Only 53% of wage earners think their place of work helps their productivity.And with good reason. The broad and ongoing Leeseman Index joins the dots between Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and the most common employee complaints about their surroundings.
This is according to Workplace Strategies and Change Manager, Nigel Oseland, when he addressed the Green Building Convention 2017 held in Cape Town earlier this month and hosted by the Green Building Council South Africa (GBCSA).
“Only once we meet our lowest level of needs can we go on to achieve our potential. It’s got to do with health at the bottom of the pyramid – so air, light and water,” explained Oseland.
A quantified relationship between productivity and air quality, noise and temperature, established by more than 200 studies shows the average 5 – 7% increase in employee productivity easily covers any cost premiums of working in a healthy space that assists attention and concentration, Oseland said.
Advantages to each element of office space
“Deep buildings with windowless workspaces must disappear. These buildings, by definition, lock in a chemical soup of materials and occupant activities with serious consequences for human health. From asthma, to skin and eye irritations, to reproductive health and cancer,” warned Professor Vivian Loftness of the Carnegie Mellon University School of Architecture in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. “They do this by locking out the natural conditioning resources of passive solar heating, daylight, ventilation and passive cooling.”