Would an investor plow millions of dollars into a stock and never bother to track how the investment does? Of course not. Nor would they confuse the expected return on investment (ROI) with the actual results. We don’t guess about financial investments. We don’t base investment decisions on what some stranger does or how they say they’ve done. So why then, do many of the largest companies in the world invest millions of dollars in buildings or renovating their workplaces and never even bother to measure results. Why are they so willing to copy the unproven workplace strategy of others? Why are they satisfied with projected results, rather than measuring how their investments actually perform?
Many generate data about real estate performance—metrics such as amount of space saved, cost per square foot, or total energy costs—but those all miss the point. We don’t—or shouldn’t—spend tens of millions of dollars to build or renovate buildings because we want to save energy costs or reduce space. Those should be secondary to the real benefit of the building—helping the organization meets its fundamental business objectives.
For me, the context of healthcare really illustrates the point. Think of the CEO of a hospital telling the family of a patient who has died because of a medical error or infection that they are terribly sorry, but the family should remember that the new hospital is fifteen percent more energy efficient than the old one. That would be seen, rightly, as ridiculous. In the corporate workplace, like hospitals, we should be designing buildings that promote the health, well-being, and performance of those using the facility; and in the process, help companies strengthen their competitive position in the marketplace.
To do that we need data, not guess work. Hospitals have turned to what’s been called “evidence-based design” (EBD) in search of data to inform facility decisions. The motivation is straightforward. Somewhere between 50,000 and 98,000 patients die in the US each year from medical errors. Between twenty and fifty percent of surgeries are unnecessary. And every year 7,000 people die from medication errors alone.
These are dismal statistics. As is true of any ecological system comprised of a dense web of interdependent factors, one can break into the system and intervene at any point in an attempt to shift its direction, disrupt its current trajectory, and improve its performance.
Design as an entry point
For policy wonks and financial analysts, using design as the entry point into this complex system may seem like trying to extinguish a forest fire with a glass of water. But we are investing $20-30 billion dollars a year in new hospital design and major renovations. That’s not pocket change. Nor are the millions of dollars firms spend each year on new corporate offices and major renovations. Think of Amazon, Apple, Twitter, and Google. Yet far less value is paid in the corporate sector than in healthcare to using research to inform facility decisions; and more importantly, to assess whether the facility investment achieved the anticipated benefits. Is that because the corporate workplace is a healthy and productive environment?
Using stress as just one indicator of health, statistics suggest otherwise. The total cost of stress to U.S. organizations, resulting in absenteeism, reduced productivity, compensation claims, health insurance, and direct medical expenses, has been estimated at more than $150 billion annually. There is no reason to assume employee stress has decreased over the past twenty-five years. The Gallup Organization reports that seven in ten American workers are “not engaged” or “actively disengaged” in their work. In effect, these disengaged workers are “checked out.” They are present physically but “sleepwalking” through their workday, a phenomenon labeled “presenteeism.”
Gallup estimates that this disengagement costs the U.S. several hundred billion dollars a year (Creighton, 2014.) Is the physical design of the environment the major source of stress; or put another way, what contributes most to a sense of health and well-being at work? In a review of the literature on health and well-being in the workplace, Cristina Banks (2014) reported that frontline staff identified thirteen characteristics of a healthy workplace. Only three were related directly to the physical environment: personal privacy, natural ventilation and natural light. The top two healthy workplace characteristics were organizational cultures that valued self-respect and respect for others; and ones that valued inclusiveness and employee voice.
Understanding context
Does that mean the physical environment is not really important? No. But it does mean that if we want to invest in design that makes a difference to health and performance we need to understand the social and organizational context in which different design characteristics contribute to a healthy organizational culture. We need to understand what works and what doesn’t for different types of workers doing different jobs.