investment elements could be. So the first place we always start with companies is why are you having this programme? What are those key kind of value on investment metrics that you will measure success? So whenever we have a client join Wellable they fill out a questionnaire and one of the questions is how do you want to measure success and that's really kind of a way to capture these VOI elements, and then from there, you have to capture the data.

So if someone says, Yes, I would like to see less sick days, we need to find out where in there, you know, time attendance records that data sets. If it's about health care costs, how can we have access to those health care claims to begin to measure those things. And so for most companies, especially the ones we're working with, who in many cases are either transitioning from a different wellness vendor to our platform, or just launching a programme for the first time, they conceptually have an idea of things they want to track, but they don't necessarily haven't implemented anything around that in the first step is that data capture based on those specific elements that you want to measure? And from there, depending on what those elements are, the measurement process is a little bit different.

In every scenario, there will be some kind of confounding variables, for example, COVID, right. So looking at healthcare claims of last year, there's no way for you to segment out perfectly, but you should consider that as you think about, you know, the value you're getting from. And at the end of the day, you can measure programme success through these value on investment metrics. But we always talk about why are we doing these programmes, it's for the right reasons, it's for those employees, it's for those tenants.

So I would always encourage employers, and we have it built into our programme capturing the feedback of those participants, right, there's no version of our sick days dropped or healthcare costs drop, and then every employee hits the programme, that's not a successful programme, it really comes down to that. So in every scenario, you're capturing their feedback, you want to make sure what they're doing is fun, because if it's not, it's not sustainable. And you want to make sure you're really building a programme based on the needs and the wants of that audience.

Matt Morley

I like it. So it's a qualitative approach combined with some of the quantitative data to give you some some real, tangible feedback from from the front line, it strikes me a lot of what you're doing then is is in a sense about content creation. What's the strategy behind your content creation?

Nick Patel

Yep, so we work with a diverse population. So everything we're doing is effectively all of the above. And some companies webinars resonate really, really well. Other ones they don't, and just for cultural reasons, based on individual interests and needs, sometimes marketing issues. So our goal is to offer a diverse set of content. So just actual material and topics we cover and deliver that in a diverse way, in terms of different media types, articles, video content, long form material, short form material, things like that.

The one thing I'll say, just as like a business founder is I never thought that we would be as much in the content game as we are now. I just mean, looking back on it, it seemed pretty obvious, but it never occurred to me, we have a very large content team. And they're very busy! And so when we think about content, we think about the combination of two factors, one, responding to demand.

So there's demand for greater mental health resources and things like that we need to respond to those areas. And we're consciously doing that. And we're going to do that in different formats. I think what's tricky is we often are seen as a thought leader, by our clients we're trying to be so I guess it's no surprise there. And so when that perspective is put in, we're being asked to think about the future in a way they have not.

So for us, no one ever asked us to create content, on the health benefits of gratitude for example, the health benefits of finding purpose in your life, or the science of happiness, but we did it. Those are all things that conceptually when you talk to an employer or property and say, hey, these are things are really important. Have you considered to incorporate that your wellness programme and we show all the data around that tie it to, you know, health benefits and well being? They jump on it quickly, but there's something no one ever demanded.

So when you go talk to most employers, they're asking us to do fiscal activity programmes and nutrition programmes. Obviously, we need those some groups now asking for mental health and financial well being, but we cover so many dimensions of health and well being and educating those employers on why those dimension are important, is critical. And then, you know, identifying where those areas to invest in so that's what we spend a lot of time at The back to actually why we formed Wellable is supposed to be this thought engine for us, not just for our content creation, but also for just general topics in the HR and property management space.

The big thing we're working on now is, as I mentioned before, is diversity, equity inclusion. I don't know exactly what that means from a product perspective, or how we're gonna deliver that content. And we're still exploring it. But we know that it's critical to the future health and well being. And make sure we deliver that in a format that kind of impactful to our customers.

Matt Morley

I really encourage listeners to have a little dig around on your site, I found it really interesting and insightful to spend a little time Yeah, moving through the space that you've referred to the empty content that you provide online, as a way to see almost taking the temperature of what both you think is important and relevant, and presumably what what the world of work is asking for, in terms of relevant content. So just seeing the diversity of the articles and the headlines out there was was a real eye opener for me. It's, it's been fascinating. Thank you so much for your time, you've got a really exciting future ahead. So I wish you the very best of luck. How can people reach out Connect, follow along, see what you're up to?

Nick Patel

Yeah, absolutely. If you have any questions, you want to connect me directly my emails just Nick @ wellable.co but a great place to start is of course our website www.wellable.co where you can check out our blog, definitely subscribe to it. I think a couple years ago, we won our award for the best wellness blog, we continue to produce a lot of interesting content there. So if you're just broadly interested in health and wellbeing as your HR person or property person or whoever it may be, it's a great way to get different pieces of content on current issues, emerging issues, and really the future of health and well being at the enterprise level.

Matt Morley

Awesome. Thanks again Nick. It's been great.

Health by Design - Green & Healthy Places 029

The ‘Green & Healthy Places’ podcast series takes a deep-dive into the role of sustainability, wellbeing and community in office real estate, residential property, hotels and educational facilities today.

This is episode 29 of the Green & Healthy Places podcast in which we discuss wellbeing and sustainability in the built environment. 

I’m your host, Matt Morley, Founder of Biofilico wellbeing design and Biofit health and fitness.

Today we’re in Vancouver, Canada talking to Ror Alexander, an integrative health expert with a strong Eastern influence to his philosophy.

Our conversation covers:

• Environmental psychology 

• The connections between Feng shui, modern health sciences and biohacking

• Organizing a healthy home

• Detoxifying your home environment

• defining an intention and energy level for different rooms in a house

• Hacking the home office for productivity

• His tips on Essential oil aromatherapy 

• And the ancient history of healthy buildings

• Active vs Passive physical activity

• Biophilic design

• Building biology

https://www.roralexander.com/

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Health By Design podcast

FULL. TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS COURTESY OF OTTER.AI (excuse typos)

Matt Morley

Ror to talk once again, it's been a year since we last spoke, I would really like to start with your interpretation of what you do where you're at And how you you contribute to this world of green and Healthy Places from your base in Vancouver, Canada.

Ror Alexander

Well basically what I do is I come from a, what I call Integrative Health, health and weight loss is always the key when it comes to health nowadays, if you can lose weight in any healthy way it's good no matter what diet you're on, but I go past just weight loss like weight loss is great but you know, I really liked I have a saying my other slogan is live stronger, longer and better. And that's kind of the way I follow with my coaching stronger is saying Okay, muscle is the organ of longevity, So, if we get stronger first, which is your more traditional nutrition and fitness and then we go into the longer which is getting more into the micro nutrition, some of the more interesting aspects the little more less well known aspects and then the better is obviously like you will talk about travel or bettering your career or bettering passion so all that sort of stuff so I come at health from a very broad point of view but in phases not to overwhelm people.

Healthy indoor environments and feng shui

The environment is a big part of that so I have my what I call my bag of health which is from Fung Shui which is your eight areas of health because it just happened my eight areas and Fung Shui before I even learned about it almost match but what I don't have really described on my website very good yet is the border around that that Gula is actually your environment. So the way it works is your environment is on the outside pushes in towards the inside and that center square is your health so that's why I look at it like a kind of phasing in

Matt Morley

you mentioned the idea of how you independently developed your thinking and if you want to call it your value system your philosophy and then you found that actually correlated with a far more far wider system around finish rate reminds me I had a similar experience with this whole sort of biophilic design stuff I was just digging around and how you could bring that outside well then and then suddenly you stumble across a term that opens up a whole world to you and you're like oh well okay, it's exactly what I've been talking about and thinking about but someone's already defined it so but what led you towards Fung Shui in the first place?

Ror Alexander

So like I know you had time in Asia would it was that some formative in that process for you? Yeah, I mean, I took I took psychology in school and I was always interested in kind of East I took the I started took a few classes on like Eastern religions and stuff like that so I was always kind of interested in it. And then I went off to Asia and I lived in Hong Kong in the beginning and Hong Kong is you know, it's a mecca for Fung Shui architecture. So this started goofing around and learning a little bit about it on my YouTube channel I have you know, a Fung Shui tour I do where I take you in I kind of show you the interesting Fung Shui aspects. But yeah, just it was really just more like just kind of fun. I liked learning about temples and I kind of like the psychology and so I just started reading about environmental psychology and how the environment affects us. And it just kept leading me to feng shui and feng shui. And then from Feng Shui, I started to learn about fosu, which is the traditional Indian version.

So Vastu actually came first I found out and then from Shrek, and almost everything came from India, almost all knowledge at the end of the day really came from ancient ancient India, and then Ancient Greece, but even ancient India before that, and then spread especially in Eastern philosophy, right? So it's spread up into, you know, up into Thailand, and then it's spread up into China.

So Chinese medicine is actually based on IR VEDA Thai massage, Thai Yoga is based all the yoga is Tai Chi and Qi Gong all that all comes from yoga, but getting off track but yeah, that's that's how I can I started learning about Fung Shui in in Hong Kong, and then I just continued learning about it. I bought some books on it, a couple courses on it, I got a chance to interview a really, really cool contemporary Fung Shui master on a trip to Hong Kong and write that I really liked her take on it because her take was a very modern take.

She comes from it for a little more from a relationship background, or I just noticed right away what I really noticed was Fung Shui had so many connections with modern Health Sciences. It's just the terminology was very different. Like I remember the first time I was on my very first day I arrived in Hong Kong a friend pick me up and we were driving through an area called Stanley which is kind of like their beach area. And he said, Do you know why these buildings have these big wind big spaces in them? And I said, No, no idea why there's a hole was in the middle of a building. And he said that for the dragons to pass through. And I was like, Alright, Game of Thrones here, whatever. But the dragons represented ci, which represented the winners represented air.

So what actually will happen these buildings a lot is the air circulation will be placed into the sword allows the air to circulate more through the building, I was like, Well, that makes sense. Coming from a health point of view, it makes sense to have the clean air and have this kind of gap in the middle of the building, where there could flow through better for the ventilation.

So that's kind of where it came from. And then like I said, I traveled India learnable best do happen to know, there's only about 10 books that I know of read really written on the topic and I happen to be friends with one of the authors of that. So that was really interesting say that his Ayurvedic roots retreat in India had him on my podcast, you know, and talk to him about vasthu because just yeah, so it's just very interesting how these ancient traditions and what we call modern health or even biohacking, a lot of them are the same related just different topics like the dip, we talked about them in different permutations.

Matt Morley

I think something about fundamental truths that many of us get to from different angles at different times of our lives. But we often seem to join similar concepts, I’m reading a book at the moment called the Barefoot architect, it's all about more of an ancestral health approach to to how you would design homes and whether you call them dragons, or you call them ventilation courtyards or what have you. But again, you're getting to the same concepts, right? So I know that you're thinking when when you describe your relationship around functional functional now you have your sort of four pillars organization, detoxification, intention and optimization. So how does that how does that work in terms of your your advisory to a client or to an individual?

Environmental Psychology and a healthy home

Ror Alexander

Well, yes, functional like Feng Shui, you know, a lot of it is it's a lot of, you know, you hear a lot of people say, oh, Fung Shui is crap, there's nothing, it's all superstition, I'm like, well, you don't really understand it. And what really what it is, it is an art, it's also a science, but it's a lot of it's about psychology. And the way it's about organizing your home, so it affects you in a positive way, whether it's psychology or psychically, or, you know, physically. So the way I describe it to clients is I termed I try not to use the term feng shui a lot when I'm talking to people, but I'll just talk about healthy home design. And so the very first one is the organization. And I think, you know, any, any book any women's health, everybody talks about decluttering.

But there's truth behind it. decluttering, organizing house, arranging things, getting rid of the crap, getting rid of broken things. Like, you know, psychology tells us that when we have a desk that's all cluttered, our eyes are constantly scanning, and it's a little bit harder to stay on focus. So by straightening things up and minimizing your area, it just allows you to stay on target a little better, helps you to keep your attention. I mean, I think that everybody's had that you walk into a really messy, overwhelming room, your just senses are overwhelmed.

Organizing a healthy home

So the first step is very easy. And that's just organization, then from there, you can once it's organized, and you got it, you know, things lined up, you got your books stacked up, then you go through it. I don't really like the term mineralization. But I'm a bit of a minimalist, but things that either bring you function. So like you have cooking tools that you really need things that help your life be better, or things that bring you joy, or getting rid of things that bring you negativity, for instance, you've got something broken, you just never get around to throwing it away or fixing it. But it's always kind of bothering you, oh, there's a broken blank lampshade over there, that broken thing.

Or maybe it's something that maybe not a great relationship a breakup had, and you're kind of keeping something that was given to you from guilts. But you don't like it. And you're thinking, I really don't like that. But you know, grandma died, and she gave it to me, I feel bad for getting rid of it. So that's where the organization sort of part fits in. From there, you move on to what I call forget the terms. From there, we move on to the detoxification. And literally that is it.

Detoxing your home environment

That is just detoxing your environment mostly. And I'm talking about that from a mostly from a chemical point of view. So that is getting rid of any harsh sense, harsh odors, anything that could potentially have some negative effects on you breathing wise or food wise. So that is just again, that's the more the physical side, right.

The first part was kind of the psychological side, the second part, the fiscal side, because we're learning more and more about how so many man made and I'm not anti manmade things, obviously at all, but there's a lot of things that are just not that great for us when it comes to health wise. So one of the things things I do is I just detox the house and I say you know if you can't eat with it, or like you couldn't put it in your mouth, you probably shouldn't be cleaning with it.

So if you got little kids, right, they put it on, they get it on their hands, they put it in their mouth. So things like Lysol. Things like these really harsh antibacterials. I mean, they can affect your gut biome. Studies have shown that kids who come from homes that use green cleaners tend to weigh less than kids who come from homes that use heavy harsh chemicals. Right. But now people will make the argument well, is that because the house from the green cleaners, are they more concerned with healthy eating and getting their kids active period?

So is it causation or correlation? Well, we don't know exactly. But it looks like when they've done studies, the gut biomes of these kids are different and a lot of it has been related, or at least strongly possible to the things that they're cleaning their homes with. So for me, detoxification is an easy no brainer. Like for instance, I brought a few pieces here I can show you right, like we use a stripper trinket vinegar over Windex, right. It's just I want to put Windex in my mouth. Right. It's quiet. For soap. We use Dr. Bronner's Dr. Bronner's

Healthy cleaning techniques for the home

Yeah, I mean this is this the clean your dishes, although don't use it for dishes. I usually just buy a decent, like natural dish soap, but I mean, we use it I use it for shaving shampoo. Use it for I mean, this is everything in the kitchen. We all just use it since it does everything.

Now people say well, okay, well what if you need to not just, you know, you need to disinfect your house, you got to get bleach or you need like, Clorox I'm like no, I just, you know, hydrogen peroxide right there works, you know, works very good. And then that's just basic cleaning supplies, you can take it up a step. You know, like for sunblock, we use pretty much just a natural zinc sunblock.

So little things like that, that if it doesn't affect your life, really negatively when something like if it's going to create a major house in your life, get rid of it, then don't but if something simple like switching Windex for vinegar, switching a laundry soda for some crappy you know, for breezy laundry soap, you know, using essential oils for smells instead of like I said, Glade fresheners. To me, they're no brainers, so that's detoxification.

Healthy homes with an intention in each space

Then you move on to intention. And this, I kind of like this, every room in your home, whatever space you're in, has an intention. It has a purpose it's supposed to serve, right. So what's a bedroom supposed to do? supposed to help you you're supposed to sleep in your bedroom, you're supposed to be able to kind of relax and whine to shut down in your bedroom.

So that's what the bedrooms intention is, is a place to sleep. The kitchen has an intention of being a place where you go to get healthy, it's the number one key to health in your home is your kitchen, your social area, I mean that the term social is what it's intended to do.

So if you have the room set up where it's there's an antisocial not facing each other, whatever, then that's not going to work. So I look at I maximize the intention of every room. And then you can get into things like the colors you use the Yang, the Yang energy, that's just it's just just means does it have a powerful energy, like something that gets you excited, like an office should have Yang energy, right? focused, bright, organize your do your best thinking in there, it's not distracting.

At the same time, a bedroom has to have Yin energy, kind of that soft, relaxing energy, you don't want a bunch of bright colors in there, you don't want bright lights, because that doesn't. That's not the intention of that space. So what I do is I break it down into the the intention of different roofs. And then finally, we have what's called call optimization, which is kind of its its relates to the intention, but what it is, is, um, I'll give you an idea of the bedroom. Right? So what is this, these are the little tweaks we can do to add into the intention.

So in my bedroom, for instance, I use only light balls with no blue and no green spectrum in them. And you probably know why that is, but maybe your listeners don't blue in the green are the ones that wake up your brain, right. So you got all these LEDs, you got your CFL that affects your melatonin level. So if your bedroom is full of fluorescent lights, even just the CFL bulb while you're reading at night, that's not going to help you getting a good sleep, it's going to perhaps push your melatonin back, make it later you just get more sleep. So that's what optimization is and the different tweaks you can do in every room to optimize the intention of that room. So for

Healthy buildings and ancient traditions

Matt Morley

I’m involved in the sort of the healthy building movement and creating you know workplaces that are good for employee well being and ever Things like the well building certification. And there's so much of what you've just described that is actually at the core of a lot of what's going into a very scientific and detailed corporate level approach to kind of achieving the same things that you've just described that as I understand that have a sort of, you know, a pretty serious history behind them.

And yet, we're still to this day kind of, in a sense, reinventing them reef rebranding it all putting it out there as well with this is this is a well building standard. And look, we've not not come up with new ideas, maybe more research behind it, but the principles, the underlying principles, and they've got hundreds of years of history behind them, and that's what's hardly spoken about, it seems.

Ror Alexander

And that's what it is. It's just the principles. That's why when people say Fung Shui is crap, I had got an argument, the guidance from that, like, it's not crap, like, there's nothing crap about it. It was a system developed to just help you maximize your natural biological rhythms and your psychological energy.

Circadian rhythm lighting

It's as simple as that, you know, whatever they call it, you know, don't sleep under the moon, it just okay, well, that just means don't sleep on bright white light don't have a bunch of bright light because the light of the moon they would say, Oh, the later moon affects your sleep, oh, whatever.

Whoo, well, no, but they're, they didn't have light bulbs back then nowadays, they functionally masterfully say, you know, don't sleep under a CFL, it's probably not the best idea. And it was about living in circadian rhythms. They didn't have electricity back then. So it was about building your house that would face the sun.

So you got the heat of the sun and all that stuff. It was about even things like you'll hear about people like the different spaces and function a while was because back in the day, you would take your most valuable objects and you move them to the back of the house and hide them because it was the most secure place. You didn't put your valuables right, your, your front door, right.

Healthy home office design

Matt Morley

So and you mentioned the idea of, of an office space and how these principles can be applied to that I think there's been so much happening over the last year and a half around, breaking down that barrier between that used to be quite a clear dichotomy for many of us where we have a place where we live, where we where we sleep, we eat with our family.

And then there's another place where we go to do our work and might be a co working, it might be a corporate office or just some other space where we go to do that type of productivity. And then suddenly, we all found ourselves without that barrier where the distinction was just broken down. Suddenly home is also the office work comes home.

And how are you now thinking about the home office? Because in a sense, I think that seems to be here to stay. or many of us have discovered that there are some positives to it. So what's your take on that? How have you set up your home office and any tips and suggestions for people?

Ror Alexander

Yeah, well, I definitely have a home office and I probably broke one of the biggest, you know, classical Fung Shui nodos, which is having your office in your bedroom. There's nothing I could do. There's no other space in my house, right? I can't put on my kid's room. I'm lucky that living rooms already have a gym in the middle of my living room, which is already not the greatest spot in the world. I can't from I'm right now I'm in my kitchen.

My kitchen is kind of my second office. But what I did is what I did is this they what they do say is, you know in Fung Shui you always hear about cures, you hear the word cure, which I don't like the word cure, but what it just means is mitigations. And what I did in my office is I decorate it a little differently than the rest of the bedroom. It's on the far side of the bed, right? So it's on the complete furthest area, I could put it from the bed.

So I'm not staring directly at my desk when I'm sleeping. right because I don't want to monitor there just you don't want that. I do have it set off into the picture, My room is the right hand corner. So the window is to the left of me because I do like having a window, you really should have a window that you can see through.

You know, because you're working, you want to have a window that you can pick out of every now and then plus that light coming in is nice. You don't want to directly in front of you because then you can't see your screen. You don't want to behind you because you can get a glare again, fluctuate things will tell you this too, but it's just common knowledge is kind of funny, too.

So there's the office, sorry, there's the life, the desk and then I paint the walls differently around my desk so they're painted in right now there are cream color, which actually came with the house and the bedroom is white. The walls are cream but they're eventually going to be gray. So I'm planning on doing like a light gray around the office to give that space a slightly separate feel.

The decor in the office is a little bit different than the rest of the bedroom to now something I've been toying with the idea of getting is you know, one of those Japanese dividers and all those wall dividers they sell them at IKEA and stuff you can put it up a sort of separate room. Again, just my room isn't really quite big enough.

Standing desks for a healthy office set-up

I think that would kind of get in the way and being more annoying. So what I've done is I've just put the office you know facing away from the bed facing out a window kept the decor different and kept This slightly different color scheme on it. And then again, I've used optimization tools around my office. So I have a standing desk, which I basically tell my coaching clients they have to get, I don't say you have to get a an expensive one like I got, I got a digital one, you know, you press the buttons up and down.

When I lived in Thailand, I lived in Thailand for years. I mean, I knew the importance of standing desks. Well, going back 20 years, I've probably always kind of used a standing area. So in Thailand, I just had a regular table and I put a box on top and I just had my laptop there and a mouse keyboard. Now somebody it doesn't have to be expensive.

They have desk converters now, but anyway, standing desk is a must for me, I have a couple little tools that I use, I can do some exercises with when I'm at my desk. And this isn't sweaty, I'm not trying like skinny on a sweat one. I'm working because you know, I don't want to do that. But things I can do some postural exercises, I have a barstool that adjusts different heights.

So I could sit on and put my foot up. So you kind of get those different movements, I've learned to do a few different stretches I can do at my standing desk, and I will put it down to sitting. Because there's a thing too, you don't want to just be standing in one position all day, just really standing in one position is not a heck of a lot better than sitting in one position, you're just moving the pain and there are the issues down the road from your back to your knees.

And then you got to look at you know, other things. And this rise screwed up a lot, actually, for years. Luckily, it was I caught it early enough but not having the screen set up to eye height. So I'd be working on a bar desk, for instance, but my head would be down.

Nowadays, our heads are always down because the phone then got your computer screen down too. So at the end of the day, it always kind of like this, you know, even though you're using a standing desk that you're supposed to your network the store. Now I got everything optimized. So it's all the perfect heights ergonomics I've learned a lot about.

So I would definitely say learn about ergonomics. And for regular chair, I just use a Swiss ball, I have a Swiss ball that I sit on, instead of just a regular seat. So my standing my desk and I'm buying for hours. It forces me though, to move a lot. So I have a timer set up to sometimes so every 30 minutes and I got to watch nowadays that reminds me, but before that I would set a timer for 30 minutes or an hour and it would buzz and Okay, kind of move it down, but it's time to move it up.

Aromatherapy for productivity and focus

So just few little things that I've done in my office and that essential oil, I keep them a very scientifically purchased essential oils at my desk, which is largely peppermint, I use a lot of peppermint oil on my desk because peppermints been shown to actually wake you up and help you focus. I'll also use Cypress there I like to have for smells a lot of you know biophilic design I'm a huge fan of I got it's like 10 drops a Cypress I think only one or two drops of patchouli too much actually start to smell like a hippie, you know, but but Julie I like it because it does have that moss scent when you walk into a forest.

And then usually a dropper to a peppermint in there as well. You know, the Cypress has been shown even to help rate boost your immune system help boost focus, but at the same time, it's not a stressful focus. It's not like it's the smell stress you out, you know, Cypress and forest bathing, you know, shinrin rokeya it's calming, it's calming and clarity at the same time. It's very interesting.

Matt Morley

I like your approach to creating an experience , thinking about the light, where how you're, you're physically interacting with your your workspace, the sense around you. And a lot of that stuff that I've applied to gyms in the past and you mentioned the gym, so I've got to go there. I'm interested to dig into this topic that you you've described elsewhere around, I think you use the terms of conscious deliberate exercise and then passive movements. So not everyone's necessarily thinking about movement in those terms. But from your perspective, how are you distinguishing between those two concepts?

Conscious exercise for health

Ror Alexander

Yeah, so it comes down to what they call NEET, which means non exercise activity thermogenesis. People don't think about that a lot. And you know, when you think about burning calories, so what's the first thing people think about burning calories, I think go to the gym. Right? It's always go to the gym, go to the gym exercise. Well, even the most hardcore workout.

At the end of the day, if you were to measure all your calories, your basal metabolic rate burns the most that's your brain, your breathing, you know, all that sort of just being alive is about 60% of your calorie use in a day. T

he next biggest one after that is neat or non exercise activity thermogenesis So you notice I'm a hand talker, I talk a lot with my hands. That that's a that's neat. That is anything where I'm moving on. But I'm not, I'm not sweating. This is at heart. And then after that you got exercise the thermogenic effect of food. Well, for me focused exercise means that's exactly what it is I separate between movement or what I call physical activity and exercise.

Exercise, to me focused exercise means I'm going in there either putting a load on my muscular skeletal system, an outside load, or perhaps I'm putting myself into a position where there's extra load on, you know, doing a push up, for instance, right, there's gonna be extra load on my chest that's normally not there, or there's a load and or I should say, stress on the heart and the lungs, right, your heart rates going up, because you're taking it out of that typical standing and sitting zone. So that is what I call active exercise. And it's important, it is very important, you know, but that neat, that non exercise activity thermogenesis that passive movement, that movement without sweating is so important, it can burn between 15 to 30% of your calories a day.

And it's so easy to make that closer to that, you know, 30%, and that 15% by doing simple things like using a standing desk, creating environments that just force you to move more passively, you don't even think about it, one of the simplest descriptions I get is, if you were to go into a room that had only standing desks, well, you're gonna stand, no option, if you go into a room that has no furniture, you're gonna sit on the floor, there's no choice, right and sitting on the floor is not overly comfortable. So you're going to be moving around a lot.

Passive vs Active movement training

So I always talk about designing spaces is particularly your home to really force passive health on you. And one of the aspects is passive movement. So that's what that like that Swiss ball, like I said, my office core, you're constantly moving on it, you don't just sit it's not a lazy boy standing up. So those are just, it's just two really great movements. So that's the way I separate them, there's that low level movement that and I call it passive, because you're not thinking about it, it's just your environment is forcing you to do it. And then there's Oh, I'm gonna go to the gym. And I'm gonna, and I have my weights worked out. And I know exactly what I'm going to be doing and counting my steps and reps and counting my load.

Matt Morley

I like I like the idea of having a combination of some degree of willpower to make that happen to get your sort of low level movement during the day, but also more of a systems approach. So take the desk and the low chair away and replace it with an alternative. And then you're no longer relying on your, your own willpower, but the systems we put in place and boom, off you go, you can then you can scale it back,

Ror Alexander

right. It's all about the systems and having what I call it, there's a there's a movement right now called the no furniture movement. And I'm kind of a member of that movement. Mine's a little more low furniture for almost a year, my first year, year and a half, I moved back from Asia access and didn't really have any furniture even a floor just on the bed. Sorry, bed on the floor. Now I have a little more but even my furniture whenever I buy my furniture, I asked myself Hey, is this gonna make me like just zonk out it's like lazy boy for and binge on Netflix for hours.

There's not so the only two chairs we own or pop us on chairs, which are cool, because you can flip them up like a bowl, and they actually make great meditation seats too. And they're not. They're not uncomfortable, but they're not you can't sit in them for you know, three hours on end with, you know, for the most part, they're just not the most comfortable chairs in the world. But the wife likes and two from Thailand, you know, they're she's like, well, I grew up with these chairs. And I go, Well, you guys grew up with these chairs, and the guys are in much better long term health than we are. So lots of little secrets.

Matt Morley

I like you're quite far out there in terms of really pushing the message. So I appreciate that. And I've got a feeling I know what the answer to this question. This next one will be but your your take on EMF and what the risks are in from a sort of building biology perspective for people who aren't necessarily aware of the concept and where you stand on 5g, etc.

Building Biology

Ror Alexander

Yeah, um that's a hard because I think there's people that you know that people don't know the science really good, and they can explain this much better than I can. But in my coaching, I do have an option to work with a building biologist named Jason Messick, and he goes into your house and he primarily focuses on three things. The first one is your air quality. The second one is your water quality. And the third one, which honestly his biggest thing he focuses on is the EMF in your house. And I guess it comes down to the problem is when people think of emf they only think of Wi Fi. And yet there's you know, there's what he calls magnetic which is currency.

So there's magnetic fields that can affect you. There's the electric or the voltage fields that can affect you dirty electricity, which is Because Ken can kind of create some problems, it's like almost like pulses and surges. And then radio frequencies, which is, which is your Wi Fi and stuff like that. Obviously, you know, like, I got lights all around me, we all live in house with electricity. I'm not opposed to electricity. And but I think we, I think we should try to mitigate it when possible, you know, like, whether or not you want to go as far as not having any metal in your bed not having a springs in your bed, which I don't.

And there's some interesting research that shows that Hey, y'all thought that those all that wiring could attract and magnify fields? Other studies saying no, they don't they don't at all. Jason has said he's gone to places where he's held a compass up over the bed on the compass spins around, right? So there's a very strong magnetic field around that bed.

And depending it like it all comes down to what as Jason explains it, you've got the duration, so how long you're in, like how long you're in a space for, and the distance. And then there's the intensity? Right? So those are the three things I'll say to people.

Well, and people that would maybe have no problems with EMF, don't believe anything like that, you know, well, would you put your face right in front of your microwave while you're cooking the entire time? And most people will say no, most people would say, I don't say, Well, why if they're not, if they're not worried about it, then why wouldn't you have your face in front of the microwave? Good, because it just doesn't feel like a smart thing to do, does it? Whether or not, I don't know, I don't know. S

o I would have to say I am strongly concerned about EMF 5g, from what I understand it doesn't sound like it's super awesome for our health, I get it, you know, you got guys that are much better than me that I've interviewed, I can talk about how the pulses that can affect the calcium signaling between nerves. The blood brain permeability can be affected by strong EMF. So again, when it comes to me and my health coaching, I err on the side of caution, providing it doesn't interfere with your life to the point where it's going to cause stress on your life, if you got rid of it, because stress is one of the worst things we can do.

So if you're going to get if, if what I suggest to you is just like mass can be so hard, I can't and it's gonna bother you and be negative, then don't do it. But if you can try to cut down and think about your, you know, EMF overall, and I think having a building biologist come in is a good idea. I mean, I don't think it's a great idea to have your bed right behind a wall where your refrigerator is just going to create a strong magnetic field. And you know, there's quite a bit mood disorders, Melatonin is a big issue when it comes to Wi Fi signals, apparently. I guess I'm not the most professional, but I do err on the side of caution. I mentioned it to clients, and I gauge their interest.

And if they're interested, I'll have you know, on Sunday, set him up with a call with Jason or show him some videos I've done with Jason, and then I let them decide. But I really think it's a good idea to at least mitigate most of the problems if you can.

Matt Morley

Nice. I appreciate that. And and in terms of your thoughts, then sort of you bridge this gap between the world of like physical activity and physical work and training and the physical environment around us. And so within that framework, how do you think about rest and recovery when you're working with clients now? Like how big a role is that playing? Do you think you've seen perceptions of the importance of rest and recovery change over recent years? Are you still sort of trying to push that message? Is it still under appreciated?

Ror Alexander

It's it honestly it's still under appreciated? I think what happens even to me, it's just like, you know, to me, it's like we know about blue light and how it affects us. I mean, to me, it's a no brainer and But to this day, I don't think I've met a client yet that has any idea what I'm talking about. I think the problem is a lot of times we in people like me health coaches and people like you too

We probably get we kind of get caught in these circles where we'll listen to health podcasts will listen to biohacking podcast you know what listened to kind of fringe your stuff and and we hear from all these guys talking about you might have 20 different specialists talking about a blue light effects and we're like wow, it's becoming so common knowledge.

It's great, but it's not. It's like you go to the grocery store right now. everything we know about diets and nutrition you know everything we know go to the grocery store and I'll go to your local I don't want your big one is there in Spain or England whenever, you know for us, it's a superstore, Canadian superstore. Go to the superstore and watch what people are buying, and it's still Cheetos and Coca Cola is and just crap. So in small circles and biohacking circles, yeah, they're learning about stress but I would say for the majority of the population Fortunately, it's still not that we haven't been able to reach the masses yet. Little things like yoga has become more popular.

But even then we bastardize Yoga, in my opinion, to where we've just turned it into an exercise routine. It's not what real Yoga is supposed to be. So yes, I do discuss a lot about stress with my clients. Again, I come from a bit of a I liked the idea of meditation and breathing, but I don't use the word meditation very often, especially for guy clients. Just because meditation still, I mean, I was anti meditation really, and yoga, I thought it was so you know, the first, when I was back in the day, I was teaching CrossFit, like laughing at yoga people. And then I went to Indonesia, and we had a yoga class there. And I tried it a few times, and kind of just started to, I was so bad at it. I was like, I just wanted to get better at it.

But over the years is I learned more about yoga about meditation, I traveled to India a couple times. I was like, yeah, this is this is actually something we need. And I have ADHD, I'm kind of all over the place. And for me, just focusing on I don't even really want to say, um, I guess, I don't sit and meditate in with my legs crossed like this, you know, but I'm very aware of my breathing for me. So I've really, in the last few years really switched to focus on my nasal breathing.

So I'll teach clients about that. I find a lot of the people said that one of the problems I have with these meditation retreats and stuff is you go and people feel so Zen down and relax, and I feel great, I feel amazing. And within a month and back to the west, they're, you know, all stressed out again, and they forgot all their lessons. So I just prefer to come at it from what we can do in our day to day. And meditation is a great thing to work up to, but I call it breathing. So I'll talk about nasal breathing first and belly breathing after your workout. That's a big one.

I talked about just two to three minutes, that nasal breathing period, then I'll get into box breathing because it's a little more you know, because the Old Navy SEALs box breathe. Oh, okay, well, that must be good. It's really just a very westernized folk way of doing a meditation. So, but yes, I definitely stressed,

Matt Morley

it kind of brings us background to where we started, right? I mean, what's more elemental, and basic than breathing? And yet, how often do any of us really just take a moment, if it's a minute, or 10 minutes in the morning, or the last thing at night just to reconnect just to just to listen in and allow there to be some space in our minds not to plan or, or worry, or, you know, relive some moment of the day or sort of anticipate what might happen later in the day and just connecting with the breath. Really, it doesn't need to be anything spiritual.

Ror Alexander

No, not at all. And if you can design like I taught, one of the things I talk about a lot is designing Zen zone in your house, which again, comes from I've been very influenced by Eastern traditions, I think I sent you a picture of my kid in our Zen zone. So it's, it's pretty cool. It's a Papa Sancerre. And we got this cool light that hangs over top of it, which we use at nighttime, because that's in our living room, all of our house has special lighting, so it has circadian lighting the entire house. So at 7pm, the house goes all the blinds come down, and then the house switches to those non blue and green spectrum blocks the entire thing. Because there's no point having it if you're just gonna switch on your kitchen light, you know, ruin your melatonin again. But the Zen zone, you know, mine's very Eastern based, we got some cool stuff we have from Thailand, and I got some fun stuff from Hong Kong and stuff around it. But it doesn't have to be. It can be, it can be really simple. A few cushions on the floor doesn't even have to be a cushion on the floor. It could be a lazy, it could be anything you want.

But it's a space where you go to purposely recharge and get a few minutes a meet time. But again, it's not something I say to a client, Oh, great, you want to lose 10 pounds, we got to build you a meditation space. It's something that I'll work towards down the road. I think that's based in India, it's called a puja room. It's a prayer space on all Eastern cultures, that spiritual zone is a part of your home. And it's a part that we're severely missing here. And it's not vague. It could be a meter by a meter. It's not a big space. So I'm not saying you need to

Matt Morley

love it. Thanks, man. It's been really interesting to get your take with a slight sort of Eastern twist on a lot of themes that even for myself, I kind of, yeah, you get you get focused in your own world. And sometimes you need a little bit of, you know, fresh, a fresh angle, a fresh perspective on things. It's really, it's really just reiterated how much of this is just part of a fundamental connection between us and the natural world and the terminology, the descriptions and their histories and traditions behind it can, you know, we can come at that from many different angles, but ultimately, it all comes back to the same ideas and I think you've really encapsulated that.

Biophilic Design

Ror Alexander

And then biophilia designs a big part of it. You know, I got in my living room is I got a green wall. I see you got one to your right hand side there. I think I got biophilic wall in my office. I got a biophilic wall. We got plants Going up the ying yang and we want to get more plants. But yeah, I mean, nature is a huge element of it. And then Fung Shui always talked about nature too, right? It always talked about the importance in nature, when you look at, like you talked earlier about, it was like, you know, you look at all the old Buddhist temples, they'd always have a courtyard in the middle, you know, you look at and you want to take that to the most modern, crazy extreme Singapore like Singapore's airport, a vortex waterfall to create negative ions and a jungle.

I mean, Singapore, that's where I got really interested in biophilic design was visiting Singapore, I mean, that place if you're going to look at a place this is, what is the poster child for modern and biophilic design, and they've put it together and they've done it on purpose. I mean, so the biophilic design, I think it's just a huge aspect. That's so important. So I really try to get people into biophilia as much as I can you know, even if even if it's a fake green wall it's still better I mean, how they shouldn't just pictures of nature can make people feel better so that gets us that's what a pitcher can do. Just imagine what real plants can do and then to the level you can take it to

Matt Morley

and with your and I noticed you've got lots of fresh herbs it looks like in the background there in your in your kitchen which is another one because they adding a runner and scent right and it's sort of doubling

Ror Alexander

we got that we got basil going on here I got sprouts growing you know we got the whole thing and that's part of the nourishing kitchen you know I got a clean green clean nourishing kitchen you know where it's again it's just talking about natural cleaners I've talked about and then having clean Whole Foods not junk foods and then obviously nourishment is that whole thing for together I you might have a kitchen that inspires you to eat healthy, not stinky, bright organize, we got you know, one of the things in the in the Blue Zones, right they have fruit bowls and table under the ours is empty right now, we do have three fruit bowls behind it, but we just ran out of bananas today. Our good fruits are always on display and the crappy foods are either not in the house or they're hiding pretty good. So get just more little tip. So lots of tips. Love it.

Matt Morley

Yeah, the basic common sense, but it just it's so helpful to be reminded then it can seem so that immediately makes complete sense to me. But you think Well, yeah, things on display. Are they hidden away in the fridge? Okay, well, maybe I could just bring them out of there and have them visible in the kitchen and that would have an impact on on my mother.

Ror Alexander

I have Oreos out here. If I see him. I'm like, it's true. It's true if I so I got a little junk food that I do keep on displays my dark chocolate covered almonds. And I even need more of those than I really should. But you're

Matt Morley

gonna hide them away somewhere in the corner. Right. That's it. Thanks so much, man. So listen, where can people find you? What's the best way to keep in touch? I know you have your own podcast, your YouTube channel. Yep, well,

Ror Alexander

there's a couple. Like I said, my own health podcast is health by design, which they can check that out. And then YouTube, it's just almost everything for me is Ror Alexander a rural and that's just our model line. So raw Alexander, you know, find me on Instagram, Facebook's probably my best one. I tend to deal with an older audience, you know, like mid 30s 40s 50s. So Facebook still the place.

I do have a tick tock but I don't understand that one. really bother much with that. But my main place I like the best because I kind of host everything there is my website, which is again, just raw alexander.com and then you can link to everything from there. It's my resource for everything. Blogs video,

Sustainable Yachting BioBlu - Project BIO concept yacht

BioBlu Sustainable Yachting and Onital Studio unveil concept designs for Project BIO 40m concept yacht

What is BioBlu sustainable yachting?

BioBlu offers a reinterpretation of yachting’s relationship with People and Planet, owner and ocean, by placing a respect for nature at the core of their activities. 

Focused on enhancing the onboard health and wellness experience for the owner and guests whilst considering a yacht’s environmental impact on the seas it calls home, BioBlu’s team provide a range of innovative solutions to yacht brands, owners and captains.

BioBlu’s services reflect the team’s backgrounds in sustainability and wellbeing, yacht design and refit project management. Together they advise on reducing yacht carbon emissions and energy consumption, improving indoor air quality, managing onboard waste, prioritizing healthy, sustainable materials and biophilic design for yacht interiors.

Project BIO 40m sustainable yachting concept

The Project BIO 40 meter displacement yacht is the synthesis of BioBlu’s philosophy, one that is in harmony with Onital Studio who joined the team to lead the yacht design process.

We gave considerable weight to concerns around onboard health and wellbeing in this project, balanced with responsible yacht design and environmentally conscious operational practices. As such, the BIO Project 40 meter is a collaborative expression of BioBlu and Onital’s shared vision and values.

BioBlu

BIO yacht concept

“Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others” (Jonathan Swift)

Project BIO – Build (B) Interiors (I) Operations (O) - aims to enhance the mental and physical health benefits of life at sea for an owner and guests whilst also considering the impact of a yacht on the life of those seas for future generations.

This symbiotic approach of balancing People and Planet, reducing a yacht’s environmental impact on one hand and enhancing its health and wellbeing features on the other, starts in the pre-design phase of a build and continues through into the interiors and operations, with BioBlu playing an integral project management role to ensure the yacht’s unique DNA is present at every point in the development process.

Aesthetically, our design is strongly influenced by the automotive and wellness architecture industries, both leaders in the sourcing and application of sustainable materials. It expresses a streamlined dynamism without compromising the wellness living concept developed by BioBlu Sustainable Yachting.

Onital Studio

Sustainable Yachting Concept / Build - collaboration with Initial Studio

The BioBlu team had previous experience developing new yacht concepts together; in this case, the motto of “form follows performance” quickly became central to the project, alongside a focus on sustainability from construction through to the yacht’s end of life, and natural aesthetics for their innate elegance.

Together, these three elements resulted in a design that suggests a new twist on the owner-yacht relationship, as well as the relationship between yacht and sea.

Design highlights include a second bridge with a ‘floating loft’ almost entirely glass-walled with panoramic views of the sea and a transformable stern area used as a beach club, drinks terrace or dining space, according to requirements.

Extendable terraces can add volume to the external bridges or indeed to the cabins, according to the client’s brief in the design phase.

Abundant natural light throughout the yacht combines with smart lighting systems that follow the body’s Circadian Rhythm and high-grade glazing, shielding the owner both the sun’s rays and electromagnetic fields (EMF).

‘Green tech’ onboard comes in the form of solar panels and hydrogen generators combined with hybrid propulsion systems that currently represent the best option for reducing carbon emissions.

Sustainable Yachting Concept / Interiors - wellbeing and sustainability

A panoramic owner’s suite has been conceived as the ideal cocoon for mental and physical rest and recovery. A connection to nature is provided via views of the night sky above while reclining on a coconut fibre mattress and organic linen sheets positioned on deep-pile carpets containing upcycled ocean plastic yarn. 

A wellbeing area provides both indoor and outdoor exercise spaces with eco-friendly equipment made of sustainably sourced wood and cork. 

Biophilic design features such as recycled teak decking, decorative wall panels made of algae, and air-purifying, non-toxic paint in a palette of soothing natural colors helps to bring the outside world in, promoting feelings of vitality.

Similarly, an office area uses the latest wellbeing interior design principles such as air quality monitors, healthy furniture fabrics, a sit-stand workstation and a nature-inspired art installation to improve concentration levels.

Sustainable Yachting Concept / Operations - systems and procedures

BioBlu looks to roll its concept out not just into a yacht’s Build and Interiors but also into the onboard Operations, again balancing concerns for wellbeing and the environment. 

This equates to an initial focus on onboard systems related to water, waste and air: an advanced water ionization and filtration  system; high-grade air purification filters and high-performance marine waste vacuum system with hygiene filters respectively, all equate to valuable additions from an onboard operations perspective.  

Hygiene and cleaning have never been more important than they are today, so ensuring eco-friendly, non-toxic cleaning materials; anti-microbial treatments on all steel panels and the use of sanitizing UV-C lights reflect BioBlu’s pragmatic philosophy of ‘marginal gains’ in action. 

Similarly, there is no easy path towards full ‘plastic-free yacht operations’ status but Project BIO aims to show what is possible in the short-term by implementing a green procurement policy for the yacht crew to follow as well as supplying natural, marine-based bathroom amenities in reusable bottles to further reduce plastic waste, amongst other details.

Globally recognized third-party certifications are likely to play an increasingly important role in the transition to a sustainable yachting sector, so the BIO yacht has aligned with RESET AIR for indoor air quality, the Clear Ocean Pact for reducing single-use plastics onboard and Yacht Carbon Offset for carbon offsetting.

About Sustainable Yachting BioBlu

BioBlu was Co-founded in 2021 by Matt Morley and Paolo Bonaveri to provide wellbeing design and sustainability consultancy services to the yacht industry. Together with Andrea Veneziani as Head of Engineering, they provide solutions for a greener, healthier and more responsible yachting sector to yacht builders, brands, owners and captains.

www.sustainableyachtingbioblu.com

About Onital Studio

Onital Studio embraces the areas of transportation and industrial design. Applying the scrum work concept, it is composed of multicultural designers working in network from all over the world, sharing their professional expertise, bringing their own skills, culture and experience. This different approach of a design studio has allowed us to be responsive, adaptive, lean and efficient, in line with our modern world.

www.onital.studio.com

workplace wellbeing with wellwise in the UAE

The ‘Green & Healthy Places’ podcast series takes a deep-dive into the role of sustainability, wellbeing and community in office real estate, residential property, hotels and educational facilities today.

Episode 28 takes us to Dubai talking to Bobbi Hartshorne, Co-Founder and Chief Wellbeing Officer at WellWise, a UK and UAE based business that takes an integrated diagnostics approach to delivering value via office wellbeing programs for corporations large and small.

Our conversation covers: 

• Bobbi’s experience creating a framework for student wellbeing via an innovative accommodation offer

• WellWise’s Research driven diagnostic system approach to workplace wellbeing

• their Employee engagement process to build a culture around wellbeing

• their network of specialists providing bespoke solutions covering everything from sleep quality, to office design and environmental health

• the growing importance of mental health support at work

• the subtle but important difference between wellness and wellbeing

• the opportunities in the UAE market for workplace wellness

Workplace wellbeing insights from our conversation

Workplace wellbeing improves almost anything that a CEO cares about ,from productivity to engagement, job satisfaction and creativity

organizations with high workplace wellbeing have 2% - 3% better performance on the stock market, better customer loyalty, and better sales performance

when you have a high wellbeing workforce, everything else tends to fall into place

in order to attract people back to these places we call offices, we're having to get very creative about what they look like, how they serve us, what function they fulfill and how they enable success

wellbeing has a broader and deeper meaning than wellness as it incorporates life satisfaction, accomplishment, motivation, purpose, engagement

GUEST / Bobbi  Hartshorne of WellWise Workplace Wellbeing UAE Dubai

• https://www.bewellwise.com/

• https://www.linkedin.com/company/bewellwise/

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobbihartshornewellbeing/

HOST / Matt Morley - wellbeing champion Espana Spain

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattmorleylux/

FULL TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS COURTESY OF OTTER.AI - EXCUSE TYPOS!

Matt Morley

Okay, let's do this. If I may, I'm going to start by going back in time a little bit, because something came out of your CV as I was doing my research for this conversation. And it's a, it's a sector that seems to be really going through a transformation at the moment. I know it's no longer what you do. But I did want to just pick your brains a little bit on the student accommodation space. And you had a role a set of well being for global student accommodation group. And really the retargeting generation said, as I see it, and it's a dynamic sector. So you're combining wellness with student accommodation? Like what did that give you? And how did that go on to influence where you are today running various workplace wellness businesses?

Bobbi Hartshorne

Yeah. Well, it was a really interesting journey. The thing about that role at GSA was that I created it for myself. And so it was really the first of its kind in the private built student accommodation environment, although there had been similar roles in universities. And so it was a very steep learning curve. And it was really in response to a growing concern about the well being of students and the types of issues that were increasingly coming up in our residences, but also just around universities in general.

Bobbi Hartshorne

what I learned was that, for students, wellbeing was relatively universal. There were nine key areas that we were finding were the constant sources of stress or the opportunities to improve wellbeing. And they were financial, cultural, physical, mental, academic, spiritual, career and environmental. And it was this extreme change and this transition that young people are going through when they go from university, or when they go from school into university, that really creates this instability, where stress and low well being and challenges can fester.

Bobbi Hartshorne

the degree to which an individual has the ability to cope with those to address them, to reduce them varies massively depending on who they are, where they come from, what experiences they've had in the past. And so whilst we were able to build a framework for wellbeing that was fairly consistent across the world, how each individual student engaged with that or benefited from it really did vary. And there was certainly no one size fits all.

Bobbi Hartshorne

it dawned on me that these young people who were really quite different to the types of students that we'd had previously sort of the millennials, and the way they behaved and what they valued, and what got them motivated, and what stressed them was very different. And it dawned on me that those young people were going to enter the workforce, and that they were going to present so interesting and new challenges to employers, in the same way that they had presented new and interesting challenges to the student accommodation sector. And so I got really into looking at that transition, again, that vulnerable period of transition out of university and into the workplace. And I started to look at how existing working practices were maybe not going to align particularly well with this new generation, and maybe some of the challenges that were going to crop up.

Bobbi Hartshorne

And it wasn't long before we started to see burnout in mid 20 year olds, who had been in the workplace less than 10 years. It wasn't long before we started to see employers very concerned about mental health issues for younger employees, and a real change in pattern in terms of what those young employees were seeking from their employers. And it was way beyond cash, it just was so much more than financial gain. And so this is really where my interest in the workplace began. And then COVID cropped around the corner, gave us all a bit of a fright. And that was really an interesting experience because putting a workplace under an exceptionally extreme set of circumstances like COVID. And you tend to bring out either the best or the worst or a mixture of both. And so I really then started to observe what happens in a workplace under extreme circumstances and what happens to employees and leaders and managers under extreme work, workplace environments. And so that really was what gave gave this sort of leeway for me to take the take the jump out of the student accommodation world and into the workplace world because There were a lot of similarities and crossovers that I could draw on. But there was also a whole world of stuff I was interested in that I wanted to explore further.

Matt Morley

So am I right in thinking then with the student accommodation, you were to use the terminology from the hotel world of you're dealing with hardware and software. So you're doing both with training , teaching the mental game, as well as the physical game. So the spaces in which the students were spending their time sleeping at night, but they also meant providing, if you'd like more operational solutions to keeping them sane and healthy and positive and upbeat, right?

Bobbi Hartshorne

Absolutely. And it's quite strange, actually, from the physical perspective because universities for a really long time have been doing a lot to support students across all of those pillars that I mentioned earlier. But the one area that always seem to be neglected, or that was never really optimized was the accommodation, whether that was University owned accommodation, or whether it was privately owned accommodation. And it struck me that the nature of your home is the place where you're going to be engaging with your personal studies where you're going to have your downtime, where you're going to be maybe alone in your room, are the times when the challenges are probably going to rear their ugly heads. And, and it was really important for us to make sure that our teams on in the residences knew how to support students in that environment. But increasingly, that as we were upgrading residences, as we were building new residences, how we laid those structures out how we built community, how we identified whether students were isolated or behaving differently to maybe their normal patterns, that all became part of it. So yeah, absolutely operational and physical,

Matt Morley

There seem to be just so many parallels between the two, if you were to switch out what you've just described in the last couple of minutes, but instead of describing students, we would describe the staff or employees. And in fact, a lot of those same issues can come up or have been coming up, especially over the last few years around stress and anxiety and what have you.

Matt Morley

So you then transition across into the next phase of your career, you moved to launch your own business in October 2020, the end surrender, and there you're focusing more as I understand it on sort of a consultancy role for workplace wellbeing, right?

Bobbi Hartshorne

Absolutely. It just felt like , my natural transition. And my passion had really gone into that space, not that I wasn't still passionate about the student space, but I felt like I'd done a huge amount in the student space and there were great people there who could carry that on and evolve it further

Bobbi Hartshorne

I moved into the workplace and how the parallels as you've already alluded to, could transition across. I could see in the same way as five years previously, I could see that the university sector was struggling with student wellbeing the exact same was happening now with employees, employers struggling with employee well being, I was also observing a lot of snake oil solutions, and a lot of well washing, we call it and they're in your field, you have greenwashing. And this idea that it kind of wasn't very authentic that a lot of the work and practice going on in this space was at a very surface level, plaster over the cracks, put a nice picture on your website and kind of say that you're doing well being but as time went on, it became very apparent to organisations that that really wasn't enough. And it wasn't getting to the heart of the actual challenges and unpacking and really helping them to address the impact that a poor wellbeing workforce creates for an for an organization. And that was really where I wanted to step in with a much more rigorous and, I guess, scientific approach to wellbeing. But I was held back in doing that because what I didn't have that I wanted was a strong research platform. I kind of knew all the ingredients that were required through my own experience and through all the research I had done, but I wasn't able to get those articulated in a meaningful way because I didn't have a research platform. And so really not wanting to be just another snake oil charmer or just another well washer I set about trying to solve that riddle and now It was really when Tim Gatlin and worldwise came into the picture.

Matt Morley

I think it's a crucial point, because as you've suggested, typically, when going in on these projects, when there's there is a problem, by the time you get to the mechanic something's gone wrong with the car, so often by the time consultants brought in, right, if you've got people complaining, or the mood and the, the atmosphere in the office is really turned negative, or whatever it might be, something's going wrong here, I think it's quite rare that it's sort of anticipation, it anticipates, potential need, typically, you're kind of coming a little bit late to the game. So you have to deliver on the data and the numbers. And it's just, it's not enough to pen some nice words and hope everything works out. So you've then took this sort of far more data driven and research driven approach with Well, why so where you're currently clearly spending a lot of your time and energy and it looks to be an interesting new addition. So why don't we dig into that a little bit? So in terms of like, what that brings to the market and the needs that it's addressing? How are you resolving some of the issues that are out there at the moment?

Bobbi Hartshorne

So look, Tim, my business partner, Tim Gatlin, he already had a really, really strong research platform, that funny enough he was using in the student space, which is how Tim and I know each other, but he was also using it in other industries as well. And so I knew that that platform, and the strength of the tech involved in that platform was exactly what we were going to need to unpack the complexity of what we now call the workplace wellbeing network. And so we set about understanding, building on our knowledge, understanding what currently employers were purchasing in this space, what issues were they trying to target? What solutions were already on the market, what research was already out there, what questions were being asked. And we started to spot some key patterns. And these kind of worse split into they were either looking at what was happening with the employees themselves. So why are our employees not engaged? How do we build resilience? Why are our employees eating a terrible diet? Why are they not sleeping properly, or they would then look at organizational factors, although there was a lot less of that going on, but you would say, you know, is our management style appropriate for a modern workforce are our rewards and recognitions keeping up with the latest trends and desires of our employees. And so you have these kind of two sides of workplace wellbeing. But what you didn't really have was anybody who was working out how the two fit together, how they impacted one another, and where they could strengthen each other. And that was really what Tim and I were curious to see if we could create. And it turned out, we could so that was great.

Bobbi Hartshorne

In kind of talking to business leaders, we discovered three really important things. The first was the workplace wellbeing and employee wellbeing was top priority, or at least top five priority for every single business leader we spoke to. The second was that they were all completely overwhelmed by the amount of choice the amount of solutions, you might have conversation, the diversity of the discussion. And they were really struggling to navigate through to something that meant something to their own organization and their own situation. And the third thing was that a lot of them had already started and maybe even four or five years in have been investing in solutions and approaches and building teams and building structures around this stuff. But it wasn't actually really yielding what they kind of hoped. And so there was this kind of disillusionment or this paralysis happening where they were struck with this problem they just could not solve. And so after six months of research and diving into this topic, we've built a diagnostic system that brings those two factors together that organizational side and that employee side. And what we're able to offer organizations now is really comes down to clarity, being able to understand exactly what's happening in your organization, where the pain points are being created, where the challenges are arising from, and what the causation and outcomes of those are, what the cost of those are is to your organization, and then to help them to navigate through a strategic blueprint to a much more successful place to re redesign or redeploy their resources into the areas where it was going to have the most impact the quickest and then build from there. To where they wanted to go.

Matt Morley

Okay, and so you're beginning that process with a data collection phase. So presumably research and surveys, So you're getting both qualitative and quantitative data that gives you a baseline, right? And that forms part of the process or WISE process, as you call it, right? Where do you go on to?

Bobbi Hartshorne

Well, actually, there's a step before the data collection process, which we call the Y, phase for why. And really, this is this is often missing, as well, we discovered when we're doing our research is that quite often companies don't actually understand why it is that they're investing or think that they should be investing in workplace wellbeing. They they've either caught on to a trend, or they've spotted a specific issue such as engagement or resilience, or health, or they have a problem with something like productivity or engagement. And they go, Oh, well, wellbeing must be the answer. So because everybody's telling us that's the answer. But actually, when you start to talk to different employees across an organization, particularly at the senior level, you discover that there's actually quite a big difference in what they understand wellbeing is going to bring to the table, and some of them have got it, unfortunately, quite wrong. And some of them have got it right. But it's not aligned to their colleagues.

Bobbi Hartshorne

The other big Why is why are you doing what you're already doing? So a lot of organizations have already invested in this space they've already bought in consultants, they've already built a framework, they're already doing activities. But why did they choose that approach in the first place? And then why isn't it working? So we have to, we have to understand all of that before we can do the survey because what the survey then allows us to do is to dig into those issues a bit further, as well as just cover off the workplace wellbeing network that I already alluded to, with those those two sides.

Bobbi Hartshorne

Then once we've got those two factors, we can look at them together and say, well, you're saying you want to achieve x, but your current approach isn't doing that. And your employees are still struggling with this factor because of this situation. And so what we're then able to do is move on to the s the strategize element of the WISe process, and help them to use all of that insight, use that quantitative and qualitative insight and really drill down on a strategy that is going to help them achieve their why by unpacking the identified issues that we got at the ice stage, so so that's what we do. And then after we've done that, we've got a lovely strategy on a piece of paper. Well, it's it's next to useless when it's only on a piece of paper, it's now about engaging, it's the E phase of our why's process. You have to start engaging people. And there's two to send you two sets of people you need to engage. The first one, of course, is your employees. So how are you going to build them up, get them on board, get them bought into the process, get them contributing to it, and building a culture around wellbeing. And the second people, you have to engage professionals and specialists and that they could be you know, sleep specialists or office design specialists or manage management and leadership specialists, you know that there'll be a whole mixture of things so that that that phase is really important, as well. And it's really cool actually the way that that plays out, Matt, because those professionals that we bring in, and we've got network of people we can rely on, it's growing, seemingly daily, they don't come into an unknown quantity, they come in at the point that we've already understood the why we've already done all that quantitative data and analysis. So we're able to point them in the direction of the specific challenge that we're trying to target with their solution. So they're not trying to create a solution blind. They've got some real tangible insights themselves that make their impact much greater. And then once you've done all of that, and you've started to embed some different solutions, you're Of course going to want to know whether it's working. And that's where we bring in our reevaluation whether that's we won't rerun the whole system again, or whether we periodically, you know, look at a particular area on a smaller scale. And we can be quite agile with that now with technology and dashboards at our disposal to be able to dig in to a deeper or shallower level, depending on the need of the organization at that time.

Matt Morley

Is that then again, based on let's call it employee satisfaction, because often it's this question from the CEO CFO character. We're going to do all of this so what are the bottom line results we can expect?

Bobbi Hartshorne

the thing that is so awesome about wellbeing is that it improves almost anything that a CEO cares about. So a high wellbeing workforce is more productive, and more engaged, they're more satisfied, they're more innovative, they're more collaborative, they're more creative, they're far more likely to stay. So retention, they are also far more likely to recommend your employer or your workplaces somewhere for others to come in. So it helps with recruitment. And you get better team cohesion, you get better team creativity, and essentially, it just elevate everything. And if there's a specific thing that they're particularly targeting, so let's say they've got really low engagement or really low productivity, then we can certainly engineer this strategy initially, to specifically seek to drive improvements there. But what you find with wellbeing improved wellbeing in general is that as it as it elevates, it just pulls everything up. It's really, it's really quite fascinating in that in that regard. And the other thing that often is overlooked is it as a result of all of this, it drives the bottom line. So we know that organizations with high workplace wellbeing have 2% - 3% better performance on the stock market, better customer loyalty, and better sales performance. So it really does, you know, I'm really not trying to over egg the pudding here. But when you have a high wellbeing workforce, everything else tends to fall into place. And so that's why we really discourage people from focusing on just something like resilience, or just engagement or just productivity, and rather look at well being because your your, your dividends, your return for an investment in well being will be so much greater and so much broader than if you just try and pinpoint one specific problem and neglect the other elements of well being, too. Yeah, lots of claims.

Matt Morley

Okay. And so if we then dig a little bit deeper into the, the wellness practitioners, so in terms of the employee experience, apart from contributing to creating some initial baseline data around how things are performing in the office at the moment, then in terms of the lived experience, what they're engaging with these practitioners who come in, and perhaps you could just a hypothetical example, or a real life case study of perhaps that mix of 234 practitioners that you might bring in that would have an immediate impact on on the employee experience, or whether it's sort of if it's a fitness or wellness classes, or the environment that they're working in, because that at the end of the day is the process and action, isn't it? It's it's the staff, here it is that the changes are coming and whether that works or not, and whether you need to tweak it a little bit. So typically, how do you see that playing out?

Bobbi Hartshorne

Yeah, it's gonna be really interesting. on a case by case basis as to as to which practitioner which approach you choose to invest in and in what order you choose to take them on? Actually, the aside from practitioners, I'll come back to that in a moment. But actually, there's a huge amount that you can just do internally, you don't always need external help with this. Sometimes the results and the strategy is about actually assessing what's happening internally, and, and working out challenges that you've got internally, that you can actually fix yourself. So it's not always about saying right over to a handful of people who are going to rescue your business, because because a lot of the answers exists internally, and you've already got talent who can do that. But where there is gaps in your experience or your knowledge or their specialist areas that your your organization's not familiar with. It could be a real mixture of things that we're seeing a huge rise, for instance, in sleep practitioners, as we increasingly understand the power of good sleep and the cost of bad sleep on everything that is human about us. We're seeing as a result of COVID and this big conversation around hybrid working and trying to attract people back to the office. What even is an office now? This question has just come up in the last six months where what we've always considered to be an office the purpose of an office, what an office should do. has just been blown out of the water. And in order to attract people back to these places that we call offices, and we're having to get very creative about what they look like how they serve us what function they fulfill how they enable success, so you're gonna definitely have a big push in terms of office design, and environmental factors that help to drive those things

Bobbi Hartshorne

I think you're gonna definitely see a rise in the need for mental health support, compensation and benefits design is going to change because cash is no longer King, as I already alluded to, and then probably on the less traditional side, I think you're gonna start to see a rise in wellbeing scientists like myself, who can who can help people to unpack that data, you're going to have people who can assess your strategy as an organization, and how well being can help you to achieve that, I think we're probably going to see a lot more team practitioners as the role of teams, especially with a hybrid slash remote working changes and challenges that are coming in. And also one of the big areas, I suspect what's going to be leadership or management training, we're moving from Hero leadership to servant leadership. And that is a massive shift in how you act, how you think, what you do, the decisions you make the way that you lead. And that's a real big area of development that also and sustainable leadership, which I don't mean sustainable in terms of environmental sustainability, although, of course, that is very important. I mean, sustaining yourself as a leader, as the world of leadership just becomes so increasingly high pressured? How do you maintain your best leadership capabilities by by having high well being yourself? And how do you then invoke that sense of, it's good to have a high wellbeing workforce and sort of that gets moved down the organization? So yeah, so I think there's gonna be some interesting developments in in that space. And then finally, I think it's probably going to be a shift in HR practices, performance management, or rather, it should be performance optimization, and employer branding, recruitment strategies, and the design of the employee experience, they're all going to be things that I think are going to grow in terms of practitioner needs.

Matt Morley

You've been using the term wellbeing throughout this conversation. And I think it's, I've read something on your site recently, where you tried to pick apart the two concepts of wellness and wellbeing, it can seem not irrelevant, but it can seem that the two terms almost just merge into one. But I was interested to hear your thoughts on how you consider wellbeing to be perhaps more of a 360 view of physically and mentally in a good place versus wellness that was perhaps more limited.

Bobbi Hartshorne

Yeah, I think how many, it's really hard now, because as you said, wellbeing and wellness is sometimes used interchangeably, but actually, they do have slightly different definitions. And they definitely have different histories. And for me, wellness generally refers to sort of an individual person's physical and to a degree mental wellbeing. Whereas wellbeing has a broader and deeper meaning than wellness as it incorporates life satisfaction, accomplishment, motivation, purpose, engagement

Bobbi Hartshorne

I think wellbeing is something that's more easily applied to groups, which when we think about the workplace is important in terms of the wellbeing dynamics of teams who are being dynamics of departments of offices of regions, etc. So, you know, there's there's that kind of dual individual versus group application of wellbeing that's harder to express in wellness terms. I mean, the International Labor Organization describes workplace wellbeing as related to all aspects of working life from the quality and safety of the physical environment, to how workers feel about their work, their working environment, the climate at work and working organization. And why does it matter? Well, because the lens with which you understand wellbeing or wellness, it really doesn't matter what you call it, but the lens by which you understand it is going to massively influence your strategic approach to it. The types of practitioners you engage in the types of consultants you gain, you engage the data that you're looking for, if it's if it's understood in the more limited historic realms of wellness, there is a risk that you will miss out on the opportunities to explore Read through that much deeper lens of what we call well being. And typically we see well being referred to in the science and the data as opposed to wellness. So I kind of tend to feel that it's a slightly more rigorous subject. Well being as a more rigorous subject and wellness.

Matt Morley

Yeah, I get it. I like that. And we haven't touched on your location. But you obviously straddling two countries, in a sense between the UK and Dubai, the UAE. Now, how do you see those two locations differing in terms of interpretations of workplace well being? Are you seeing certain things that have much more relevance or importance in the UAE versus in the UK, for example, or vice versa?

Bobbi Hartshorne

You know, what, in many ways, it's not as different as you might expect. And there's some strengths and benefits to both that have sort of come out actually, in the last four or five months that I've observed, the thing we have to understand is that well being is universal. how we approach it, how we solve it, how we understand it, how we address it, the degree to which we're open to do that varies from culture, to culture, but the actual ingredients are factors that contribute to a human's well being are, are the same the world over. And, you know, our cities and any major city anywhere in the world that has a diverse cultural population is going to have issues and challenges and opportunities because of that. variance.

Bobbi Hartshorne

My, my gut feeling is that a lot of the issues are prevailing, the world over, they're not unique to particular cultures. So again, coming back to this shift from Hero leadership to servant leadership, that is happening in the West as much as it's happening here. race and gender inequalities that are still prevailing the world over old habits, dying hard in in kind of very highly bureaucratic, very highly hierarchical issues. These exists here as much as they exist in the West. For me, I think the only major hurdle is that there is probably a slightly delayed discourse here. And that may be the conversation hasn't been as open for as long in the Middle East, in the Gulf region, as it has been in the West. So people's kind of openness or understanding or literacy around the topic is maybe slightly lower here. But in some ways that actually map presents an opportunity for this region, because because the well being conversation and the understanding of well being has matured so quickly, and our data and best practice, evolution has been so fast. Actually, I find that sometimes the West is carrying a bit of old baggage in this space. And a little bit of like, Well, we've been on this journey for five years now. And nothing's changed or little has changed. And so there's a frustration there. Whereas the Gulf region is joining the conversation at a much more advanced stage and a much deeper understanding of the science behind it. And so they don't have to shed their baggage before they can engage at this higher level, which in many ways could present a really, really cool opportunity for them to leapfrog some of the resistance that we may be seeing in the West. And actually, that has definitely played out. I have had more attraction and interest and engagement from organizations in this region, including Saudi and the UAE than I have yet had in the UK, where you would expect the conversation to be much more mature.

Matt Morley

Nice. Sounds like you're you could be in the right place at the right time. So really insightful conversation. So thank you so much for your time, how can people reach out and contact you? Where can they find you online?

Bobbi Hartshorne

Yeah, so the best place to contact us is bewellwise.com we've got some really great free resources for people there, we've got a free to download white paper, which explores the current challenges with wellbeing and how to improve them. We've got a online self assessment tool where people can go in and answer a handful of questions and then get some tailored advice into their emails.

Matt Morley

Alright, listen, thanks so much for your time. It's been fun!

Hotel gym design - a consultant's view

BIOFIT IS THE HOTEL GYM DESIGN CONSULTANT FOR LUXURY RESORT BRAND IKOS

(article first published on our sister website biofit.io here)

what does a hotel gym design consultant do?

It may seem obvious but in reality it’s not that simple! First, some context. Most hotel or resort gym designs are wrapped up in a wider architectural project, with a space allocated for the gym, then flooring, lighting, electrics, ventilation and mirrors installed, before a recognized equipment brand is called in to equip the entire space with their products.

As such, there is no specialist ‘gym design’ going on, nor is there a gym concept developed that fits in with the context of the hotel, aligned with current fitness trends and the hotel’s target market / guest demographics.

hotel gym design as a ‘usp’

This situation occurs because the gym is more of a box ticking exercise than a priority. It is unlikely to generate any revenue for the hotel so is more of an obligation than a Unique Selling Point in itself - for us, as hotel gym design consultants, this is a huge missed opportunity.

In the IKOS Resorts group based in Greece we found a brand that understands this completely and has decided to turn their gyms into genuine features of the guest experience.

creating a hotel gym concept

Wooden flooring, white walls, TV screens and tightly packed rows of Technogym equipment is not our idea of a gym concept', although for many hotels this is deemed sufficient.

Hotel brands that want to stay ahead of the competition and wish to tap into the huge wellness market, should look to develop a concept for their gym first before deciding on the interior design or equipment.

What type of fitness training are the hotel guests doing at home? Do we want to give them everything they have in an urban gym or gently encourage them to try something new while on holiday?

Are we looking for a more natural, eco-friendly style or a high-end, sophisticated aesthetic with the equipment choices? Do we want to offer just strength and conditioning or promote more focus on stretching / mobility and outdoor fitness training in the fresh air?

All of these questions and answers go into making an innovative hotel gym concept that avoids the same, standard cookie-cutter approach favored by 99% of hotels but that is already being replaced with more inspiring hotel gym concepts. The revolution is coming!

gym equipment selection

Selecting hotel gym equipment should, in our view, be seen as a central part of the gym design process. Going to one brand and asking them to fit out the entire gym is always going to result in a standard response.

Every gym equipment brand has their high-value products that they want to sell as many of as possible. They also have a clear style that defines their products, almost becoming part of their brand in many ways.

The design aesthetic and commercial interests of the equipment supplier, in other words, are rarely aligned with delivering the best guest experience possible that connects with the aesthetics of the hotel or resort.

For that, you will need an external gym designer who works with multiple brands and can curate a bespoke equipment selection to match each hotel or resort’s personality, budget, floor space and target audience.

designing an outdoor gym for a hotel or resort

One of the most obvious trends in hotel gym design right now as we emerge from the COVID crisis is the surge in demand for outdoor training facilities where guests can exercise in the fresh air, without worrying about wearing a mask, spreading germs and so on.

Ideally an outdoor gym location should provide shade from the summer sun as well as a view onto nature, a space that is entirely closed in may offer privacy but we are hard-wired to appreciate perspectives that give us a view into the distance.

Outdoor hotel gyms can either be functional fitness facilities with kettlebells, dumbbells, exercise mats, and sandbags, or a combination of functional fitness training gear with a calisthenics rig permanently installed in the allocated area.

gym flooring design considerations

For indoor hotel gyms we like to work with sustainable cork flooring or a cork-rubber mix tile that provides additional comfort underfoot. Beyond just aesthetics, we also consider sustainability, indoor air quality, acoustics, durability, maintenance and the type of training that will take place in each zone of the gym, meaning flooring and equipment layout must go hand in hand.

Outdoor hotel gyms can consider flooring options that include grass in dry climates, sand or specific outdoor gym flooring tiles in locations that have higher annual rainfall.

Wood or wood composite decking is also an option, albeit a more expensive one and perhaps better suited to mind-body practices such as yoga classes a hard floor is going to need reinforcing as well as additional protection on top wherever there are heavy weights being used.

hotel gym interior design for wellbeing benefits

We are specialists in biophilic design in gyms but we consider wellbeing interiors to be a more all-encompassing strategy that does not necessarily include plants, nature and greenery, instead it focuses on creating a space that has functional health benefits for the gym users.

We do this via improved air quality, wellness lighting, acoustics planning, access to healthy nutrition and drinking water, space for mental wellness such as a meditation room, as well as optional biophilia solutions such as natural fabrics, patterns, materials and, yes, plants.

email us to discuss your hotel or resort gym design project

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Further reading:

• Sustainable hotel brands in the UK

mental wellbeing clinic design - the soke, london

The ‘Green & Healthy Places’ podcast series explores the role of sustainability, wellbeing and community in office real estate, residential property, hotels and healthcare facilities today.

Episode 27 is with Dr Chi-Chi Obuaya of The Soke in London, UK a private mental health clinic that has re-defined the mental wellbeing clinic for an upmarket clientele, setting a new benchmark in the process.

We discuss the cultural differences between UK and US in openness around mental wellbeing, the impact of Covid on our relationships at home and in the office, mental health champions in the workplace, why having an off-site venue for discussions around mental health is preferable to an in-office solution, designing an interior for mental wellbeing, the parallel with boutique gyms and private clinics in terms of aspirational positioning and how working on your inner game can make you a more effective manager through empathy.

An indoor environment shouldn't reinforce the fact that you feel unwell, that you're a “patient”. We wanted to create a space that really made people feel nourished, and the design features I think tick the boxes in that respect, but also to be aspirational. 

Dr Chi-Chi Obuaya

GUEST / DR. CHI-CHI OBUAYA OF THE SOKE, LONDON, UK

• https://www.thesoke.uk/

• https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-soke/

• https://twitter.com/TheSokeUK

• https://www.instagram.com/thesokelondon/

HOST / MATT MORLEY

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattmorleylux/

• https://www.instagram.com/matt.aspiotis.morley/

FULL TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS COURTESY OF OTTER.AI - excuse typos!

Matt Morley

Chi-Chi, welcome to the show. I'd really like to dig into your role as Head of the Clinical Board for The Soke so could you talk to us about what that has involved for you so far and how you see it evolving over time?

Dr Chi-Chi-Obuaya

Really excited to be here, Matt, good to see you again, as well after all these years. I'm a Consultant Psychiatrist here, I trained as a medical doctor specialized in psychiatry, and I focus on adult psychiatry so I see anyone aged 18 and above, with a range of mental health difficulties, including depression, anxiety, problems related to birth, trauma related issues, addictions.

I'm the Clinical Lead at The Soke - a behavioral health center in the heart of London, we're coming up to our one year anniversary. And the whole premise of setting up The Soke was really that within the UK, there are plenty of mental health professionals that people can see. But we found that there's still massive stigma around mental health and accessing care. And we just wanted to ease that process for people by having a really high quality service that has a beautiful environment, encourages people to come forward and supporting that by offering them very good quality care in an environment that is conducive to promoting good mental wellbeing.

Matt Morley

I think that really comes across in terms of the space that you've created, and clearly that's one of the key attributes in the experience on offer. But in terms of the mix of resources on the team, and the range of services that you offer, presumably you each have specialisms, but there seems to be this interesting client service director role that is atypical, or less common let’s say. How is your mental wellbeing team structured?

Dr Chi-Chi-Obuaya

Yes, so our clinical model is a multidisciplinary one, I think we recognize that in private practice, you can certainly access a whole range of mental wellbeing therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and it can be quite difficult for people to navigate through the system, and to really understand who they need to see and what skill set that person needs to have.

So most of us have a pretty broad range of people we would see with a vast range of conditions. But within that, there are areas of interest. So for me, I still work within the National Health System. And I see people with ADHD, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. We have therapists who have a particular interest in supporting people who have, for example, body image issues, who might have disordered eating, but maybe aren't quite meeting the threshold for eating disorder diagnosis.

I'd say generally, one of the themes is that we're trying to be quite proactive and preventative. So a lot of healthcare services are set up to treat illness, and that lends itself to seeing people when they're already really unwell. And there's certainly a role for that. But we're trying not to offer that acute care rather to catch people before they fall into major difficulties.

We have a broad range of child, adolescent and Family Services. So we're working with couples, parents, right across the age span. So really from from birth right through to old age. The multidisciplinary model is key in that we meet on a daily basis as a team, discuss potential referrals, discuss clients who might be seeing a range of us within the team. And it's then bringing our different bits of expertise together to think about how we can holistically support people from a mental wellbeing perspective.

As I said, we're just coming up to our one year anniversary. So there's still plenty of room for growth, and we want to be able to offer a wider range of services, such as nutritional advice. There are a vast array of therapies. So we're really at the starting point, and we want to add to the clinical team there.

Our client services manager is really the go-to person to help people navigate through the team, because it can be quite daunting and the reality is that when people are seeing therapists, they sometimes don't know how to benchmark that, or to get a sense of what progress they're making.

We're data driven, we have outcome measures and we try to be very goal oriented. The Client Services Manager is the person that can think about some of the services we maybe don't provide, but can signpost people externally for that, and where there are challenges where people do feel stuck therapeutically, which happens, it's not a sign of the therapy being of a poor standard, it just happens that sometimes you don't have the right fit with an individual therapist. We're really trying to think holistically, systemically, I think the multidisciplinary aspect is something that has often been missing within private healthcare.

Matt Morley

That really resonates with me having been through a period of about six months of therapy myself and feeling that it was very much as if we were operating in a complete bubble, there was no third party around to bounce ideas off or to sense-check how it was all going. What you've just described having another person, not in the room exactly but right outside would have been so helpful.

Having a beautiful space in which to physically connect with someone in person rather than online would have been good too!

To pick up on something you've alluded to that earlier, the idea that it's prevention rather than cure. And I wondered how you feel as a Londoner, if there is a change, that's already happened, or it's happening around acceptability of discussions around mental health, the idea of not waiting too long before you pick up the phone or walk through your front doors, for example, when you feel that something's reached a point where it's arguably not too late, it's already become critical.

In the US we'd we'd imagine in places like New York, it's far more common that one should engage with these things, almost on a regular basis, not just for six months, but perhaps semi permanently, how do you see culturally where London's at in terms of this dialogue now with around mental health?

UK-US cultural differences in talking about mental wellbeing

Dr Chi-Chi-Obuaya

Yes, great question, we're on the journey, we're certainly not at the level of the US, in terms of it just being really ingrained in the culture and something that wouldn't make you bat an eyelid. If you and I were having a conversation and you said, I've just come from my therapy session, that would just be a perfectly normal thing.

The UK is still quite conservative, and we might feel a bit awkward. If somebody said that in the middle of a conversation, we are getting there, there have been massive public mental health campaigns, trying to de-stigmatize mental health, both within society and I think particularly within the workplace.

the impact of Covid on mental wellbeing

I would say that the the covid 19 pandemic has forced people to have these conversations because guess what, it's affected people in every way you can imagine. And I think it's made the language of mental health difficulties much more accessible to people, because they can understand when you start talking about grief, for example, which in British culture, we're not great at doing. People can understand it, because it's actually affecting people directly, or people that they know, given what's happening.

Work has been disrupted for a lot of people. People have lost jobs. They've been put on furlough schemes. They felt that their jobs are under threat. They've been working from home and that's equalled stress. They've been trying to homeschool children too, that's very difficult. So I think the conditions are ripe for that conversation to move forward. It is moving forward. I'd still say it's a little bit too much towards the the reactive end. I when people are experiencing difficulties, that's when they're accessing help. And our vision is that we'd like to support people who kind of think you know what, I don't see anything wrong with just having some exploratory therapy just to take stock of things. Even if there isn't Externally what we might regard as a major issue. And I think that's where people are in the state. So I think we'll get there. But it's going to be a process.

Matt Morley

You mentioned the the impact of what's happened over the last year and a half on mental health in the workplace, and the impact on corporates, large businesses, and how there is clearly a need for there to be a wider conversation in the office.

How do you as a company or yourself personally engage with the business end of mental health, because it does feel like that suddenly become such a critical piece now within our overall wellbeing strategy in the workplace. What does that look like for The Soke?

Workplace wellbeing and mental health

Dr Chi-Chi-Obuaya

There's no one size fits all solution. I think that's the key thing to understand. And you use the word ‘conversation’’, I think the key aspect is to be a part of that conversation, and see where it goes. The reason I say that is that different sectors, different businesses within those sectors are at very different points in terms of their recognition of the scale of the problem when it comes to mental health challenges, and also what they really want to do about those problems.

To give an example, at the end of the scale is just dipping one's toe into the water. There are lots of mental health campaigns now across the calendar, we have mental health awareness week, which is often a focus for businesses. And those businesses may get in external speakers. And we've been part of those conversations. I think with any of these initiatives across a range of issues around social injustice and lots of challenges around the workplace, that really is the start. However it isn't enough on its own. All that really does is it raises awareness. And it gets people thinking and ultimately businesses need to decide what's best for them, we try to support that process.

At the other end of the scale, we've had really good engagement with companies that massively want to change their culture. And that could look like having mental health, first aid training, having champions across the organization, having a culture of supervision, which creates opportunities for conversations amongst peers and one's colleagues, through which discussions around mental health again, can just naturally flow. So those are some of the workshops that we offer to corporates. And it really just depends on on how much time, effort and resources they want to invest in.

One of the really interesting things has been to observe from the outside what different corporates do. I'd say that things have moved in a healthy direction over the last 5 to 10 years. A lot of corporates felt that the right solution was to bring a lot of these services in house, that might include offering GP services or psychological therapy services in the house. We have a fantastic space here. And what we find is that there can be reticence from employees about accessing services in house among senior leaders, they see it as too much of a reputational risk.

Amongst more junior colleagues, there's often a culture of competitiveness, and they find that they're worried about their job security if they're accessing the mental health suite, on on floor x within the building. So often, these initiatives are well meaning but they don't really quite cut it in terms of people really accessing them. Often people will even in very well resourced organizations seek external help, because they're more comfortable with that. So we want to get to the stage where Businesses really understand that and they're able to engage with us in that fashion, because often the employees want to do that way. It might be convenient for them to access us in this increasingly fluid working environment that people have at a time that suits them in an environment where they're more relaxed, and we've put in some features to really to bolster the client's experience, and that's probably going to work better for them, we feel.

Mental health officers in an ESG strategy

Matt Morley

You mentioned the mental health officer role. And it's come up on my radar, having done some work with a real estate developer in London, on their ESG strategy. - environmental, social and governance. Mental health is now part of that remit. So if you have a pension fund putting money into a project and a real estate developer the annual report on their ESG depends partly on their approach to mental health in the workplace.

I just thought that was an interesting combination, because the role of the mental health officer is purely to identify a problem and then get that person to pick up the phone, send an email, or make contact with a professional, passing on the issue to the experts in other words. Nothing more nothing less.

I remember thinking that makes total sense, not trying to resolve something themselves, but having the right person on the end of the line and just joining the dots so that that person feels comfortable in taking action.

Interior design for mental wellbeing

That leads us then into the idea of having a physical space that is not the office, but you might get there having been recommended via your corporate, your employer, you then rock up to the soak. And from what I've seen online, your private clinic’s interior space just does not look like anything I've seen in terms of mental health clinics, I think on some level rewriting the rulebook of what it should feel like and look like when you when you go for one of these sessions.

For those who haven't seen the website, can you describe the type of environment that you have there? I mean, there seems to be sort of Scandinavian influences, vintage furniture, it's like a it's like an interior design showroom. As much as anything, it looks beautiful!

Dr Chi-Chi-Obuaya

Absolutely, I think you're spot on. And that is all by design. I certainly wish to take absolutely no credit for it. My role is to focus on the clinical work. But our founder, Maryam Meddin, had a vision. We've talked about the fact that we want people to be able to access care in a way that really feels normal. But the problem she identified was that the environment, and we've got some of the best clinicians in the world in London, I think, New York's up there, but London is about as good a place to practice psychiatry, psychology anywhere in the world.

The indoor environment shouldn't reinforce the fact that you feel unwell, that you're a “patient”. As you said, when you go around a lot of hospitals, which have fantastic clinicians, practitioners offering really high quality level of care, the environment just lags behind. We wanted to create a space that really made people feel nourished. And the design features I think, tick the boxes in that respect, but also to be aspirational.

Aspirational boutique gym designs compared with most private mental health clinics

Lots of people go to gyms now, we don't think anything of it, it's a pretty regular thing to do. And you just go maybe in your lunch break, and you go back to work, and it's not a big deal.

Boutique gyms have become a bigger part of our lives. When they first launched, there was something very aspirational about them. And so the aesthetics support about view that you went to a gym and you just had that wow factor. And that's exactly what we're trying to do here. So you come into reception, it doesn't feel clinical, the sofas are really comfortable. You feel relaxed, it's a bit like being in someone's living room, and a nice one at that.

One of the things about seeing a mental health practitioner in London is that people tend to be very busy. So you leave a session and then you're back out onto the main road and you get on with your day. But actually, we wanted to make people feel that they weren't being kicked out of the building, that they had that time to reflect, and just to not feel rushed, particularly when they're talking about some quite challenging issues.

So one of the key design features would be our pods - spaces next to the therapy rooms, where you can just sit back very comfortably, read a book, have some time in a darkened room to reflect on your session, we have some evidence base technology that supports people, one of these is alpha stem, a device that delivers a microcurrent to your ear lobes. It's a small device, you put it on for anywhere between 20 and 60 minutes. And it has evidence for supporting people in improving their sleep, and also in reducing anxiety levels. And it's going to be approved by nice the National Institute for care and excellence in the treatment of generalized anxiety disorder.

We see a lot of young people, and they have parents. And so we're able to give something to the parents when they're hanging around, So that's thinking about the family as a system. And we don't just talk the talk, we're able to do that by by linking the building to the therapy directly.

Matt Morley

That reminds me of some work I did in the past around with a hospitality client, we were looking at the guest journey and identified this pain point when you're checking out of a hotel or resort and you know the holidays over and guess what you get slapped with a huge bill and then you're sort of just spat out onto the street again. So how could we rewrite the script on that to turn it into a moment of delight?

After a therapy session you may well be feeling a little vulnerable. You might not want to go straight out into the into the hustle and bustle of London street again. So creating that third space between the outside world and the therapy room and allowing someone just to chill is very innovative, I think.

Create a wellbeing interior design that appeals to men as well as women

Dr Chi-Chi-Obuaya

If we go back to your example. It's about recognizing who the client is. And we've done some work around that as well. So yes, the environment, broadly speaking, allows people to have a really great experience. But we also need to understand who our customers are. And so we wanted an environment that had these soft features. But to say very bluntly, one that isn't feminine, per se, because we have a lot of male clients, we know that men are not great at talking, generally speaking, there's been a lot of work in the public domain around getting men to talk about their mental health difficulties.

So they're a big target group in terms of this whole de-stigmatization process. Being in central London, we know that a lot of our our male clients are going to come from a corporate background. So we wanted to make sure the optics weren't suggesting that we're some sort of hippy or New Age service. So we wanted soft, but also very professional. And I think we strike the balance just right.

Matt Morley

So if we then follow that thread a little further, what would you say are typically the red flags that take place before someone .looks for help, for example, someone in a corporate environment? What should we be looking out for in terms of cues?

Dr Chi-Chi-Obuaya

I think it's important to recognize that there are a broad range of mental health conditions and one of the traps we sometimes fall into as psychiatrists when we're asked this question, we think about the more severe end.

So I do see people with really severe depression. People who've experienced significant trauma, even people who might have a psychotic illness. And we tend to go for that, but there's so much in the middle that we miss. And I think your question speaks to the person that that might be undergoing significant stress over a period of time. It might be work related, it may have nothing to do with work. And it could be very much to do with their personal circumstances. And so it's a lot more ill defined. And we know that stress affects people in many different ways. But in keeping with the idea that we want to get people, maybe before they present with a severe depression, I think it's understanding some of those themes around stress and how it manifests for people.

So the sorts of concept I'd want to get across would be pretty high level. And we might talk about people who are thriving. And it's just as it sounds, it's when you've got that spring in your step, you're very outward focused, you feel energetic, you're paying pretty good attention, broadly speaking, to exercise, your your nutrition, you're engaged with friends, family colleagues, and you've got a I don't like to talk so much about work life balance, there are people who have very busy jobs and work long hours, but you're paying attention to the things that give them a sense of energy and enjoyment.

I think particularly in the current context, burnout is one of the key aspects people need to be looking out for. And that builds up over a period of time, where there's that loss of attention to the things that give one a sense of rejuvenation, and replenishment.

At the other end of the spectrum, we might think about the concept of languishing. And it's just as it sounds, you know, the energy levels are down, you start to become a bit withdrawn from colleagues, you're just not quite on top of things at work. And one experiences significant stress. And one of the things we're mindful of is that people can experience this cliff edge experience where they're functioning outwardly, for a period of time, but where stress is building up, it can hit you very quickly. And the cliff edge term comes from the fact that you can very quickly go from outwardly functioning to really not functioning very well at all. And that can have significant implications within the workplace. But of course beyond that, as well.

Matt Morley

Is it rather like an athlete having a strength and conditioning coach, they might have another one who's their mental coach? If we assume that a high performing executive or indeed any professional who's trying to be at the top of their game, do you think there's a case to argue for their having someone on their mental health team, such as a life coach?

a word on executive performance

Dr Chi-Chi-Obuaya

Certainly it’s best not to wait until something goes wrong. I’m biased so you may guess that my answer is going to be yes, it will be a great idea. I think it's really important to be very clear about what the role of that individual or team would actually be. There are psychologists who work in corporate organizations, and may be termed ‘performance coaches’ or ‘psychologists’.

We've been quite clear about what our perceived role is, and that's why I said there are different conversations with different corporate clients. What we don't see our role in doing is saying we're going to come in, and by engaging with our intervention, you impact the bottom line. If that happens as a result of optimizing employees wellbeing, reducing sickness rates, people being happy at work and so on , then yes of course, we want that. But that's not a direct goal.

I think if I use the analogy of a sports person, and there have been a lot of sports people coming forward, people who've played at elite level, who talk about the fact that everything was geared towards winning and performance, and it wasn't actually looking at them as individuals. And there could be a lot of resentment that sets in for people who outwardly appear to have these amazing lives living the dream. And it's far from that. And I think that's relevant to the workplace as well.

We're not here to just help the organization, we actually want to focus on the individual. In the same way, with an elite athlete, you want to look at them holistically, and say, how do we support this person not to run faster, or to put in more minutes in whatever team sport they're in. But to really focus on their wellbeing, that will, of course, have the direct knock on effect, that they will be able to focus on the challenge that they have, be it in the sporting arena or in the workplace. So yes, we want to engage in those conversations. But we want to do it with real clarity about what we're actually trying to achieve. And I think businesses need to wake up to that aspect. It may sound counterintuitive but actually, this is the way forward.

mindfulness, empathy and the inner game

Matt Morley

Certainly from my personal experience in doing this work, it became very much complimentary to my mindfulness meditation, which by itself was getting me somewhere, but I felt perhaps not to where I wanted to be. Combining the two was a magic formula for my mental game.

I think the point I'd ask people to consider is that by loving ourselves, we're able to give more love back out to the world. And if you're managing people in an organization, if you're managing a team of 10-20, however many people, empathy is critical.

So much of that can come from being able to love and respect yourself first. And knowing what your own triggers are and why you react in a certain way, or why you struggle to get into someone's head, the way a particular person rubs you up the wrong way, that's a real problem, because they're on your team yet somehow you still have to handle them every day and get the best out of them and nurture them.

It's not about friendship, it's a professional relationship. But still, I think, this type of work that we do on ourselves, has so much benefit, not just for us, the individual. but for those around us. I think for me, that was almost this unexpected benefit, a knock on effect that I felt able to connect more easily and in a more honest way with those around me, and particularly people I was managing at that time.

Dr Chi-Chi-Obuaya

That's the point I was alluding to, when I said at the starting level, it's get a speaker in to give a half hour talk for Mental Health Awareness Week, what you described, actually enables cultural change, but it requires a conversation. We don't just have an off the shelf package for organizations. But what you have articulated there is where we want to get to with organisations, but we fully understand that it requires leadership, it requires a bit of knowledge about the mental health landscape, what different providers can offer.

Where you want to get to as an organization that absolutely is on the money in terms of where we want to go. And in our workshops. That is what we try to do we go through that journey with people in understanding a bit about their own mental well being. And the key word is empathy, and just being able to understand what's going on for other people. But yes, the journey starts from within, absolutely spot on.

Matt Morley

Thank you so much for your time. It's been great Chi-Chi!

talking wellbeing interiors with design well studios

The ‘Green & Healthy Places’ podcast series takes a deep-dive into the role of sustainability, wellbeing and community in real estate and hospitality.

In this episode we’re in Portland, Oregon in the US with Michelle Ifversen of Design Well Studios - optimizing built environments for wellbeing.

We discuss a term that is more common in the US than in Europe, namely ‘building biology’ - a combination of healthy building strategies and Biophilia or nature-connectedness.  

Her in-person and virtual assessments of residential environments address issues affecting the health of occupiers, the risks of off-gassing from flooring and wall paint, how to mitigate the risk of Electro-Magnetic Fields (EMFs) in homes and how to safely manage your smart home technology. 

Michelle has a lot of strings to her bow, having co-developed a lab test for indoor air quality, launched her own collection of biophilic nature-inspired artworks and delivering landscape design services for clients as well to bring the outside world indoors. 

She’s devoted to all things natural and healthy in the home environment, so we had lots to talk about!

EPISODE NOTES 

GUEST / MICHELLE IFVERSEN / DESIGN WELL STUDIOS

• https://www.designwellstudios.com/

• Indoor air quality testing

• Botaniculture artworks

FULL TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS COURTESY OF OTTER.AI - EXCUSE TYPOS

Matt Morley

Welcome, Michelle, thanks for joining us. Really nice to have you on board all the way from Portland, Oregon. I wanted to kick things off just with an overview from your side onwhat you do with design well studios and how you got to where you are today.

michelle ifversen

Thanks for having me, Matt. I've been inspired by biophilic design and healthy living spaces for quite some time now. I grew up in Santa Barbara, California, beautiful place, but everything grew there. And we lived in an area where it was a little bit more damp. And so I developed a lot of allergies and suffered with that. And everybody's like, oh, you're allergic to mold? Well, mold is an allergy, but it's not supposed to be inside of you...

michelle ifversen

I love science, I grew up watching surgeries, believe it or not. But My mother is a renowned landscape architect. And my father was a builder. My birth father was a sculptor. So I love art and design as well. So the the science part and the design part, really, you know, I love I've always loved that. I wanted to become a doctor. And I was taking my anatomy classes. And long story short, I walked in to do my cadaver labs and the formaldehyde was so overwhelming that I couldn't complete it. So I went to art school in Europe.

Matt Morley

It sounds like an interesting combination between art and science and an element of medicine and perhaps some influences from landscaping. And some point that leads you towards biophilic design and wellbeing design then?

michelle ifversen

Exactly, it was infused in my environment. And whether I liked it or not, it was happening, when I was designing my son's room 20 years ago, it was very difficult to find healthy building materials or healthy material furnishings. And so I researched heavily, and took a while to find one place in Oregon, actually Pacific Rim furniture with no toxins, no, no adhesives that were, you know, bad for you. And so I started that path while I was a designer and doing information architecture for high tech companies.

michelle ifversen

I moved back to Santa Barbara after living in a couple of different places on the west coast. And met a naturopathic doctor. And so we got to chatting. And she had a house call and noticed how gnarly their environment was, how it was damp, it was off gassing. And we got together and we created a company that that did these house calls these environmental assessments and then later on, I got into building biology and studied all about building science healthy building and remodeling and electromagnetic field testing EMF and really dove deeper into VOC is an indoor air quality. Okay,

Matt Morley

so there's lots in that. So we're let's loop back around to the building biology piece because I think that's it's really valuable information. But you mentioned the scene in Portland, Oregon 20 years ago. And if you like struggling to find anywhere that was delivering on this concept of sort of healthy materials and healthy furniture, how are things today and how does it compare, for example, with what you see, for example, down in California, in terms of the rest of the US, there are certain parts of the world that seem to be really pushing ahead and with availability Now for these things or leading from the path, or leading the market, how is your local scene?

michelle ifversen

Well, I'm not shopping for cribs anymore. But for healthy fabrics and furnishings, it's not fabulous. I mean, you definitely still have to source and a lot of this stuff comes from Europe. And it comes from California. So we do have a mattress manufacturer here that gets natural latex material and he makes beds and so I source a lot of those for my clients. You know, I do a lot of used furniture have you and repre upholstery, it. There's a real upholstery company here that does all sustainable upholstery, and natural latex and wool and things like that, too. It's there are some places, but especially furnishings. Really, really tough. really tough. There are some places that do I work with a lot of artists that will create furniture for me, right, so we'll design furniture together and for jobs, and so will source you know, really nice sustainable wood and I, I coached them on healthy finishings and adhesives and things like that to, to make that. So it's still in that creative stage. But it's not readily available, where you just go walk down the street, and here's an eco store, like in London, you know, they have a lot more to offer.

Matt Morley

Yeah, I think I think probably the reality is that, in most even major cities, still, there's a sense that it's a it's a niche market, but it's it's then about availability. And you're right that the European market is now pretty strong on that. But that, yeah, it doesn't necessarily mean we have direct access at retail, but we can get to things pretty quickly within the European market. And there's some, there's someone out there doing everything that we need. And I think that's, that's a real sign of the times. And I think it'll just carry on, we don't know how far it'll go in terms of becoming mainstream, but I think it'll become increasingly accepted. So let's look back round then. Because you mentioned building biology. And I think, you know, those are perhaps two words that don't necessarily go together or that Oh, yeah, for sure. Give us the give us a 32nd intro into building biology from your perspective.

michelle ifversen

Building Biology is about building science and and creating built environments that simulate nature. So breathable walls, you know, healthy indoor air space, air quality. You know, you know, great flooring without adhesives, and it really trying to mimic outdoors to indoors. And you know, I love technology but we have to put a limit on it, there's a right way to use it safely. And we can talk more about EMF later. But building biology is just that it's breathable, livable spaces that support humans. So I call it human code, rather than building code.

Matt Morley

That's an interesting take on things. And then so when you do your environmental wellness assessments, then I'm guessing 99% of the time you're going into spaces that are not built along those principles. So they're not buildings that have a builder nology concept behind them. So in fact, probably the opposite, right, you're going in, there's some kind of a problem that's been identified, whether it's visually something that's appearing on the walls, or there's a health issue for residents of the home, would that be correct?

michelle ifversen

Absolutely. Yeah. Most people get to me from their wellness providers, that they recommend having them check out their home, or they are they're like, I've gone down all this health, these, this this road to you know, having their health being compromised, and they think that there's something is cut stemming from their environment, right? So they're, it's kind of a detective work, they want to figure out where the source is coming from. And that's a lot of our business. It's, it's not as sexy as his biophilic design. But it is a supportive work, and I really enjoy it. And I've helped a lot of people over the years determine what's going on in their environment, because it's so they're so used to their environment. They're so used to their home and they're, they're not objective, right. They're like they think that's normal things are normal that off gassing of the paint of the of the flooring is normal.

michelle ifversen

You know, I've got so many cases where people will build brand new homes or their remodel and they'll put luxury vinyl tile. I don't know if you have that in Europe, but it's Yeah, yep. It looks great. It's beautiful, easy to clean, whatnot. But it a lot of them have adhesives in it that with formaldehyde, formaldehyde and metal off gas up to 15 years, especially if they don't have a system, an air system that will purify it and filter that out. So I do on site assessments here locally in Portland. And then now since pandemic, I've had to there's to do more virtual assessments. So I've been doing virtual assessments for people all over the country, and I work together, don't assume they work together. But I've connected with a toxicologist and immunologist that works with people all over the world. There. There are situations where they test their blood for mycotoxins, mold, and they want to know what to do about their environment. And so I come in and consult with them and do a virtual assessment through, you know, laptop or FaceTime, and take a look at their environment. And we have a really lengthy questionnaire to determine. And I've been able to help a lot of people that way, this feels really good.

Matt Morley

And so if you were to do an in person assessment, which presumably in a local context, post COVID, will become the norm again, for you or the preference.

michelle ifversen

I found myself getting exposed to mold and to chemicals. And so I know how to, I know how to what supplements to take, I know I sauna, and I know how to do that. And we're the gear, but it's not something that I, I want to do so much anymore. comes with a health risk rate.

Matt Morley

Right. And he mentioned EMF stem. So for those that perhaps aren't aware of what it involves, why you would need to test for it, and how you identify it, what's your process there.

michelle ifversen

So a lot of people come to me when they are looking to purchase a property, right? Like yesterday, I just did a property that was right next to a corridor where it's people run up and down it and above it, there's transmission power lines. So they wanted to know there, this person is very active, they're very healthy, they want to know what's going on. And so they think that, hey, there might be a connection, I want to check it out. So I go and I do an assessment where I check first gives me electric and magnetic fields. And we adhere to the precautionary principle, from building biology standards between you know, what's, what's low to high, and the health risks that could be coming from that now. There are a lot of studies, studies are still happening. But like with 5g, it's so very new. So there's not a lot of studies out there. There's studies with 2g and 3g. But 5g is completely a different animal, a different beast, it's small cell microwave radiation, and it has to be close not for the way. But when you're close to it, it's definitely it's definitely more harmful. I shouldn't say I don't want to go down that road too much.

michelle ifversen

When it comes to EMF, like I have a cell phone, but I use a case that has that shields it I'm hardwired with Ethernet and my computer, we don't have Wi Fi here, we have our Roku, which is a television. It's kind of like a Apple TV. And it's hardwired. So we still have the benefit. We have a outdoor speaker auto stereo, we plug our, our stereo into it. So it's all connected and it still sounds fabulous. So there's ways to do it. You know, I've been doing a lot of these smart homes and they're very savvy. They're very cool. I mean, you can talk to your your or not talk to you but find out how many eggs are in your frigerator I love the site. I love technology. I love it. But is it necessary and how much do we need? Right? And so

Matt Morley

It's a fascinating moment in history with two things going on in parallel - a return to nature on the one hand and a massive technological explosion on the other. Reconnecting with nature via biophilia isn’t about going backwards but nor do we want to neglect our evolutionary history completely, that’s the risk. So we end up with this dichotomy between the two tendencies, it can be hard to bridge the two sometimes I feel.

michelle ifversen

Just around air quality, then because I am conscious that that's going to be one of these think like hot hot topics for a few years to come for obvious reasons. So yeah, how do you work with indoor air quality? And what sort of techniques are you thinking about in terms of measuring and also improving indoor air quality?

michelle ifversen

So I was thinking of what you're saying about technology, they have the, the white the apps on your phone that can check your air and things like that. So that's that dichotomy you were talking about, like, yes, it's great that you're checking your vo C's and your your air and whatnot and your health of your home. But then you're using Wi Fi, right all over to us that purpose. So we don't do that.

michelle ifversen

We have a developed a kit with, with the lab here in the US, that tests for over 500 different voc volatile organic compounds, or chemicals. And it's a tube that you put on the test to the pump. And it's about an hour and a half test, and it just takes in the data, holds it in the tube, and then we send it off to the lab, and then we get a very professional lab report back that I go over with my clients. And it goes to the source where the where it's coming from. And so it's very, it's a great tool to analyze your air what's going on, if you did sit or remodel, if there's something going on in your environment, you think you don't know what that odor is or what's happening, we were able to determine what you know, where the source is coming from, and then to help to consult with them to remediate it.

Matt Morley

So it's like a deep dive analysis of the indoor air quality at a specific point in time,

michelle ifversen

right is a blood test. Yes, like a blood test for your body, right. And so it's a, it's a great way to know what's going on there. And we test for mold, vo C's as well. So if there's something going on that way, and then we have a isolated formaldehyde test, which is fantastic, because you don't have to strip away the other chemicals to get to that particular chemical. It just is a pure appear to us. So we can ship these. And people can buy these pumps, and they hope they have them for tool in their home. And they can use them in their office or car, their van build, they're there, they're there, kids dorm, or their, their their parents assisted living place and they can use it in or they can use it again after they remediate. To have that it's it's it's, it's a great tool.

Matt Morley

I think the the the underlying concept there is that there is there are now just a plethora of low grade and not that effective air quality monitors out there. And this Dyson fan in the corner of my home office here would it would be included in that it just can't work it out. If it's not, it's not the standard that we need in order to get a really decent look. And most of what's happening sort of desktop monitors are not going to get there. So I think the idea of having what you're describing as a, like a blood test for your and then perhaps, you know, slightly more slightly more not medical grade better than an upgraded air quality monitor doing a sort of continuous analysis such as that aware and companies like that. And doing that, to me starts to feel pretty comprehensive

michelle ifversen

it's good to have the constant monitoring, it's great to do that. But it's also, you know, important to note that we don't want people living in fear, right? We want them to be able to be go come home to their space to go to their workspace to feel inspired and not worried that there's something in their environment that's going to harm them. So it's really good. I feel like I give people a lot of peace of mind, especially with EMF testing. Like for instance, some people's dishwashers are very hot, right? And so a lot of people prep around their dishwasher. And if you're trying to conceive a baby, that's probably not a good thing. Right? So it's just good to know where, what your what's the pulse of your home, and how to operate and function. And then when you move to a new place, you know, figure that out again and then you're like you know how to navigate and and shield or just know, to not hang out in that particular area like a lot of people put their electrical panels or theirs Aren't leaders, your bedrooms or spaces where you spend a lot of time.

michelle ifversen

So that's that's a constant radio frequency coming at you all the time, preventing a lot of dirty electricity. And like I'm helping a woman on the coast who has a two acre property and she's building a home. She's got a she's got a two year old and she wants I'm consulting with her on placement of where the smart meters should be. And not near his bedroom, not near areas over there. You can opt out and not haven't had the radio frequency on there. She doesn't have any health issues, but it's just a preventative. You know, it's a it's a good, good way to know about that. So a lot of I do a lot of places that, you know, you'd be shocked where they there's no regulation here in the US that I just found now that the the newer homes are going to be more regulated where they put the gas meters, they have regular radio frequency as well. But what about all the existing homes? There's nothing about that there's no education, there's no shielding, there's no they don't try and opt out. So it's, it's, it's a hard fight sometimes to be able to reach a lot of people with this, but I prevail. I keep trying

Matt Morley

that you get into the study more strategically surround healthy interior design as a concept and almost sort of healthy healthy buildings and healthy real estate development or refurbishment projects. Right. Now, it's a term that I think we're seeing more and more of everybody has, I think their own interpretation of but when you talk about healthy interiors and healthy interior design, what do you interpret that to mean?

michelle ifversen

sourcing materials and furnishings and finishes that are non toxic, that are that are not going to off gas that are not going to give them trouble. I've had clients who just purchased a regular mattress and that given them sort of a thought body burden, toxic overload that's created them to be multiple chemical sensitive from one mattress. So it's just it's really good to and who knows their story before Do you not I mean, they could have had other past exposures but just a healthy interior really is about quality air. That's that's more than most important healthy building materials insulation is a huge one. And making sure that your your crawlspace your attic is is clean, and not not too not too damp, not too humid. And just really shoring it up in in, you know, the healthy design too. It's not just about the building material furnishings and things like that. It's it's space planning, right? It's bringing in greenery, it's its views, it's it's where you function and operate in your home.

michelle ifversen

I'm in my office which was a spare bedroom that we created. And there was no window towards the backyard of a lovely backyard with the with with a garden and beautiful vegetation that I had no access to in here when I moved in here. And so my husband built or made a window. So I could see it. And so it just it makes me want to come in here. And since I'm not in the field so much I'm I'm more inspired to be on the computer and have these podcasts and these meetings and work with my clients. They're so having a view of nature is is the landscape design, outside in inside out. So that's that's a really big piece of the way I design and I work with people on their landscape and their yards to their gardens. So they can be where they're sitting have a beautiful view, or there's a fountain there or a special plant that they like or a tree or something like that. So it's not it's sort of Yeah, it's it's a nice way to design and people seem to really appreciate that.

Matt Morley

That then you get into the concepts of biophilic design & biophilia. And I think what you're describing is really sort of direct forms of biophilia where it's it's live plants, but I know you're also so I indoor landscaping or indoor outdoor landscaping. But I know you've also done a project whereby you've co created it seems a collection of biophilic artworks, which to me would look like indirect forms of biophilia a way to connect with nature but through a print so the original artworks How did you go about that? What was the story behind that?

michelle ifversen

Yes, so very cool story. And it's, it's a It feels like the most wonderful project because it's My mother. My mother is a very renowned landscape architect who has done so many projects all throughout California Santa Barbara, Montecito, Napa Valley, the Bay Area. And here in Portland, and she is retired now and a few years ago, I've been I've been trying to, and she went to art school. I mean, she's a she's an amazing artist and painter, but she has not painted since she was in college. And so I was very inspired to, I bought her canvases and, and paints and things like that. And she slowly started getting into it. But then what really took off is that I'm a photographer, I've been a photographer for years, I was I started out when I was in art school in Europe.

michelle ifversen

I love photographing nature. I love photographing wega I hike, I'm very active, and I go and I photograph the macro of a mushroom close of a mushroom open. Just having that perspective, deeper into that that lens. And I would bring my photos, I would send them to her on my phone, and she would just be inspired and just this light bulb hit with her and she started painting them. And then she started painting indoor plants during the pandemic where I wasn't going out so much. So we kind of went in, right. And so she started painting these beautiful monsters and these palms and ferns and I put them all in my my studio here and we put them in the house and it's just really invoked such a positive mood. And so that was that sort of the start of our biophilic prints and we're opening up a store on Etsy and going to be selling them on the on the site as well and and just been just really have fun with it.

Matt Morley

Like it your husband making windows out into the back garden for you got your mom making up works. Seeing things now as we're looking ahead as we're sort of, I think there's this feeling of cautious optimism for the next six months. But how are you seeing things I know, it's been a tough hustle over the last 18 months for most of us working in this game. But it does feel like there's perhaps just this opportunity now, right? When what the themes we've been talking about for a while, uh, suddenly becoming a little bit more understood and appreciated. Are you picking up on that? Are you feeling optimistic for the next six months? How do you see it,

michelle ifversen

definitely, definitely, I feel like this is that it's a breath of fresh air and people are tired, they're hungry for it. You know, they are they've also spent a lot of time in their home environment, right, they've been like, and they realize that they can do better, and they want to do better, and they're still working, they're still working from home, they so they have income, a lot of people and so they want to dial in their homes, and then a lot of people have gone out into their gardens and gardening. So they really are taking pride and ownership into their own environment, which is feels really good. So it's for me as a environmental designer, I feel like it's just opened up this avenue of, of awareness and also desire to dial things in a little bit deeper and to and to realize that that's good money well spent, rather than, you know, an option of kind of a luxury, I should say it's looking more like they want to take care of their health, they want to take care of their their place. And they want to they want to source better materials. So it's the residential piece that I that we've talked about you and I is that, you know, having people you know, showing them how to do that and offering that service to be able to dive in deeper. So they're actually applying these things on a purchase just

Matt Morley

to give someone like a really top line in a few a few tips. Just the sort of the basics. We're talking someone who's perhaps not necessarily thinking today about creating a healthy home but right they have, as you say, over the last 18 months become more aware that actually yeah, it's important to think about that and perhaps they're not doing enough and therefore Okay, what are the what are the first few things that everyone should be thinking about?

michelle ifversen

indoor air quality, obviously, number one, test your air first. Find out what's really going on in your environment just to get a baseline, and then work with us on on going over the report and and really that's just like if you want to start somewhere and then if you know dial it in with an air purifier, you know and to reduce those vo C's and then figure out where the sources coming in, bring in more plants, definitely bringing more plants, you know put in a little humidor. It's called a monitor humidity monitor, and and check to see you know, how's your house functioning, you know, if you're living in Florida, it's going to be very high. So stick a dehumidifier in there. So just really kind of be one with your space. And then also notice where you spend your most of your time

michelle ifversen

For example, in your bedroom. When you wake up. What do you look at first thing I say it's a fantastic trick or tip I should say is put a photograph or put something inspiring are a beautiful plant or your you know your meditation station or something inspiring to look at when you wake up every morning. also pay attention to where you put your electronics. Try not to have them next to your bed. Turn your plate or your phone and your wireless router off at night. That's a good that's a good easy tip. Nice.

Matt Morley

Yeah. And the route is found the best way at least with that was finding these multi plug multi plugs with timers on so I set the timer so that just goes off at midnight. Totally goes back on if you do have Wi Fi Yeah, for sure. Like lots of great tips and information in there. Really cool. We'll link to everything on the show notes. And thank you so much again for your time. It's been awesome.

michelle ifversen

Thank you Matt. Really appreciate it. Love chatting with you. Thank you so much.

Wellbeing interior design and biophilia at Can Ikigai, Barcelona

Our wellbeing interior design for “Can Ikigai” is a haven of tranquillity and biophilia in Barcelona’s Gracia neighborhood

Wellbeing interiors and biophilia

In this project we combine elements of wellbeing interiors and biophilic design in response to the existing Japanese influences present in the apartment in its unfurnished state.

The use of solid oak sliding panels and flooring, combined with an abundance of natural light and an over-sized wrap-around terrace meant that we could keep the majority of the plants outside, leaving the interior space for a more minimalist, neutral palette of beige, white and grey-black.

Healthy home design

A living area has a Japanese futon paired with a quality mattress covered in a beige linen fabric cover sourced from our friends at La Maison in Barcelona. We then added a Libeco throw and some tonal cushions to ‘disguise’ the guest bed as a day bed / sofa, layering natural fabric over natural fabric.

Wabi-sabi design

An entire wall of bespoke shelving was decorated with objets d’art and tribal artifacts collected from around the world in particular Spain and the African continent, each one ‘imperfect’ in its own way and thereby creating a degree of visual consistency through materials and finishes. A reading lamp from Artemide then makes this a comfortable corner for reading, especially during winter months.

Biophilic kitchen

The kitchen is more of an architectural statement so required nothing more than some carefully displayed wooden chopping boards and designer kitchen goods for a keen chef to enjoy the cooking experience, such as a Vitamix blender and a classic Pavoni espresso machine. Plants, leaves and indeed fruit and vegetables themselves plat a decorative role off-set against the backdrop of a dark grey, rough ceramic wall finish.

Biophilia in a home office

A healthy home office set-up features a standing desk and stool combined with a floor pad for added comfort under-foot, a biophilic art installation on the wall by Flowers By Bornay, vintage Scandinavian side table in solid teak and a biophilic art print sourced from an at fair in South Africa.

Eco-friendly bathroom

Linen towels, reusable bottles for natural soap and shampoo, a plastic-free set of bathroom accessories and a smart lighting system for those dark evenings all ensure that this is a healthy bathroom experience that also does no harm to the planet as we removed all plastic completely. This requires proximity to a good eco-friendly store selling soaps and so on, in this case Barcelona had plenty to offer nearby!

Home gym design

Making use of the large outdoor space, we brought in a set of kettlebells, sandbags, dumbbells, medicine balls, bands and exercise mats to create a functional fitness training area with all the essentials, and just the right amount of design influence to ensure continuity with the rest of the property. A row of succulents lines the whitewashed balcony wall, keeping the connection to nature whilst working out.

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what are Biophilia and Biophilic Design?

definitions of biophilia and biophilic design for hotels aand residences

The Wardian biophilic design residences in London’s Canary Wharf, a development by EcoWorld Ballymore

Biophilic design concept - the key principles

There is a tendency to over-simplify biophilia as meaning plants or greenery in general and therefore biophilic design as simply bringing plants into an interior space, effectively as decorative objects.

There is a grain of truth in that but I’d classify biophilic design a little more precisely as a way to bring the outside world in to re-establish our connection to nature even when enclosed in a built environment.

The biophilia hypothesis

That concept of a connection to nature starts to outline the logic behind biophilic design, essentially the biophilia hypothesis that states we are inherently connected to mother nature, the elements, animals and the plant kingdom due to our shared evolutionary history.

Lest it needs reiterating, Homo Sapiens has really only had a bit part role in nature’s billions of years of history, we have to keep that in perspective as the world does not, despite appearances, actually revolve around us.

We do not have any ownership rights over the planet, quite the opposite in fact. We may currently be the dominant species but this, like everything from a meta historical perspective, is likely to be temporal. Our time will come, eventually.

Once we have established that nature ultimately runs the show, the biophilia hypothesis can be seen from an entirely different perspective. The further we disconnect ourselves from the natural world the greater the risk for our health and the future as a species. On this basis, a couple of plants on your desk at work is not the solution.

health benefits of biophilia

When I talk about the health benefits of biophilic design I typically divide the answer into mental and physical wellbeing.

how can hotels use biophilic design?

There are some interesting studies that address the potential role of biophilic design in hotels such as the one done by Bill Browning entitled Human Spaces 2.0 - Biophilic Design in Hospitality. That is very much a reference point.

In that study Terrapinn Bright Green did a fine job of putting some hard data to biophilia’s claims of adding value to the guest experience, driving room rates higher and increasing ‘linger time’ in hotel lobbies, all tangible deliverables in terms of a design strategy.

The biophilic design Sky Lounge at The Wardian residences in London UK, a development by EcoWorld Ballymore

biophilic design in real estate

That research team took some of what we know from the world of biophilic design in residential real estate development around how access to nature increases property values, whether it be proximity or views of green nature (parks, gardens) or blue nature (ponds, lakes and seas).

Dwell time in a lobby increases when there are views of nature (direct biophilia) but also when there are representations of nature such as landscape murals, dense indoor landscaping and so on (indirect biophilia).

A prime example of this is the lobby area of The Wardian Residences in London’s Canary Wharf, a veritable bonanza of biophilic design for a luxury residential target market. Yes there are many plants in the mix but this development also uses natural stone such as marble to great effect, as well as nature motifs on carpets, wallpapers and murals.

Does biophilic design help heal hospital patients quicker?

This is the research study that so many people refer to, delivered by Roger Ulrich. did patients recover quicker when they had a view of nature than when they were looking out onto a brick wall from their hospital bed? YEs.

I think there are so many different variables within that, perhaps it is worth taking it with a pinch of salt and corroborating it with other studies that draw similar conclusions. No t to discount the work of Ulrich, far from it but we need more such data to build up a truly bullet-proof case for biophilia’s impact on healing and recovery times.

Direct biophilia vs indirect biophilia

It is also important to define the difference between direct and indirect forms of biophilia - direct forms of biophilia would be a view out onto a park, or in this case, a living green wall.

Indirect biophilia can be a representation of natural forms through patterns, textures, colour, images and so on, often with nearly as much impact on our mental wellbeing as direct forms of nature in fact, which opens the door to a far wider range of biophilic design solutions for an interior space.

Biophilia and community

A vertical garden wall that produces edible salad leaves can have a far larger role to play than merely decorating a hotel or office building’s lobby. because you're effectively creating a design feature with community benefits as the leaves can be contributed to a local charity for example, or used in the hotel kitchen for guests as a 0km herb garden.

It can also be a way to build local community ties for a corporation by inviting kids in to learn about the vertical farming process, whilst still all the time delivering a great biophilic feature. This type of solution with multiple benefits has a very bright future ahead in our opinion as it gives biophilia a wider purpose than pure aesthetics.

Restorative nature

Garden walls can be a great way to create a calming, restorative space, be it in a health clinic, hotel lobby or workspace. It's been shown to help with concentration levels as well. . The study that I did in London showed that it helped with reducing anxiety and creative brainstorming sessions, people just felt me it was a conducive environment to that sort of work.

biophilia and indoor air quality

Living plants have another purpose, for example, helping in some small way in terms of indoor air quality, improving the quality of the indoor air that we're all breathing.

Usually here we refer to the famous NASA study where they tested 10 different species and worked out that a number of them were able to take out the bad stuff, take out the co2 and pump oxygen back into the air, even in a spaceship. So if you focus on those, you’ll need lots of them to have a really tangible impact but again if you're dealing with scale, then the solution is to go big on your biophilia for maximum health benefits, no better way to do that than with a vertical garden wall!

In addition to ventilation filters, this can really make a difference, as do natural fibres and fabrics in an interior space that do not contain VOCs for further improvements to the indoor air. See more on that here.

The 1 Hotels example of sustainable luxury

The 1 Hotels brand has redefined the sustainable luxury hotel segment from our perspective. They really went big on sustainability by integrating biophilia and biophilic design into the DNA of their hotel concept from day one, combined with a health and wellness angle. This gave them a People and Planet approach that aligns perfectly with our value system, it’s more than skin deep too, this goes all the way through their operations policies to help shape the guest experience form the ground up.

biophilia and sustainability

If we go back to where we started, with biophilia being a love of and innate connection to nature, it follows that if we do not respect nature in our work as biophilic designers, real estate developers or hoteliers, we are effectively shooting ourselves in the foot. If you’re not doing things in a sustainable way, using sustainable design and construction practices for example, then anything you do that has a negative impact on nature is to avoided at all costs, otherwise we are merely greenwashing.

biophilic design and moss walls

In spaces that have no natural light, how do we work with biophilic design? Can we ever use plants in this context? Often, the solution here lies with preserved moss, possibly combined with a wall panel such as cork bark. We can also use patterns and textures that reflect nature here, organic fabrics, wabi sabi finishes, anything that fits into an organic design approach that does not require natural light. By layering detail upon detail in this way, we can create great results even in a lower ground space, when needed, proving that biophilic design comes in many different guises!

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An introduction to biophilic design and wellbeing interior concepts

What is a green building vs a healthy building?

The real estate industry has increasingly shifted away from thinking exclusively about 'green buildings' and 'sustainable real estate' in what has been a quiet revolution over the last 10-15 years towards building occupant wellbeing and human health, extending the concept further to give a mix of Planet (green buildings) and People (healthy buildings).

What role do smart buildings play?

Aligned with that, we are increasingly looking at smart buildings too, so 'healthy, green and smart' are becoming the holy trinity of high performance real estate today in other words.

Thinking about a workplace, home, building, or an entire community that is healthy, green and smart means we have three possible levers to play with. Let's leave the smart slightly to the side for now.

Biophilic design in wellbeing interiors

When we're thinking about wellbeing interiors, there's been this massive shift towards appreciation for integrating nature into an indoor environment, a concept now typically referred to as biophilia, which is really just our innate connection to to the natural world and how increasingly urban environments, come with their own risks because we end up disconnected from where we came from.

Biophilic design brings the outside world back in. I started doing gyms and then branched out into coworking spaces, business clubs, offices and now entire buildings. The focus there is combining elements of both eco-friendly and sustainable interiors that are conscious of how an indoor environment’s materials, fabrics, plant count and so on can also affect occupant wellbeing.

What's fascinating is that the natural and organic are inherently healthy, just think about diet for example. So natural positioning for a brand or office interior in a Silicon Valley tech company is a fundamental piece of their workplace wellness and employee engagement strategies. Not not just doing less harm to the environment but actually giving something back to your people, to your employees who are spending their days there.

What are the benefits of biophilic design in the workplace?

Besides making just about any interior space more pleasant and uplifting, biophilic interior designers can make a workspace more productive for workers, helping with concentration with views onto nature, be it direct or indirect, living or a representation of nature in other words. Both work, as it turns out!

Biophilic spaces also foster feelings of vitality and by being connected to nature during the work day the research shows it promotes overall positivity. We also look for data, tangible results that highlight the impact of such biophilic design interventions, it’s not enough to rely o aesthetic improvements alone, we’re after functional health improvements here.

What data or science is there behind biophilic design’s benefits?

That's where the tech piece loops back in, increasingly all of this needs to be data driven and/or scientifically backed, delivering functional health benefits. One area of particular interest is indoor air quality, previously this was wrapped up in the wide-ranging healthy building certifications such as WELL Standard and Fitwel. Now though, we’ve seen dedicated air quality standards coming onto the market such as RESET AIR. This is a real sign of the times and holds the key to more widely available data around indoor air quality.

When you're dealing with a workplace, we don't have a standardized system of rankings for how healthy a space it is. The green building movement did make some progress in that sense, with certifications like LEED and BREEAM and various others all around the world starting the process off.

how do smart building certifications fit into this?

More recently we've had smart certification systems come into the market; I tend to use WIRED Score. They go in and make sure that everything within that building or workplace is future-proofed so that you can effectively integrate tech into your facilities management system, opening the door not just to high connectivity but also energy efficiencies, invaluable building usage data, and so on.

Air quality monitors produce data every hour that can be analyzed online and set-up to send alarm notifications whenever there is a change in air quality in a particular space, for example if something doesn’t look right in a particular meeting room because it has been full of workers for four hours straight and the ventilation system has started to play up. Technology gives us a real time view of the health credentials of a space, no matter its function.

Yes, there is a modest cost to all of this but once you're set up I think you then get into discussions around providing support for your occupants, guests or customers. You’ve made health a priority. Another tangible output is often productivity rates and less low-level anxiety.

Work doesn’t need to be about putting hours in at your desk in a specific corner of the office, it's about how much can you produce and what type of space(s) do you need to do your best work, adding value to the company’s bottom line in the process?

Does biophilic design have its own wellness building standard?

Biophilic design is a part of building standards such as LEED or BREEAM for example, there are components within them that give credits or recognition for integrating elements of biophilic design so rather than being a separate standard it appears as a feature, or a design strategy that we use to not just tick boxes on a standard’s check list but to deliver tangible aesthetic enhancements to an interiors space.

So in a sense, biophilia sits between the two worlds of green and healthy buildings, with wellbeing interior design on one side and sustainable design on the other. In other words, if I create a biophilic office or biophilic gym for example for a project pursuing LEED or WELL, it would secure points for both standards.

what about wellness lighting?

There has been real revolution in lighting systems over the last few years, and so there's a few different ways of looking at it one would be to say, okay, how can we, first of all, reduce energy expenditure with the lighting? That’s the easy part, we've been doing that for a little while now.

Then it becomes, ‘how can we enhance wellbeing through our lighting choices?’ That’s where smart lighting systems, exposure to natural daylight, even color therapy come in. It’s all about the spectrum of light we use, that affects our energy levels basically.

From a biophilic design perspective, I take inspiration from ancestral health practices, with a brighter blue-white light in the mornings and into the middle of the day, then softer, more amber hues or yellow and orange with no blue at all after dark. That means no TV and no bright halogen overhead lights please otherwise it disrupts sleeping patterns, that then results in decreased energy levels the next day, and we all know what feels like.

We see hotels engaging with that concept but workplaces are only really just catching on. How many of us have spent entire days in offices with intense blue-white halogen lights above us from nine o'clock in the morning until nine o'clock at night, then you go home and guess what, it's hard to switch off despite being tired!

If it’s dark at 5pm in winter, consider a task lamp on your desk combined with a softer uplighter on a wall or a standing lamp with a dimmer option. We want energy levels not to drop but we also need to protect the quality of our sleep once the work is done. It’s not that complicated really once you work it out.

how do you apply your knowledge to residential projects now?

I'm often dealing in quite large-scale projects, so it might be an eight-story mixed-use real estate development in London, an entire hotel or various fitness rooms and gyms in a health centre. When I have scale, I'm part of a team working alongside engineers, architects even interior design studios. Over the last year though I've been at home and so my challenge has been to take some of this big picture thinking and apply it to my own little world of a home office environment with wellbeing interiors and biophilic design principles.

I've created a home gym space as well as a home office in fact, applying the knowledge gained from commercial or hospitality projects and converting them into a residential context. What happens when you apply those ideas to your home environment where you now spend a lot more time than you did before?!

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Wellbeing Interiors Q&A with Matt Morley

Matt Morley in a rare seated moment at the MONTOYA creative co-working space in Barcelona, Spain

What was your career path into wellbeing interiors and healthy building consultancy?

I spent almost 10 years working for a real estate developer, so from a head of marketing role I eventually moved over into a Real Estate Creative Director role in-house for a development called Porto Montenegro. We built an entire town on the Adriatic coast, basically. I

I’d be called in to work with an architect, financial analyst and the operations department to design and launch new business concepts such as co-working offices, outdoor gyms, business clubs, retail stores, beach clubs and so on.

‘Give me a space and a budget and I'll create the concept for you!’

How did you end up combining nature, health and real estate interiors?

That was where I learned my trade, in a sense, but in parallel with that I was developing this interest in natural fitness, connecting with the outdoors both during exercise and through interior design.

The difference between how I felt when I was exercising in nature vs an uninspiring indoor gym became ever more clear. The same goes for office environments, so I started bringing in plants, using a standing desk and using various healthy design strategies to improve the spaces I spent most time in

Your way in to biophilic design was a combination of real estate knowledge, interior fit-out experience and a passion for nature, in other words?

Yes, although I wasn’t using the terms ‘biophilic design’, healthy buildings or wellbeing interiors back then, it was far more instinctual. In retrospect, that’s what made it all feel so urgent, my energy levels were so directly affected by the spaces I spent time in. I just didn't feel healthy in certain homes, offices or gyms. What could I do to change it?

I started hacking away at the subject, gradually realising that there was a whole school of thought largely led by the US around how to actually do wellness real estate and wellbeing interiors in a more structured way, as evidenced by the WELL Building Standard for example.

How did that lead to you setting up a health & fitness consultancy for hotel groups?

I set up my first company, Biofit, specializing in creating green and healthy gyms and wellness spaces. I now advise hotel groups and corporates around Europe on creating innovative fitness facilities and wellness activity programs for guests.

That was followed in 2019 with my second company, Biofilico, with a much broader scope, really going back to where I was before, creating a range of interior concepts but with an eco and wellness twist.

We also offer healthy building certifications and expert advisory to project teams on larger development projects or corporate offices.

What about this relatively new term of ‘Wellbeing Champion’, what does that involve?

More recently I’ve started playing the role of a Wellbeing Champion on bigger projects alongside developers, architects and HR teams, representing the voice of occupant health in other words and promoting strategies that can positively impact the wellness benefits of a building or interior.

What career path do you recommend for those who want to work in wellness interiors?

I had my own very particular way in to wellbeing interiors, there are others who have done very well having migrated across from a building engineering background, a sustainability consultant background and of course architects. All of them have a passion for working with nature though,

My particular angle on wellbeing interiors is through environmental design and the lived occupant experience combined with a strong real estate and corporate sustainability strategy perspective, that’s my magic sauce if you like!

What different responses are you seeing in the world of workplace wellbeing now post-COVID?

It’s quite hard to generalize at a country or regional level, possibly even at an industry level. I tend to think more in terms of brand culture and how a particular brand or organization applies their culture or mission and values to their response.

What I am seeing is more creative businesses such as fast moving tech startups and generally more youthful dynamic company cultures, and especially those linked to health and wellness, have all been early adopters of new more flexible approaches to working from home and flexible hours in general, where it’s about results rather than hours clocked up in front of a screen.

Contrast that with more traditional businesses that are pushing for return to the office no matter what.

From my perspective, there have to be some concessions at a building level. A structured approach I recommend goes beyond tactical, knee-jerk reactions such as ‘do we need plexiglass screens in between desks now’ or do we need more cubicles.

What about ESG in real estate? Is that relevant here?

Right, so the savvier companies are adopting an ESG strategy approach: Environmental, Social and Governance. Investors, pension funds and the like are all looking for ESG credentials in the businesses they back, creating pressure from above.

Then from below, HR teams are saying they want a healthier work environment for staff now. Bring those two together post COVID and suddenly we’re talking about indoor air quality in C-suite boardrooms in a way that wasn’t imaginable just two years ago.

Now everybody wants to know about indoor air quality and how an office environment can connect to a corporate ESG or CSR strategy.

It's been a really difficult year on so many levels and yet there does seem to be this amazing opportunity to slingshot off the back of all of this to a healthier built environment in the near future.

ESG reporting has just gone right to the top of the agenda and so if there is a silver lining to all this, for me it's that there are so many opportunities now to if not reinvent but certainly upgrade the the workplace environment in particular but also our homes and gyms, health centres even retirement homes.

How do you help workplaces evaluate or measure wellbeing interior interventions?

It’s typically a combination of qualitative and quantitative data, something like indoor air quality, for example, is very much quantitative, so installing air quality monitors around the workplace.

You can do a deep dive analysis of what's going on today, make a number of changes, effectively applying various biophilic design principles oriented towards improving the purity of the indoor air that we're breathing, things like changing the ventilation fan filters, removing any nasty materials and fabrics or upgrading certain pieces of furniture and replacing them with more natural alternatives.

Is it all about interiors and furniture or do building management policies have a role to play?

It’s definitely worth thinking about things like an eco-cleaning product policy and green procurement strategies so that going forward, anything that's coming in or bought for the workplace has been approved and signed off in terms of being chemical free and not off gassing nasty stuff into the indoor environment.

From there, you set up your indoor monitors and off you go, you've got data being produced on an hourly basis with a monitor on each floor and each key work zone that then gets analyzed in the cloud and you're set up for life.

How can an employee workplace survey help with wellbeing design?

Employee satisfaction within the workplace, done anonymously, can help us in identifying some of the softer stuff such as noise pollution, thermal comfort, bad odours, and so on all of which ca affect concentration levels negatively and therefore they damage the business in terms of productivity.

Open-plan offices are certainly not dead but clearly there are different types of work going on in the workplace that require different environments, such as solo deep work where you need to really zone in and focus, or more collaborative meetings that are all about engaging with others and bouncing ideas around creatively.

What type of a space does that require and how can biophilic design foster or promote the right outcomes?

You have also created a number of office recharge rooms in the past, what is the concept there?

In a sense this also answers the question around performance metrics for wellbeing interiors in the workplace. I did a project in London’s Canary Wharf to create a biophilic workspace or creative meeting room right by the water called The Wardian Case - Vitamin Nature space.

It was full of plants and we did a scientific research questionnaire with the University of Essex, and it was all about productivity, concentration levels, stress levels and a feeling of vitality.

Everybody spent at least an hour in the space, and we found across the board, positive responses on productivity, stress levels and concentration.

Office recharge rooms that use biophilic design are a really interesting way to convert a small space or unused office space into somewhere that can help with mental wellbeing during the work day, especially for creative workers.

Post COVID there's a real need for a focus on mental health in the workplace, making Biophilia a real trump card to play because connecting with nature has this amazing calming influence. It's instinctual!

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Is Biophilic Design about Sustainability or Wellbeing?

Can Ikigai home office by Biofilico wellbeing interiors

What is biophilic design?

The concept biophilic design can be a confusing name but actually it's very simple. In fact I'd argue there's perhaps nothing simpler because it's effectively our innate connection to the natural world.

So 'biophilia' = love of or connection to nature. If nature has been our partner in evolutionary history over the last, wherever you want to start from 200,000 years or a billion years, depending on how you look at it, we should just pause there for a second.

We're now in 2021, industrialization began a couple of hundred years ago, that marked a profound change on our evolutionary path that has meant we're increasingly disconnected from our partner in evolutionary history, Mother Nature. It's hard to underestimate the impact of this diversion in our respective paths.

My argument is that the further we move away from the natural path the more at risk we put both our own physical and mental wellbeing and also it turns out, that of our host planet as well.

What role do green buildings / healthy buildings have in biophilic design?

This is where biophilic design connects with sustainability and environmentally-friendly thinking.

If we accept the premise that we're endangering our relationship with the planet, biophilic design is a way to rectify in some small way, that disconnect between our living environments that previously were just natural spaces, and the reality of living, working and playing in a dense urban environment.

Our home or office may well be in a high-rise, city centre building, yet how can we still maintain that connection to nature, that has been proven to be so fundamental to our mental and physical wellbeing?

Biophilic design in a workplace for example, is not just about sustainability, a green building strategy to give something back to the planet; by bringing the outside world in biophilic interiors are also about wellbeing design for the office. Healthy buildings are all about making our real estate as positive as possible for our own health.

Healthy interior design and nature

Our work and home environments can and should be healthy places to spend 8-12 hours a day, it's that simple, anything less simply isn't good enough any more.

The closer you can get to a natural indoor environment, be it in a workplace or residential context, the healthier that space is going to be for you mentally and physically.

Think of biophilic design as as a hybrid solution that combines elements of healthy building or wellness interior principles, with green building concepts.

Whereas we've had 25 years of green buildings and sustainable real estate development, over the last 10 years there's been a shift towards wellness real estate and workplace wellness design that connects to the environment. It's a subtle but important shift in perspective.

Biophilia is interesting, indeed biophilic design is interesting because as an expert consultant I straddle those two worlds. You often get people who are specialists in green buildings or healthy buildings, my approach combines elements of the two.

Organic design in biophilia

The first key concept then is 'organic design', finding ways to integrate natural elements back into our offices and homes. That can be real life nature but it can also be representations of nature, artworks, sculptures, natural materials or other ways to give you a visual connection that isn't actually a living photosynthesising plant!

Wellbeing interiors in biophilia

Secondly, it's about using nature to create wellbeing interiors for offices and homes, which involves for example, focusing on ways to bring the indoor air quality in line with what one would find in a forest, beach or mountain setting - as pure as it can get in other words. Definitely not what it's like in downtown London, LA or Shanghai on a busy. Monday morning.

A Wellbeing Champion for healthy materials

As a Wellbeing Champion on a project, we also consider the selection of sustainably sourced natural materials as a central part of wellbeing interiors and biophilic design.Healthy materials like these don't off-gas or contain any nasty chemicals, that in turn will damage the air quality and pose a low-level health risk for building occupants. Typically the more natural and organic matter a fabric or material contains, the cleaner and healthier it will be.

Movement and fitness in biophilic design

We were born to move, that's part of our evolutionary history so how can biophilic design prompt small amounts of almost unconscious movement into our workspaces into our daily life?

Whilst we are in the office there's some clever things we can do there that don’t necessarily involve designing a gym, ‘active design’ involves strategies to help prompt people to be just that little bit more active in their workspace. For example standing desks, walking meetings, engaging stairwell design to create a viable alternative to the lift, a mix of work areas that might even include a room for stretching and yoga or meditation, if not a few weights and a barbell!

Nourishment in biophilic design in the office

This can be as simple as using displays of fresh fruit and vegetables as prompts, as a way to encourage people to think, eat, drink, healthy. Consider how to encourage water consumption, low-sugar fresh fruit juices and eve vegetable juices as a way to maintain energy levels throughout the day rather than reaching for a chocolate bar or Diet Coke.

Wellness lighting in a healthy office design

A lighting system it can be a smart system that is in tune with our circadian rhythms which is basically our 24 hour cycle. So, for example things like in winter after dark, it’s best not to use glaring white, blue or gree lights ss you might find in say a hospital emergency room.

Instead we’re trying to find ways to smooth that path to complete rest with softer more amber tones to improve your sleep quality at night, and certainly not disrupt your sleep while still giving you enough light to be energized and deliver on your work i the latter half of the day, or if working late i the office.

So just really taking inspiration from the natural world, and finding ways to integrate that into the workplace experience.

What is the role of a biophilic design in real estate?

Biofilico creates environments that are promote productivity while reducing low levels of stress and anxiety during the work day, primarily that's done through the workplace environment interventions described above but what I'm seeing is, if you take a slightly more health oriented approach it can also be applied to other sectors.

At the moment we’re looking at later life residential concepts for example, so almost like upscale retirement homes where actually it's all about health and living well. Private health clinics, I'm looking at now, as well, and definitely residential, where I'm able to apply the same principles are the same. We all want to live well, feel good and be healthy, right?

So where do we spend most of our time? In our residences, workplaces and for some of us more than others, quite a bit of time in the gym as well! Those are my three sectors of interest.

CONTACT US TO DISCUSS YOUR WORKPLACE WELLBEING INTERIOR PROJECT

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FURTHER READING:

World GBC Health & Wellbeing Framework for green & healthy buildings

Biophilia in healthy buildings

The role of biophilic design in healthy interiors

The real estate industry has increasingly shifted away from thinking exclusively about 'green buildings' and 'sustainable real estate', this has been a quiet revolution over the last 10-15 years towards building occupant wellbeing and human health as well, not replacing but rather extending the concept further. This then gives you a mix of Planet (green buildings) and People (healthy buildings).

Healthy, green and smart buildings

Aligned with that, we are increasingly looking at smart buildings too, so 'healthy, green and smart' are becoming the holy trinity of high performance real estate today in other words. Thinking about a workplace or a home or a building, or an entire community that is healthy, green and smart.

Benefits of Biophilia in real estate

For me at least, within that space of sustainability and wellbeing in buildings and interiors, there's been this massive shift towards integrating nature into an indoor environment, typically referred to as biophilia, which is really just our innate connection to to the natural world and how increasingly urban environments, come with their own risks because we end up disconnected from nature, so biophilia or biophilic design brings the outside world back into our urban, indoor environments.

Biofilico started doing gyms and then branched out into co working spaces and business clubs and offices and now entire buildings, but really the focus there is combining elements of the eco friendly and sustainable, a consciousness about the impact we’re having on the planet, from the materials to the types of fabrics that we're bringing in, and how many plants are in there, and so on.

Nature = healthy interiors

What’s fascinating is that the natural is often the healthy too, so if you think about diet for example, the more natural and organic your ingredients the better the nutritional value. The same concept can be applied, in an abstract way, to our office and home environments.

You're seeing all of these Silicon Valley startups going big on biophilic design in their workplace wellness and employee engagement strategies for that same reason.

A lot of it's about giving something back to staff, not just doing less harm to the environment but actually giving something back to the people, to your employees who are spending time in the workplace every day by making it generally more pleasant and by implication a more productive for them to work in.

This approach helps with concentration levels too, it's been shown that if you can reconnect a little with nature during your work day rather than sitting in a white box all day long, then it actually helps to restore energy levels, it gives feelings of vitality.

Biophilic design research - health benefits

There's a lot of research out there around the positivity that a biophilic interior in your home or office can engender and so now we're seeing this happy balance in interiors today.

We’re looking for the science and the data to back all this up. That's where tech comes back into the discussion as we need to deliver functional benefits, so not just form and aesthetics but functional mental and physical health benefits.

Like any good interior design it all needs to look good whilst having minimal impact on the environment, plus we are aiming for tangible improvements in emotional and physical wellbeing for the occupiers of the space in question, be it an office, a home or even a gym.

Well building certifications

In the same way that you have your star ratings for hotels, when you're dealing with a workplace, there hasn't really been any standardized system in terms of ensuring that there is adequate consideration taken for workplace wellbeing, or generally creating a healthy environment for workers.

The green building movement did that to an extent, via certifications like LEED and BREEAM and various others all around the world. Then came the wellness certification rating systems such as WELL, FITWEL and RESET. More recently we've seen the emergence of smart building certifications, the one I use is WIRED SCORE.

They really go in and just make sure that everything within that building or workplaces is set up so that it is future proofed so that can you can effectively integrate tech into your facilities management system, a lot of it then goes into the FM facilities management, and you're then looking for efficiencies in terms of how a building is operated so that you're reducing energy expenditure at lower times of usage, when there's less occupancy in a space, whether it's an office or hotel or, or an entire building and creating a more touchless environment so that most things can be done and delivered via an app or via technology instead of old school manual options.

What is indoor air quality in the context of a healthy building?

Indoor air quality data comes down to your air quality monitors, Biofilico is certified in RESET AIR - a protocol for installing certain types of high-grade monitors in certain locations around a building or interior space, ensuring the data is delivered to the RESET cloud for ongoing analysis, you then have a lot of alarms that go off if anything looks unusual, you can overlay that data with occupancy data and start to see if there's something happening in this meeting room because they've been in there for four hours without a window open and there’s a problem with the ventilation, for example.

Wellness tech is now allowing us a real time view of the healthy credentials of a space. Yes it requires a modest investment upfront on behalf of the building owner or the tenant, but really once you're set up you provide support for your guests, customers, occupants or residents, giving them reassurance that you're taking their health to heart and that it's a priority.

When you look at the costs of staffing and rent, a minor increase in healthy interior enhancements can really make a tangible difference, especially to productivity rates. People are breathing fresher air, they're more likely to be do quality creative work. It's no longer about putting hours in at your desk in a specific, dedicated corner of the office, it's about how much can you produce and what quality work can you produce around the building, , moving between areas as needed to adapt to the type of work you are doing at any one time during the work day.

Biophilic design in building certification standards

Biophilic design is less an alternative than an integral component of the green building and healthy building movements. So if you're looking at LEED or BREEAM, there are components within them both that give credit or recognition for integrating elements of biophilic design, such as landscaping, gardens, views of nature, plant walls, and so on.

Biophilic design is a strategy that we use to not just tick boxes but to deliver value and enhancements to a space and what's interesting about it that is straddles both worlds, the green and the healthy, wellbeing design and sustainable design. So that same strategy can be applied to both of those two different types of certification standards and you gain credits for both.

Lighting strategies in healthy buildings

There's been some real revolution in lighting systems over the last few years. How can we, first of all, reduce energy expenditure with the lighting? That's the easy part, we've been doing that for a little while, then you say okay how can we enhance wellbeing through smart lighting systems and really you get into color therapy, there, playing with the light spectrums on offer at different times of day to connect with our innate circadian rhythm.

So thinking about, say, a brighter blue white light. In the mornings, which is when the sun is high as we're getting up to the middle of the day and then towards the end of the day, a softer, more Amber yellow or orange hue, and removing all the blue white lights later at the end of the day so we're not disrupting sleep patterns.

How many of us have spent days in offices with these intense blue white halogen lights above us from nine o'clock in the morning until nine o'clock at night, then you go home and it's hard to switch off! A different type is more appropriate after dark, especially in winter.

How does Biofilico apply these concepts to a home setting?

A typical project might be an 8-story mixed use real estate development in London or the health and fitness offer for entire hotel. At a larger scale, I'm part of a team and there's mechanical engineer consultants, architect studios and interior design teams involved as well..

Recently though, we’ve applied this thinking to Can Ikigai in Barcelona, Biofilico’s home base, with a home gym set-up, a biophilic home office and a wabi-sabi organic interior concept design. This has meant applying some of the knowledge that we have from healthy buildings and wellness in the workplace to a residential context.

Contact us for help with your office, home, hotel or gym project

future of Workplace wellbeing interview with matt morley

We recently participated in a webinar on the future of workplace wellbeing alongside The Yoga Agency and Yinshi Meditation as well as the Founder of Planet Organic / Beluga Bean, Renee Elliott.

Here is an extract from that webinar with Matt’s thoughts on workplace wellness, biophilic design and active design in healthy buildings.

For those of us working in the wellbeing space we have seen that Covid-19 has bought wellbeing into the spotlight for many businesses. Why do you think this is?

MM: From my perspective at least, COVID has merely accelerated a process that was already underway, in what was admittedly a rather patchy, yet undeniable ‘quiet revolution’ towards healthier, greener workplaces that respect the Triple Bottom Line of people, planet & profit. 

In the broadest of terms, the US, Australia, Canada, Singapore and to some extent the UK were seen as world leaders in this. Like I say, these things start as a niche and slowly become more mainstream, we just leapt forward by several years basically.

Indoor Environmental Quality - or IEQ - is a fundamental part of the healthy workplace concept, those of us engaged in this field have all studied it in-depth and more importantly implemented strategies to create, maintain and monitor purified, high quality indoor air with adequate ventilation rates long before the world switched on to the risks of getting it wrong, airborne virus transmission is one example but high levels of CO2, particulate matter or Volatile Organic Compounds all have their own detrimental impact on our health. 

Essentially then, at least in terms of creating a baseline for IEQ, it’s about three fundamentals: 

• the mechanical system or HVAC

• the building and fit-out materials present in a space that can off-gas harmful chemicals that reduce IEQ

• a facilities management policy around enhanced, eco-friendly cleaning schedules

Have you noticed any trends in terms of what different industries are doing to prepare the workspace for peoples return 

MM: Innovative tech companies were already way out in front on this as they are often cash-rich and place such priority on their knowledge workers no matter where they are in the world  - an example would be the green, leafy and cutting edge Amazon offices all over the world 

Where they led, others followed, so more generally now a lot of small-medium size start-ups looking to attract and retain top talent into their workforce in a highly competitive job market recognize that having an uplifting, positive space can make a real difference.

Then we have companies with an inherent connection to nature, perhaps via their mission statement or product line, an example there would be HERO organic foods in Switzerland for example, basically the natural version of Danone, they are now doing biophilic nature-inspired offices that reflect their company values on one level but also are designed to help raise productivity, concentration and happiness levels amongst their staff, whilst keeping them safe.

The current phase that I’m seeing is akin to a trickle-down effect that has been 10 Xd by COVID to a far wider spectrum of companies who now see an urgent need to upgrade their offices in light of recent events.

What do you think are some of the longer lasting impacts of covid 19 in terms of the way we work?

For those businesses looking for a standardized process backed by scientific rigor , there are a number of well regarded certification programs out there now, from Virus Response, to Air Quality specific, to those such as the WELL Certification that cover not just a workplace’s Air quality but also its Water, Nourishment and nutrition, the quality of Light within the offices, Fitness and movement, thermal and physical Comfort, as well as Mental Wellbeing

So just as sustainable building certifications tell us when a building has eco-friendly credentials, increasingly the leading workplaces are talking about their wellbeing standards as well.

Before it was a nice to have but Covid changed that.

What can businesses do to improve their physical environment/office space and why is it important.

First and foremost, again, it has to be indoor air quality, please please please let’s get that right! You may need some outside help to implement a solid plan in larger organizations but your staff will thank you for it and now is the time! 

Additionally, I’ve been talking about biophilia and biophilic design for 5-6 years now but it feels like this concept is finally ‘having a moment’ as more and more workplaces are catching on post-pandemic.

Essentially it’s about bringing the outside world into our built environment to harness nature’s mental and physical health benefits, for example a plant wall can do amazing things in terms of air purification. 

No matter how modest a space, a nature themed recharge room for having a quiet moment alone, doing some deep thinking, or a little light stretching can make the world of difference to the workday, especially in offices with limited natural light and no outdoor green spaces nearby.

For me, biophilic design combines elements of sustainability and wellbeing via its nature-first approach to materials, colours, sounds, textures and even scent. 

It’s not just putting plants on desks, the deeper you go into the principles behind this idea the more it gives back and the greater the impact can be on that Triple Bottom Line I mentioned earlier. 

In the end, we’re looking to boost productivity and concentration while reducing anxiety and stress amongst employees and, just as importantly, respecting the environment in the process. It’s a win-win.

What advice do you have for those in the audience in HR of Office management roles who have the responsibility of caring for other peoples health and wellbeing ?

I’ve touched on Indoor Environmental Quality, specifically the importance of establishing high quality indoor air and then monitoring it on an ongoing basis - data is key otherwise you’re operating blind! 

We then have the wonders of biophilic design, whether on a small or large sale, whether promoting access to nearby nature via walking meetings outdoors, or by bringing more nature indoors, it’s all good.

I’d add to that a real focus on physical and mental activity opportunities facilitated by the organization, even if only a discount or voucher system for nearby fitness studios or meditation centres if there Isn’t space or budget to host something in-house every week.

It’s the thought that counts and ultimately, if budget allows, having it there under-utilized (“my employer cares”) is still better than not having it at all (“my employer doesn’t care”).

Also, consider boosting your community-oriented CSR practices that help staff and the organization itself give back - they have been shown to foster immense feelings of purpose and satisfaction in the giver, not just the receiver. 

Additionally, consider the lighting in an office, uplighters / standing lamps and desk lamps with warmer, amber hues can be especially helpful in the darker winter months as an alternative to those harsh overhead blue-white lights that are detrimental to sleep quality, which in turn impacts worker performance the next day.

What can employees/individuals do to stay healthy during this transition back to normal?

In terms of personal agency, taking matters into your own hands rather than relying on organizational level change, it would have to be Active Design also known as ‘incidental movement’ during the day - it’s about being active at work, which is different to working out at work!

• So mindfully choosing the stairs not the lift

• Perhaps using a standing desk rather than a chair for at least part of the day

• moving between deep work spaces and more collaborative zones in the office, or going to a colleague to chat instead of sending an email 

• using a bike to get to and from the office

• consciously making yourself walk outside at lunchtime for a bite to eat

• proposing a walking meeting with another colleague instead of opting to sit together in a small enclosed office, and so on….

Contact us here to discuss your workplace wellness project

reset air quality standard - real estate - core & shell

What is a healthy building?

A healthy building definition is important to establish first and, for us, a building can only be considered “healthy” if it has a proven, positive impact on the mental & physical health of its occupants, whilst also doing no harm to the environment. We simply cannot accept that a building is good for People but harmful to the Planet, we must combine the two.

Imagine a people-focused building designed for maximum wellbeing benefits that also had a detrimental effect on the planet around it. The cross-over between green building concepts and healthy building concepts is obvious.

The rise of the healthy building movement over the past decade provides a new lens through which businesses can assess their performance and we are proud to be able to play a part in this process.

See our 9-point guide to healthy buildings here.

What is a smart building?

‘Smart’ is now right up there alongside ‘healthy’ and ‘green’ when it comes to desirable characteristics of a modern building.

We need data and information in order to monitor and optimize a building’s performance; ultimately ‘smart’ in this sense is effectively about ‘high performance’ buildings that are digitally connected with smart technology built in.

The leading smart building standard / certification for us is currently WiredScore, check them out here. They define a smart building by these four factors:

• an inspirational experience

• a sustainable building

• a cost-efficient building

• one that is future-proof by design

What is Indoor Air Quality in a healthy building?

Indoor pollutants such as CO2 have a negative impact on cognitive function and performance. the best solution is source control - nipping the problem in the bud, by not bringing harmful materials into the space that carry chemicals, VOCs or off-gases.

For that, we need building materials and fit-out materials that disclose their chemical ingredients, ideally with a healthy product accreditation to back up their claims.

One of the main culprits in this sense are Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) or chemicals that off-gas at ambient temperature from building materials such as particle board, glues, paints and carpet backing. 

Particulate Matter PM2.5 and PM10 are made up of dust and synthetic materials decomposing around us from furniture, fabrics and so on.

For RESET, Carbon Monoxide is only relevant for projects where combustion is present. As reference, CO reduces the amount of oxygen transported in the bloodstream, making it potentially lethal.

Sensor technology cannot cover every pollutant, other air quality sensors do exist but they are prohibitively expensive, so as the market for high-grade sensors steadily democratizes over coming years, new pollutants will be incorporated into the standard.

What is RESET for smart and healthy buildings?

RESET stands for “Regenerative, ecological, social and economic targets”. It is a healthy building standard and certification.

The company was started by architects in Shanghai in 2001 adopting an eastern perspective based on a 5000 year history of health and regeneration, rather than the explicitly green / sustainable approach promoted in the west.

Unlike other green building or healthy building standards, such as LEED, WELL or FITWEL, RESET AIR does not insist on any set, prescribed paths towards achieving high quality indoor air results.

Their approach is simply to leave the door open to innovation, how each project gets there is up to the project team. It is the destination that matters most in this instance, RESET do not concern themselves with prescribing the journey.

In their terms, this is a biomimetic approach, that takes its inspiration from nature and the biosphere’s 3.8 billion year history. They talk our language in other words!

What is the RESET Air for Core & Shell indoor air quality standard?

You’ll find that RESET AIR for Core & Shell, whether for new or existing buildings, is basically all about ongoing monitoring and analysis of high quality indoor air quality data, delivered to the RESET cloud via a network of professionally installed, pre-approved air quality monitors.

We are concerned primarily with particulate matter (PM2.5), Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and Total Volatile Organic Compounds (TVOC) in the outdoor air and the supply air including recirculated air that affects the building in question.

The data will be communicated back to building occupants as a way to raise awareness about this important healthy building theme, that has never been more relevant than in the post-Covid world.

Nota Bene: the intent here is different to that of RESET Air Commercial Interiors; in this case we are not focused on the quality of ‘mixed air’ that occupants inhale inside the building, for example in office spaces or communal areas.

Again, we are concerned exclusively with the quality of the air being delivered through the building’s HVAC system.

What affects the air quality of air in an HVAC system?

Clearly there is a world of difference between a remote coastal or countryside building and one in the middle of a megalopolis such as Shanghai.

Factors to consider here are location as well as a building’s orientation, the general climate, the age of the structure and HVAC system equipment, use type, and zoning calculations.

Daily averages are calculated based on hours of occupancy and international standards for Indoor Air Quality (‘IAQ’).

Qualifying projects must remain within these limits for a full three months in order to be certified, although there are a certification statuses available before then too (see separate article here on that).

• Particular Matter / PM2.5: Less than 12 μg/m3 (75% reduction. NB: When outdoor PM2.5 is ≤48μg/m3, indoor levels can be no more than 12μg/m3. When outdoor PM2.5 is >48μg/m3, filtration at the level of the air handling unit must remove 75% of PM2.5 at a minimum.

• Total Volatile Organic Compound / TVOC: less than 400 μg/m3

• Carbon Dioxide / CO2: less than 800 ppm

• Temperature: Monitored only as this impacts PM2.5 and TVOC

• Relative Humidity: Monitored only as this impacts PM2.5 and TVOC

What are the air quality Data Provider requirements?

Data is collected and transferred to te RESET Assessment Cloud online. For this reason projects have to use certified RESET Air Accredited Data Providers that connect to the RESET Assessment Cloud.

This may sound complicated but it isn’t really as some air quality monitor manufacturers such as Awair are also accredited data providers, so you deal with both steps in one purchase effectively.

Data is to be communicated to building occupants on an hourly basis, perhaps via a digital display in reception, a smartphone app or webpage. RESET want this information to be as visible as possible, not hidden away and hard to find!

What air quality monitors are accepted by RESET AIR?

Direct read or hand-held instruments may be good for a walk-through survey or in detecting a specific pollutant but they have been deemed unsuitable for RESET as the standard requires high quality and constant air quality data in order to detect trends and patterns over time in a specific, fixed location. A lab test is good for a deep-dive but will only reflect a specific moment in time.

RESET provides standards for the deployment, location and installation of monitors that have been classified as Grade A (reference grade) or Grade B (commercial grade) only, excluding the increasingly common consumer Grade C.

It is RESET APs (accredited professionals) that are responsible for the monitor deployment plan, RESET then acts as the neutral stakeholder capturing data in the cloud. 

As all monitors will gradually drift over time and need to be cleaned / recalibrated, the occasional follow-up site visit is required to inspect the monitors, again by a RESET Accredited Professional.

In order to certify for RESET Air for Core & Shell, projects need to demonstrate the mechanical (HVAC) system delivers air to occupants in line with the performance targets. For this to happen, we need a baseline established via outdoor air quality monitoring.

Indoor air quality monitors are then “paired” with the outdoor air monitors and the aggregated data can compared. This is the crux of the Core & Shell standard. Understanding this point is fundamental.

How do air quality monitors need to be installed for RESET AIR Core & Shell?

RESET Air accredited monitors that report PM2.5, CO2, Temperature and Relative Humidity need to be positioned within 5 metres / 16 ft of an air intake in a location that is pre-filtration and pre-mixing. Read that line again, it is really important!

If a building has 10 stories or less and one air intake, it only needs one outdoor monitor. That same building with more than one air take, needs still just one monitor but located wherever the air quality is deemed to be worst.

Taller buildings with a single air intake again need just one outdoor air monitor but if it has multiple air intakes then the monitor must be positioned at the highest air intake (or centrally if they are all on the same level).

Indoor monitor deployment meanwhile are based on a project’s total air volume. Mechanical systems that are not designed with constant air volume must calculate air volume based on the highest capacity airflow possible in the system.

To achieve Core & Shell certification a minimum of 30% of total air volume must be monitored.

These indoor monitors need to cover the usual suspects of PM2.5, TVOC, CO2, relative humidity and temperature.

Monitors should be installed post-mixing, post-filtration (or simply post-filtration if there is no mixing in the HVAC system in question). They should also be installed prior to dampers that limit airflow to a duct. The outdoor monitors have to be paired with an indoor monitor, this is essential.

Thee are the steps a RESET accredited professional will follow:

1. define project boundary

2. deploy outdoor monitors

3. calculate total air volume

4. calculate 30% of total air volume

5. deploy and pair indoor monitor locations to outdoor monitors

6. deploy additional indoor monitors if necessary

Contact us to discuss your RESET air certification project or other indoor air quality queries.

Interview for 'Future of Workplace Wellbeing' webinar

Matt Morley on the Future of Workplace Wellbeing

FREE webinar registration link: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/7716129787897/WN_AHVNM-q-SKCVoJzk5mfi6A

Matt, can you describe what you do in regards to workplace wellness in a sentence?

I can try! It took me a long time to get there but basically I’m about creating green and healthy spaces, so I combine design and operational strategies to help make offices geared for wellbeing and sustainability.

What will you be discussing at the upcoming Future of Workplace Wellbeing seminar?

It’s already shaping up to be a really promising line-up and I’m delighted to be contributing my thoughts to the panel. I’ll likely focus on tangible improvements that can be made to the work environment itself, in order to offer practical inspiration to HR teams, Brand Managers and Office Managers concerned about the now imminent return to work.

One thing’s for sure, there has never been a more pertinent time to make office upgrades of this kind, employees are quite frankly looking for signs of understanding from their employers now that we have all grasped the risks associated with spending so much time in close contact with colleagues.

The benefits still far outweigh the risks in my view but every office needs to adapt to the new reality. Debate about how to create a safe and healthy workplace is here to stay.

Which workplace wellbeing trend gets you the most excited at the moment?

I’ve been talking about biophilia and biophilic design for 5-6 years now but it feels like this concept is finally ‘having a moment’ as more and more workplaces are catching on post-pandemic.

Essentially it’s about bringing the outside world into our built environment to harness nature’s mental and physical health benefits; so while I may be known for creating the world’s first biophilic gym back in 2017 those same principles can be applied to any type of indoor space, and ultimately we spend most of our time in our homes and in the office, so it is there that we’er seeing the most innovation at the moment.

How does biophilic design connect with the future of workplace wellbeing in your view?

For me, biophilic design combines elements of sustainability and wellbeing via its nature-first approach to materials, colours, sounds, textures and scent. It’s not just landscaping or putting plants on desks, as some might think, the deeper you go into the principles behind this design philosophy the more it gives back and the greater the impact can be. Recently i’ve been geeking out on innovative bio-materials from fruit skins and algae for example!

So why is this important? We’re looking to boost productivity and concentration while reducing anxiety and stress amongst employees and, just as importantly, respecting the environment in the process. It’s a lot to think about, I recognise that but it is absolutely within reach for most offices.

What are the intended outputs of this particular workplace wellbeing strategy?

Pretty quickly I realised that data illustrating the benefits of biophilic design was going to be key when pitching this concept to a CFO or CPO so in 2018 I carried out a research study with the University of Essex and EcoWorld Ballymore, a real estate developer with a biophilic residential building in Canary Wharf.

We created a ‘Vitamin Nature space’, or recharge room, and invited local professionals in during their lunch hour, or for a team meeting or workshop and the results were so encouraging!

There is this innate connection in all of us to natural spaces, it’s an evolutionary thing, just think of the hundreds of thousands of years of history in which our ancestors’ survival depended entirely on their understanding of edible plants, wild animals, dangerous insects, the seasons, weather cycles and more.

Arguably there is nowhere better to bring some of this biophilia back into our lives than in soulless office interiors in a dense urban environment.

What workplace wellbeing project has had the biggest impact on you recently?

I have an ongoing advisory role with Black Mountain Partners in London, a real estate development fund currently re-launching a Grade A heritage building overlooking London Bridge with a gym, restaurant, rooftop bar and, crucially, eight floors of offices.

For this long-term client I manage their Placemaking & ESG, so i’m working very much at a strategic level with the CEO to align the fund’s activities with ESG, both at corporate and building level.

ESG fundamentally influences not just how the business is run and the team is managed but also impacts the work being done by architects, engineers, interior designers and facilities management.

On smaller scale consultancy projects I’m often alone, doing both the strategy and the creative implementation at office-level, or I’m working in partnership alongside a local interiors team (as was the case for the Hero natural foods office project in Switzerland).

For Black Mountain Partners though, I don’t touch any of that directly but I do get to work with the biggest names in the business; it’s a high stakes game!

What’s your workplace wellbeing practice of choice?

It would have to be Active Design - it’s about being active at work, not so much working out at work (although that certainly does no harm if the opportunity is there!) instead it’s about using the stairs not the lift, adapting to a standing desk rather than a chair, moving between deep work spaces and more collaborative zones in the office according to the task in hand rather than being locked in a private office, using a bike to get to and from the office, walking outside at lunchtime for a bite to eat, and so on.

Contact us here to discuss your workplace wellbeing project