You’re sitting in a cramped conference room for a four-hour meeting. You want to stand up, stretch your legs and get some fresh air, but you can’t – there’s too much work to do. By the end of the mini-marathon, you’re mentally drained, you have a headache and you go home exhausted.
It turns out this general malaise might have less to do with long meetings and more to do with the rooms in which they are held. “These are symptoms that we’re seeing repeatedly,” says Mahesh Ramanujam, president of the US Green Building Council. “We know that it boils down to the carbon dioxide concentration in the room.”
Poor air quality, ventilation and lighting are common problems in old office buildings. Green building – the modern process of using healthier and more resource-efficient methods and technologies in design and construction – is widely viewed as a major step forward. However, its value can sometimes seem abstract, unrelated to the day-to-day experience of the people and businesses that occupy these spaces and structures.
That’s now changing, as recent studies show the benefits are immediate and powerful for workers’ productivity and health – and ultimately for businesses’ bottom line.
A smarter, healthier workforce
The green building community has long been trying to prove that better conditions translate to improved outcomes for workers and their companies. Recently, Joseph Allen, a professor at Harvard University, and his research team made major breakthroughs with two projects, known as the COGfx studies. This research was made possible through funding provided by United Technologies.
The first study placed 24 people in a controlled environment over six days. He and his team then simulated the air qualities of a conventional building, a green building and a green building with enhanced ventilation.
The effects on the participants were startling: workers in the green building environment scored 61% higher in cognitive function than when breathing conventional building air. In conditions of green buildings with enhanced ventilation – which have twice the ventilation rate of conventional buildings – cognitive scores spiked 101%.
The study found that this improved cognition impacted a wide variety of skills and tasks, including strategy, crisis response and focus. This could be a game-changer in the years ahead, as businesses will continue to feel intense pressure to provide environments where employees can make fast, smart decisions in order to stay competitive.
The second study of the COGfx series tracked 109 participants in 10 real buildings across the US, six of which were green certified. In addition to scoring 26% higher in cognitive function, the workers in green buildings also experienced significant health benefits such as better sleep quality and fewer symptoms of illnesses caused by sick buildings, such as nausea, throat irritation and headaches.
A breath of fresh air for businesses
This study isn’t the first to look at the environment’s impact on workers. Bill Browning, a partner at the green building consultancy Terrapin Bright Green, points to research showing that even short interactions with nature can help workers reduce stress and reorient their thinking. And Ramanujam points to studies that show improved lighting can result in a 27% reduction in headaches, which translates to about $70 in healthcare savings per worker per year.
What makes the COGfx research different is that it explicitly links the quality of a building’s ventilation to the productivity of the people inside.
Allen estimates that it costs up to $40 per person per year to double the ventilation rate in a building – but the study suggests that productivity benefits range from $6,000 to $7,000 per person per year. When energy efficient technologies are used, the energy costs per person per year drop to between $1 to $18. “The costs are trivial compared to the benefits, any way you look at this,” he says.
John Mandyck, chief sustainability officer at United Technologies, says investors who build and buy buildings also seek greener options. For example, in speaking with representatives from Previ, Brazil’s largest pension fund, he learned the company had narrowed its real estate investments to certified green buildings – they believe that 10 years from now, those are the only real estate assets that will retain their value.
This impact could eventually extend to the employees who work in such buildings. A job applicant today might ask about a company’s benefits package or work culture, but with an increasingly environmentally aware workforce, another valuable question soon could be: what’s the CO2 level in your building?
As green office buildings become more common, it’s important to consider the impact that they can have on your career prospects. We now know that improved air quality and increased ventilation can help people work better, think better, sleep better and be healthier overall. They can make businesses stronger over the long run, and, marathon PowerPoint presentations aside, they may even make those lengthy meetings more tolerable.
For businesses with workers who constantly suffer from headaches, sleep issues and lethargy by afternoon, better air ventilation and purification could be a simple solution for healthier and more productive employees.
This content is paid for by United Technologies.
