WELL: A global benchmark for healthy buildings

Why is WELL v2 beneficial to your workplace, and your business?

WELL v2 is a comprehensive roadmap and certification service with inbuilt professional support and rigorous third-party assessment, used for improving the quality of indoor spaces for the people using them with inspired, intentional design decisions. Humans spend on average 90% of their lives indoors, hence the importance of quality indoor spaces.

Human health and the built environment are linked. Evidence suggests that companies who invest in strategies to improve the health and wellbeing of their employees experience enhanced performance and secure better financial returns. Healthy workers are happy workers, and wellbeing positively correlates with better employee engagement. Regulators, investors, and other stakeholders are also prioritising human, social, and environmental criteria to better understand risk and return, ascribe value, and execute business decisions.

WELL v2 can positively impact your business, strengthen your ESG impact, and support the health and wellbeing of your people. For landlords operating in an increasingly competitive market, it is also an opportunity to command premium value for your properties.

The WELL v2 certification explained

The WELL Building Standard is a performance-based rating system and global benchmark for health in buildings, with every project verified through on-site testing. The architecture of the rating system consists of ten concepts, each containing preconditions and optimisations. Preconditions define the integral components of a WELL Certified space, and are universally set for all projects. All preconditions are mandatory for certification.

Optimisations can be selected once preconditions are met. These contribute towards your overall WELL score, resulting in either Bronze, Silver, Gold, or Platinum Certification.

The Ten Concepts

These categories are assessed throughout WELL v2 certification:

• Air
• Water
• Nourishment
• Light
• Movement
• Thermal comfort
• Sound
• Materials
• Mind
• Community

WELL is scalable, whatever your business objectives

For business leaders who want to prioritise health and wellbeing throughout their entire organisation or real estate portfolio, WELL can be implemented at scale and across multiple locations. With annual fees ranging from £24,000 to £200,000, WELL at scale is a roadmap with scope to:

1. Strengthen your ESG impact
2. Integrate human and social capital metrics into ESG and sustainability reporting
3. Embed diversity, equity, and inclusivity best practices
4. Command premium value for your properties
5. Attain and retain talent
6. Demonstrate reputational integrity to key stakeholders and community members

WELL v2 and other sustainability certifications

With WELL certified professionals inhouse, and board-certified assessors in other sustainability accreditation schemes such as Fitwel and LEED, our Workplace Strategy team helps clients understand their ESG goals and priorities, and primes them to embark on WELL certification.

WELL marks a commitment to creating people-first places. Instead of assessing the built environment through a lens of environmental sustainability, WELL is catered towards the social: all about the interplay between design and human health, and how the former can determine and improve the latter. It is scalable and globally applicable, and responsive and adaptable to fit any environment or organisation seeking to elevate human health and promote wellbeing for all.

Start your journey today.