Companies can attract talent with a new perk: Healthy Offices

Silicon Valley has become a parody of itself with the perks companies offer. Bring your dog to the office, free lunch, and oh yes, the ping pong table. I remember meeting a client at the Googleplex in Mountainview. We sat on beanbags, sipping kombucha…inside a tipi.

Today most of these perks are downright irresponsible with the threat of COVID-19. While companies remain in stasis, they will need to re-imagine how to lure talent back inside the office. One direction we’ll see are companies investing in state-of-the-art clean offices. 

** This is part of a larger story titled “Squandered Skylines: The Future of Real Estate in a Post-Pandemic Society” available at Barn Burnt Down. **

The novel coronavirus shows no sign of slowing with over 145,000 dead and 4 million infected in the United States. Since safety precautions have become politicized and thus disobeyed, it means we’ll continue to see spikes of infections rise which will continue to keep office occupancy in limbo.

But offices cannot stay closed forever. Multiyear leases and billion-dollar campuses are too valuable to abandon. Plus, I don’t know about you, but Zoom calls are draining. This led me to investigate what companies are doing to make employees feel safe at work. Turns out quite a lot. But what will make the concept of healthy offices stick is establishing a standard and shifting the culture to accept it. If those two things can happen, this might just work.

The Power of the Plaque 

LEED certification is the gold standard for environmentally friendly commercial buildings. The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is a non-profit which grades buildings on its design, construction, maintenance, and operations with the goal of being the greenest building possible. If a building meets their high bar, it receives a certification based on how green the building is. The levels are Certified, Silver, Gold, or Platinum.

There should be a professional rating system for healthy offices. I felt calling it the Innovative Healthy Office Program works but turns out IHOP is too competitive an acronym. In all seriousness, this can be a huge part of the recruitment process. Instead of the usual perks employees see, why not champion things such as state-of-the-art sanitization systems, medical grade air filters, UV-C lighting? 

The tech is already being installed in offices around the world. Here’s the kind of solutions you'll soon see.

The New Healthy Office

Belgians invent things we never knew we needed— the waffle, the FN-P90 submachine gun, couverture chocolate, the list goes on. A design firm in Belgium have re-imagined how we open doors with minimal touch. Materialise has published their designs for 3D printed handles to affix to existing doors. They operate by using your wrist as the point of impact. 

Elevators are a major concern for offices and apartments. Getting into a confined space with a potentially infected person sounds terrifying. However, there’s only been one confirmed case where someone got infected with coronavirus after a sick person was inside.? Nevertheless, companies like Ashla Services are outfitting elevators with UV-C lighting systems. UV-C light annihilates the COVID-19 virus.?

Commercial elevator companies such as Thyssenkrupp Elevator have created smart elevator management systems that monitor traffic and are adding air filtration. They also have created a device that attaches to escalator handrails which continuously zap it with UV-C.§ 

Air filtration is a significant challenge. The longer someone is exposed to COVID-19, the greater the risk. COVID-19 can remain suspended in air particles for up to 3 hours.? Offices, just like schools, still believe in the factory model of 9-5 or really 7:45-6pm so you look good in front of the boss. Spending an entire day inside a room, no matter how large, is still a danger.

You’ve probably heard of HEPA (high-efficiency particulate absorbing) filters, they’re inside airplane cabins, Teslas, and Dyson fans. They filter out 99.97% of airborne particulates such as bacteria, mold, dust pollen. However, there’s something better out there— ULPA (Ultra Low Particulate Air) filters which filter 99.99% of particulates— something that has a minimum penetration size of 100 nanometers. COVID-19 ranges between 60-140 nanometers. The New England Complex Systems Institute believes both filters can work in curtailing the spread of the virus.??

ULPA filters are 35% more expensive but if your company has cash to splurge on scooters and doggy-daycare which one would you choose???

Science Experiment or Real Life?

The global real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield introduced plans for the “6 Feet Office” which includes how employees should move about the office— always clockwise. It dictates where one can enter and exit a room too.§§ The plan also details where someone can stand based on the carpet design. It’s difficult to tell if this is viable, or some strange performance art experiment designed by David Lynch.

The invention of the office wasn’t designed to be inherently fun or enjoyable. It focused on production. Now employees are rightfully demanding more, and corporations are trying to adjust. First, we had cubicles that made us feel like lab mice in maze. Then they chain sawed the walls down to be more open— which has been proven to stifle productivity and creativity.?? Then a gypsy from Burning Man named Adam Newman convinced everyone shared tables was a good idea— until it wasn’t.

So where does that leave us?

We Must Create a New Standard

In the 1960s an anti-littering campaign was launched. The term “litter-bug” became embedded in the culture. No one wanted this vile moniker applied to them or their business. It took a marketing campaign to shift the culture in the right direction. 

LEED certification established a new standard for companies to strive for. Now we must establish a healthy standard for offices, hotels, apartments. It may sound daunting to construct a new standard, but all this needs is a little momentum to get noticed. Only 4.7% of commercial buildings across the largest U.S. office markets are LEED certified.? But you’ve seen the LEED plaque outside buildings. You’ve heard it mentioned on earnings calls and company town halls— the name, the concept, the standard has stuck.

Lets take the what we learned from this pandemic and rethink the concept of the office. We must build office to be what Nassim Taleb calls "antifragile."

"Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty. Yet, in spite of the ubiquity of the phenomenon, there is no word for the exact opposite of fragile. Let us call it antifragile. Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better".???

The antifragile office can be the new health standard. This can be the fastest way to recruit new talent, investors, and clients back into the office. It will take courage. But the one who raises the bar, will be known for shifting the culture forever.

Read the more about the future of real estate in Barn Burnt Down's debut story Squandered Skylines.

? Kang, Yun Jung. 2020. “Investigation on COVID-19 Infection Cases in Korea.” Research Square. March 20. https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-18483/v1.

? Based On Science. (2020). Does ultraviolet (UV) light kill the coronavirus? Retrieved from Based On Science: https://sites.nationalacademies.org/BasedOnScience/covid-19-does-ultraviolet-light-kill-the-coronavirus/index.htm

§ 2020. Customer Information: Coronavirus (COVID-19).https://www.thyssenkrupp-elevator.com/us/coronavirus/.

? Lewis, T. (2020, May 12). How Coronavirus Spreads through the Air: What We Know So Far. Retrieved from Scientific American: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-coronavirus-spreads-through-the-air-what-we-know-so-far1/

?? Elias, B., & Bar-Yam, Y. (2020). Could air filtration reduce COVID-19 severity and spread? New England Complex Systems Institute.

?? Hepacart. 2020. ULPA Filter vs. HEPA Filter: What’s the Difference & Why Does It Matter? March 19. https://www.hepacart.com/blog/ulpa-filter-vs.-hepa-filter-whats-the-difference-why-does-it-matter.

§§ Cushman & Wakefield. 2020. “6 Feet Office Project.” Cushman & Wakefield.https://www.cushmanwakefield.com/en/netherlands/six-feet-office.

?? Bernstein, Ethan, and Ben Waber. 2019. “The Truth About Open Offices.” Harvard Business Review. December. https://hbr.org/2019/11/the-truth-about-open-offices.

? Gunby, Jennifer. 2017. "2017 National Green Building Adoption Index releases data on growth." U.S. Green Building Council. July 20. https://www.usgbc.org/articles/2017-national-green-building-adoption-index-releases-data-growth.

??? Taleb, Nassim. 2012. Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder. Random House. (link to the book)