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In recent years, employers have looked to employee wellness programs as a means of increasing productivity, reducing insurance costs and fostering better employee wellbeing and satisfaction. There’s a direct correlation between employee wellbeing and costs to employers. Worker’s compensation claims and healthcare bills amount to more $60 billion per year in the U.S. So, it makes sense to help boost employee health in order to boost a bottom line.

There’s also emotional aspects to wellness. Job satisfaction and the notion that employers have a social responsibility give employees a feeling that companies care for them.

And so, employers roll out the usual suspects when it comes to employee wellness programs: smoking cessation classes, exercise breaks, yoga classes, weight loss challenges and the like.

Problem is, these efforts don’t work.

According to a clinical trial published by the Journal of the American Medical Association and reported by the New York Times, employee wellness program efforts don’t provide any substantial benefit in terms of healthcare savings. More importantly, don’t impact employee health all that much.

Researchers tracked 33,000 employees of BJ’s Wholesale Club over a yearlong period and found that employees participating in employee wellness programs saw no reduced blood pressure or other health measures. And there was no financial gains or savings for the employer in undertaking the wellness program.

“Wellness is this multibillion-dollar industry where there has been a really weak evidence base of what these programs do,” said Katherine Baicker, dean of the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, in the New York Times when asked about the clinical trial.

Do employee wellness programs foster a culture of health?

So, is there anything employers can do to positively affect the health of employees?

We believe wellness begins by creating a conducive workplace. Given that indoor air is two to five times more polluted than outdoor air—and that employees spend an average of nine hours a day in these enclosed spaces with others—it makes sense to provide a cleaner indoor environment.

Ultimately, instead of tired smoking cessation programs, or five-minute exercise sessions, we feel employers should focus on a better way to boost productivity and build a culture of health: Cleaning the air.

For example, AeraMax Professional’s line of commercial-grade air purifiers removes up to 99.97 percent of airborne contaminants like viruses, germs, allergens, bacteria, dust, odors and volatile organic compounds from indoor air, providing a healthier, cleaner environment. That means less pollution to exacerbate asthma conditions, and less germs and viruses coursing through the air, making employees sick. And that means less strain on insurance and health benefit programs.

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It makes perfect sense: healthier employees are happier employees. However, many business owners believe developing a wellness program or a smoking cessation class is the path to employee happiness. Not so fast.

Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) affects Productivity

According to a recent study commissioned by the Building Engineering Services Association in the United Kingdom, almost 70 percent of office workers polled said poor indoor air quality in the workplace made for negative feelings, and worse, lowered productivity.

“The health impacts of poor outdoor air quality are well-documented and have been linked to respiratory tract infections, lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease,” said Steven Loughney of Siemens Building Technologies in a report. “Indoors you’ll find these same pollutants intermingled with dust, carpet fibers, fungal spores, cleaning products, photocopy residues or building materials, which create quite an unhealthy cocktail of contaminants that eventually permeate across the workplace.”

Is it Sick Building Syndrome?

Indoor spaces where poor air is circulated ad nauseum often create symptoms of Sick Building Syndrome—sluggish behavior, frequent headaches, lowered resistance to viruses and colds, difficulty concentrating and increased absenteeism—among occupants.


The EPA estimates that Sick Building Syndrome accounts for $60 billion in lost revenue per year. What’s more, it’s estimated that $220 billion is lost in worker productivity due to absenteeism and employee sickness. In fact, the average cost of one employee sick day is $2,650.

How can you address this?

In many cases, poor building design and inadequate ventilation systems are to blame. There is a way to quickly boost IAQ, making employees both happier and healthier: installing AeraMax Professional air purifiers.

These commercial-grade air purification systems effectively and efficiently remove up to 99.97 percent of airborne contaminants, like viruses, odors, volatile organic compounds and bacteria from enclosed spaces using hospital-like True HEPA filtration.

The four-stage filtration system of AeraMax Professional systems automatically senses when air needs to be cleaned, working behind the scenes to refresh air and improve the overall health of occupants. That, in turn, can overcome the effects of sick building syndrome and reverse the negativity experienced by employees. So, in this case, healthier means happier.

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These days, facility managers have more responsibilities. More occupant interaction, more belt-tightening decisions—and more opportunities to truly affect change in their facility. This is why the director of the Healthy Buildings Program at the Harvard Center for Health and the Global Environment, Joseph Allen, Ph.D., stated that a facility manager has more of an impact in the health and well-being of the occupants than physicians.

Find out more about how you can clean smarter, not harder.

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Can indoor air quality make people more productive? Research from Harvard University’s Healthy Buildings Program says yes.

Quantifying Productivity Improvements

In a study, researchers analyzed worker concentration and cognitive ability using various environmental scenarios, altering indoor air quality in a controlled lab setting. In one setting, the researchers lowered carbon dioxide levels, boosted ventilation, and removed toxic chemicals typically found in office settings. At the highest ventilation rate for the study, tests conducted on participants in the closed environment showed an 8% increase in productivity over participants who didn’t benefit from the improved conditions. This then was quantified as a $6,500 increase in productivity per employee.

Higher Test Scores

In another test scenario, participants were given a cognitive test. One set of participants was given the test in a typical office setting, while the other set was given the test in a “green space,” one where volatile organic compounds (VOCs) were removed. The test subjects in the green space scored 60% higher in the tests; when improved ventilation was introduced into the environment with no VOCs, the test scores were 100% better.

The resultant report, Economic, Environmental and Health Implications of Enhanced Ventilation in Office Buildings, outlines the tests conducted in seven different cities and concludes that indoor air quality can be key to improved productivity.

Watch the report’s key highlights

Researchers believe that building managers need to be more aware of the potential gains made by improving indoor air quality. “There’s a little disconnect between the public health silo and those making decisions about buildings,” says Piers MacNaughton, a researcher at Harvard’s Healthy Buildings Program. “I don’t think [the public health] field has done a good job of reaching out to the real estate developers, managers, and owners of businesses that can make this change. I don’t think it’s acknowledged that changing these factors can make a difference.”

Still, the report plainly outlines the gains made by improving indoor air quality. One way to do this, while eliminating VOCs, is to outfit workplaces with an office air purifier from AeraMax Professional, which removes harmful VOC and up to 99.9% of contaminants from indoor air.

 

Source: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/12/11/14709/htm

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The effect that work environments have on productivity and employee satisfaction has become a hot topic in the corporate world as research continually becomes more available. More people have become aware of how Indoor air quality (IAQ) affects employees’ health, comfort and ability to focus.

If you need to convince your boss, office manager or HR department to invest in improved IAQ, you have to prove the investment pays off in the long run. Here are five reasons why excellent IAQ has strong ROI. It can:

  1. Improve recruiting efforts
    The health and cleanliness of your workplace will immediately make an impression on potential hires. Indoor air quality directly contributes to facility perception, especially in common areas such as bathrooms and breakrooms.
  2. Bolster productivity
    Research shows that improved IAQ benefits productivity almost instantly. In fact, a group of creative marketers, architects, engineers, designers and programmers performed 61 percent better on cognitive assessments in work environments with optimal IAQ. Over time, this level of increased efficiency dramatically improves the bottom line.
  3. Create a healthier, more positive work environment
    A healthy and clean office can impress office visitors such as clients and recruits and will give employees a feeling of comfort and security. Since employees spend hours each day in shared spaces, distractions such as odors, dust and allergens have a major impact on their feelings of workplace satisfaction.
  4. Reduce sick days
    Though it may come as a surprise, the flu virus is most commonly distributed through the air. Improving IAQ with targeted air purification allows organizations to remove 99.9 percent of contagious, airborne flu virus from common areas. Everyone knows how quickly an illness can travel around the office, so clean air is integral to a comprehensive wellness strategy.
  5. Eliminate odors
    Don’t let odors drive workplace complaints. Improving IAQ prevents odors from lingering in an environment for extended periods of time and adds to worker comfort and satisfaction.
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