Building a Mindful Connection: The Built Environment and Mental Health (RE-RELEASE)
What role does the built environment play in influencing our well-being? Join STOBG’s VP of Human Resources, Keith Lodge, as he interviews Lauren Moss SVP and Chief Sustainability Officer at Vornado Realty Trust, Dr. Whitney Austin Gray, SVP at the International Well Building Institute, IWBI, and Jennifer Taranto, VP of Sustainability at STOBG about the connection between the built environment and mental health.
HOST
Keith Lodge
VP, Human Resources, STO Building GroupView Bio
GUEST
Lauren Moss
SVP and Chief Sustainability Officer, Vornado Realty TrustView Bio
GUEST
Dr. Whitney Austin Gray
SVP, International Well Building Institute, IWBIView Bio
GUEST
Jennifer Taranto
VP, Sustainability, STO Building GroupView Bio
Intro (00:05):
Welcome to Building Conversations, a construction podcast powered by the STO Building Group. On today’s episode, in honor of mental health awareness, STO Building Group’s Vice President of Human Resources, Keith Lodge, speaks with Lauren Moss, Senior Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer at Vornado Realty Trust, Dr. Whitney Austin Gray, Senior Vice President at the International Well Building Institute, IWBI, and Jennifer Taranto, Vice President of Sustainability at STO Building Group, about how the built environment can impact the mental health and wellbeing of its occupants.
Keith Lodge (00:46):
Hello and welcome to Building Conversations, the STO Building Group podcast. I’m your host, Keith Lodge, Vice President of Human Resources, and here with me today, are Dr. Whitney Austin Gray, Senior Vice President at the International Well Building Institute, Lauren Moss, Senior Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer at Vornado Realty Trust, and the STO Building Group Vice President of Sustainability, Jennifer Taranto. Today, we’ll be exploring the connection between mental health and wellness and the built environment. Now before I go any further, I must say I do in fact hate the sound of my voice. So, there is a good chance that I will break out into either an Irish or an English accent during this. Welcome and thank you all for joining. Could you all please take a moment to introduce yourselves? Jenn, we’ll start with you.
Jennifer Taranto (01:36):
Hi, Jennifer Taranto, Vice President of Sustainability at STO Building Group. My current role really kind of revolves around working with clients and projects across a variety of sustainability, health, and wellness needs, as well as working with the greater organization and strategizing around those same topics. I started my career in the field as a superintendent, so I really came up as a builder and enjoy that aspect of the project, and I think that that really helps lend itself to be able to build better buildings because I have that initial knowledge.
Keith Lodge (02:14):
Great, thank you Jenn. Whitney?
Dr. Whitney Austin Gray (02:16):
Hi everyone. Whitney Austin Gray. I lead research for the International Well Building Institute. We were founded almost 10 years ago, and we developed the Well Building Standard, which we’ll speak a little bit more about today, but that is the first and largest building certification system in the world focused on human health. We work with organizations globally to create places that allow people to thrive, which is going to be a big topic for us. So, going into the pandemic, we had 400 million square feet that were part of our portfolio, and now, we are closer to 5 billion square feet. So, my background is public health, my PhD in training, but I just love hanging out designers. I think I’m a wannabe designer/constructor because I love taking the science and actually designing a solution for all and not trying to just design the problem out. And so, I do my best to surround myself with brilliant people that are designers and actually constructing these incredible places globally. When I’m not doing that, I’m also teaching at Georgetown, hopefully to support the future. I think of the industry to have real estate and urban planners trained in public health. So, thanks so much for having me today.
Keith Lodge (03:23):
Great, Lauren.
Lauren Moss (03:25):
Thanks for having me. Nice to be here. Lauren Moss, I’m the Senior Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer at Vornado Realty Trust. We are a public diversified REIT heavily focused in New York City, about 34 million square feet of office space. We’re sitting in one of our buildings right now, PENN 1, part of the Penn District redevelopment we’ve taken on over the past really 20 years I would say. I’m excited to talk about the work that we’ve been doing. I am, as I think will be great for Whitney to know, an urban planner by training, always fascinated by the intersection of real estate and community development impact that buildings in the built environment have on people. And that’s really the focus that we’ve taken at Vornado with our sustainability program is how we use the buildings that we own and manage to impact the people in them and around them.
Keith Lodge (04:18):
Great. For those of you who don’t know, the 1 PENN building itself is absolutely spectacular. Have probably one of the nicest gym facilities I’ve ever seen. Not to say that I actually attend there very often, but it is absolutely beautiful and it’s kind of part of the wellness initiative itself. I wanted to kind of start off and ask everyone a general question itself. Jenn, I’ll start with you. Can you explain what wellness in the workplace looks like?
Jennifer Taranto (04:46):
Yeah, so I think it’s a, that’s a pretty broad question. If we think about the built environment itself, we are looking to things like place that prioritizes daylight. We’re looking for a place that has good indoor air quality. It has breakout places, areas of respite, places where people can go and de-stress. It has biophilia these connections to nature that give us that calm sense of feeling. So that’s kind of what I think that the physical workspace looks like. But I do also think that the workplace is much broader than that, right? That it expands into policies and procedures and benefits and just an overall culture of wellness that happens to incorporate some of those physical elements.
Keith Lodge (05:36):
Great, thank you Jenn. Whitney?
Dr. Whitney Austin Gray (05:39):
Sure. So, Wellness at Work is being redefined. I think we are redefining and defining it as we speak. That was not a priority of your parents or your grandparents’ generation. So, when we study occupational health, the history of it is to remove hazards in the workplace to allow you to be productive. So, we removed chemical hazards, physical hazards, biological hazards, and it was really only the last couple decades that we focused on psychosocial hazards and work was killing us. Going the pandemic, we had $311 billion price tag around burnout, which is directly linked to work. That’s really important when you define wellness at work because people don’t want to just go somewhere they’re not sick. They want to go somewhere that they want to work, that they can thrive because you live 20 years longer than people in 1962. So about 50 years later, you’ll live 20 years longer.
Dr. Whitney Austin Gray (06:38):
So, you don’t just finish working and that’s the end of your life. If you plan to live to eighty-five or even a hundred, you have to pay attention to your wellness and not just trying to decrease disease. You need to promote your overall wellbeing, and that’s your physical, emotional, financial, social, occupational, spiritual, intellectual, and again environmental wellbeing. So, the last thing I’ll say there too is that it’s wanting to and feeling in a positive state to come and be part of an organization and not merely just having the absence of disease to be productive at work.
Keith Lodge (07:15):
So, Whitney, you’re saying I should probably go to the gym at PENN 1?
Dr. Whitney Austin Gray (07:19):
Well, actually it’s a really good point. I think a lot of people feel guilty about health. So, all joking aside, I work in this field, and we talk about, for example, take a bicycle to work, but I live in DC, and I don’t want to mess with my hair and it’s really humid outside and it’s difficult to manage that commute on top of everything else might not always be the safest thing. And so, you have to be really real. Just because there are options for health and wellness doesn’t mean it works for everyone at all times of the day. So, we have to get much smarter, and the idea of feeling guilty about not doing your self-care really needs to be an idea that I call BC: Before COVID, right? Just let go of that. And wellness is not merely the gym, right? So, we’re going to talk today about mental wellness and there’s a gym for that too, I will argue. So, I think let’s let go of the idea that going to the gym or riding a bike equals wellness. That is a part of your physical wellness, but not all of it. And by the way, feeling guilty and stressed about not being well is not part of wellness. So, we’ll let go of that one. So, if you don’t want to go to the gym, I totally understand it and I hope maybe others that do feel comfortable can, but the idea is it’s an option for you and not a requirement.
Keith Lodge (08:35):
Thank you. Lauren?
Lauren Moss (08:37):
Yeah, I mean I think it’s, you know, when we were sort of preparing for this, it’s thinking Vornado is both an owner operator and then an employer, right? So, and my job, it’s interesting. When we look at ESG and reporting and how you create programs, we’re sort of responsible for both groups, and we look at them, I want to say, slightly differently. And then actually, the more I think about it, we’re trying to create the same thing for our employees that we’re doing for our tenants, right? The idea is optionality, is gym membership a priority? Is flexible work, is daycare, is training, ongoing training, all of these things that we want our employees to feel supported in to continue their careers here, to develop themselves? And then we think about, in our buildings, how can we create this type of environment that allows our employers and our tenants to offer those things to their employees?
Lauren Moss (09:33):
And so, how do we create a campus environment that has access to daylight amenitization in the sense of outdoor spaces that are inviting all types of access to food from very sort of fast casual to very refined dining depending on what you’re in the mood for and have availability? How do we increase connections among all of our tenants through TED Talks and events in the buildings that we can promote, not just the gym, which is amazing and has access to daylight, which just makes it, I think actually, a really special place to be. But then we have doctors on-site so that if you want to get your vaccine or you want to get a checkup or if you are feeling stressed and you need some support, you can then go to the medical facility in this campus and get access to things that help you become the best version of yourself. That’s how worth trying to reframe the buildings that we operate.
Keith Lodge (10:29):
Excellent. Whitney, I’m going to kick it right back to you because I think you kind of hit on a little bit of it as it pertains to how can employers promote mental health a little bit better in the workplace?
Dr. Whitney Austin Gray (10:40):
Right. So, your knowledge workers constitute about 75% of the workforce in the US. So, if they do not have good mental health and wellbeing, that’s going to affect their ability to produce. And for most people, you pay their salary. But there’s actually equations we use to assume that this person can bring in six times their salary and revenue for the company. So, when you think about this, you are spending a lot of money on this employee and if you will, the analogy is a seed, okay? So, this seed has education. You don’t want them to produce at their highest, you want them to grow, you want them to flourish, and you’ve put a lot of professional development into them. You have a lot of benefit packages that you’re providing. You do everything that you can for this seed and then you put it in this sort of like crack of concrete in the sidewalk that’s dry and air that everyone steps on.
Dr. Whitney Austin Gray (11:34):
That’s not water, that doesn’t have good light and then you expect it to flourish. So when it comes to investing in mental health and wellbeing for your employees, think about these environments that we’re actually enabling them to flourish or disabling them. What are the environments that people are spending their time in? And those environments have shifted now too through the pandemic. Who are you in contact with?
Dr. Whitney Austin Gray (12:22):
Who is your community? Who is your social network? What are your resources? How are you managing stress? Are you eating well? How are you managing life demands through the trauma of this period of time? And so, so many employers invest in these seeds, and they expect the individual seed to flourish, and they don’t pay attention to the environment. If you create environments where a hundred percent of people have the option to make the healthy choice, the easy choice by climbing the staircase, by taking a break with colleagues and having food, which bombs us, it’s a very simple thing but allows our colleagues to say to one another, it’s hard balancing childcare or it’s really been difficult coming back to work and balancing this new space.
Dr. Whitney Austin Gray (13:16):
And as long as someone can connect with you, that’s a huge factor in our mental health. And we can go on and on about the workstations, your ability to focus, how employers are adapting to the diversity of needs. Not all seeds are created equal. So, I’m really encouraging that employers rethink that they don’t focus on the individual, they focus on the environments and the communities of strong workers. They’re going to need to be mentally resilient. Not just, okay. Expect that we’re going to have things happen in the future and expect that your workforce can bounce back. But you have to invest, you have to water the seed, you have to allow them to be able to be resilient before these incidents happen. And for those employers that saw a huge dip in retention and recruitment in this pandemic, ask yourself: did you invest before? Are you just now finding out that you need to plant that seed in a much better space and take care of it differently if you really do want your workforce to flourish?
Jennifer Taranto (14:15):
Yeah, I think Whitney brings up some really good points, and I really like the seed analogy. The one thing I would add to that is that it turns out that employers have been thinking about mental health and wellness in the workspace for a while. We used to do a, before the pandemic, we did a survey, a pulse survey, of our clients and design partners. And as early as 2017, we first saw mental health creep to the top of those priority lists. It was still just under indoor air quality. Indoor air quality, always ranked the highest. But I think that there was some turning point where heads of real estate, global heads of real estate, really saw that they needed to start doing better. And we’re all kind of learning on this journey together and what that means.
Keith Lodge (15:03):
Mm-hmm.
Lauren Moss (15:03):
I would say, I think, again, it’s how you can create the environment where you can offer all of this is really important, right? There’s, you know, we have an app that we use for our all of our tenants and that means they have access to all of these services, right? So, whether you’re an employer and you’re creating access through a website or you’re an owner, manager, creating access through an app so that you can see everything that’s offered, and you can start to make choices on what’s best for you at that moment, I think are really important evolution in the development of all of this. And so that you can pick what’s happening depending on where you are in your moment as an employee and an employer at that time.
Keith Lodge (15:47):
Great. I’m going to start with you, Jenn, and kind of trying to shift a little bit and just see how does STO Building Group value mental health and wellness in the workplace currently today?
Jennifer Taranto (15:56):
Well Keith, as you’re obviously aware, we are not all nine to five office workers at STO Building Group. You know, we’ve got great teams doing amazing things, but they’re out in the field on job sites. And you may also know that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that men working in construction have one of the highest suicide rates by population. It’s about four times higher than the general population, and it’s the second highest of all workplace industries. So, we launched a campaign called It’s Okay to Not Be Okay. And we’ve incorporated mental health and wellbeing into our safety culture. I mean, this is a big component of what we do and we’re making sure that we’re not only looking out for each other, but we’re looking out for our trade partners. And I think that that’s a big piece about starting the conversation about mental health, our HR staff, yourself included.
Jennifer Taranto (16:49):
We’ve, you know, lots of messaging around the office on our intranet and in many other places that lets people know about those benefits, that ones that are specifically tailored to mental health. But I think more importantly, you know, to some of the points that Whitney was making earlier, we’ve got offices like our Dublin office that has what they call Fresh Air Fridays where they all go outside and take walks together in their local park. And so, it builds that comradery. You know, another thing that I think we do really well in our industry overall and especially at STO Building Group, is we have a strong culture of philanthropy and giving back to the communities that we build in. Not only because it’s part of our culture, but I think that it also lends itself to mental health and wellbeing. We know that building those community connections really reduces feelings of loneliness and isolation and through that, volunteerism activity.
Jennifer Taranto (17:37):
And then I think that, I talked about this a little bit earlier, but we also, in our offices and in our office space, we do try to incorporate those physical elements of daylight and biophilia into the physical workspace. I think also another big piece of is being able to control your physical workspace. You know, being able to sit or stand or adjust your computer monitors, things being less static than they used to be in the past. I think all of those things are things that STO building group does really well when it comes to mental health and wellbeing.
Keith Lodge (18:07):
Great. Whitney, anything to add?
Dr. Whitney Austin Gray (18:08):
I just really want to highlight what Jenn was speaking to around leading the way in the construction industry around mental health and wellbeing. People are shocked when you share that suicide number. I mean, when you think about over, we’re talking about hundreds of years that we have worked to make sure that those workers are safe from those physical, biological, chemical hazards. And again, it’s that psychosocial hazard that’s killing people. So, what’s also fascinating is, I mean, we see this research go back to 2016. We see that on job sites using mindfulness training, and actually, we cited that, in wellness and construction white paper, that was put forward with Delos and with STO group and Structure Tone. And there’s some really great references, and what I’ll say is that I applaud that construction as leapfrogged many that are taking these sort of baby steps called call a hotline, join a program if you have a problem.
Dr. Whitney Austin Gray (19:04):
And just saying, no, everyone is dealing with trauma. We are all dealing with mental health issues. This is not an anomaly. This is not just something that happens. So, the stats are around one in two people, if you really look, will experience some mental health issue in their life. About one in five are in treatment or currently diagnosed. Depression can take upwards of 18 years to diagnose. The idea that you, yourself, or someone directly next to your child, your friend or your coworkers dealing with mental health is real. You don’t catch it; you don’t avoid it. And we are all coming out trauma right now. You didn’t skip it no matter where you were, you were either primary or secondary trauma coming out of this pandemic, which means that you were directly impacted, or you had to sacrifice a way of being. And this isn’t something we need to be afraid of or label it like of someone else’s issue.
Dr. Whitney Austin Gray (19:51):
We are all in this. And I will say to my public health colleagues, they’ve dragged their feet in looking at mental health issues in the workplace. And I applaud that the construction industry and others in the design community are saying actually, we could rethink about how to bring people back. We could create places and make people feel like they belong. We can create cultures where we can actually say, we’re going to get ahead of this issue and not behind it. So why shouldn’t real estate, design, and construction be leaders in mental health and wellness? Why not? Right? And for those that aren’t or don’t have any response to, what are you doing for mental wellness in the workplace, you’re way behind. You need to be assessing, you need to be taking action or you need to have a reason why you’re not. And if you know that coworker that’s suffering right now and nothing is happening to support them, expect that something will roll out, that you will start losing workers.
Dr. Whitney Austin Gray (20:45):
So, about one in five people are reporting that they’re highly disengaged, those numbers are going up from Gallup. That’s a person who’s toxic in the work environment. So not only are they unhappy, but they make everyone around them unhappy. They slow down all work costs easy and complain about everything. Everything moves slower. And I will argue that I don’t think a lot of people that are highly disengaged want to be. I think there’s a different way that we can look at this. And so, there’s a lot of stats, there’s a lot of opportunity, and there’s a lot of timing. And I think that the construction industry is well positioned and real estate to be leaders in this. And I think we’re going to at some point talk about ESG, but that’s just another mechanism to elevate that real estate should and can be leaders and bringing people back, making them belong and helping them heal because we never healed in isolation.
Keith Lodge (21:33):
Yeah, you know, it’s interesting Whitney, you know, just listening to what you just said and trying to correlate back to the beginning of the pandemic and obviously construction, obviously not first responders or anything like that, we were kind of thrust right back into the workforce. A lot of our projects were deemed essential, and initially, it was a scary time for everybody but to kind of peel back the onion and really truly understand what it was like because a lot of those employees wore us almost like a badge of honor. But ultimately, we’re never going to really truly understand what they truly went through during that time and are still going through because they were basically on those front lines of the construction field and back way before the rest of the actual public was back and bring back into the workforce itself.
Dr. Whitney Austin Gray (22:18):
Yeah, and we have ways to study that, too. So, we study a mass disaster, and we study the cycles. So, the honeymoon cycle, recovery cycle. I’m happy to share that with your viewers, and I just want to emphasize that, unlike most disasters, they’re done. The earthquake is done, and you start going through healing. With the pandemic, you thought you were done, then you were yanked back in. So, you were hopeful, and then it was yanked back and then you started to recover, and it was yanked back, right? And that’s unlike anything that we’ve ever lived through in modern history. This is something that – and we don’t need to be afraid of talking about this – this is something we’ve all gone through, and I think the leading employers just acknowledge that we’re kind of in this snow globe moment. You know? We’re shaking it up and seeing where the pieces land but do be prepared.
Dr. Whitney Austin Gray (23:03):
That this is not something that you avoid. Mental health and disease. It’s something that, you know, your head’s attached to your body for a reason. So, they work in concert, and we’re all in the sort of healing phase. So, a lot to learn and a lot to share. But like I said, we’re also figuring out as we go. And I think anyone right now that’s like got it totally figured this whole thing out, it’s probably not being totally honest about that. We’re really living in, you know, writing the next chapter and the next era of work together right now.
Jennifer Taranto (23:33):
And I think, Keith, the other thing you mentioned, and I think I liked your phrase, “badge of honor”, the way that all of our people went back out into the field, but I will tell you at the same time, I had so many conversations with them that they were terrified about bringing home COVID to their families. So, there is both sides of that.
Keith Lodge (23:53):
Absolutely. Shifting gears, a little bit, I want to ask you Lauren, it’s a two-prong question just locally to us. How does the PENN district change the way in which office buildings are viewed today? And also, how does their push for more hospitality for their tenants create a healthier work environment?
Lauren Moss (24:11):
Sure. It’s interesting when you start to look at the big developments that have happened over the last eight to 10 years, and how, you know, the Penn District we look at as a campus. So, we have multiple buildings throughout this district, and we’ve tried to create and are continuing to evolve how we create connection between them. PENN 1, where we’re sitting, is sort of the hub right now, right? And then well, as we open up PENN 2 at the end of the year and as we continue to connect the other buildings in the district and message to the tenants that this is a campus with services for everyone, right? That you can walk from your building at three 30 West 34th Street over to Penn 1, the WIFI’s the same, right? The key card that you have is the same, the tenant benefits are the same. That’s first and foremost.
Lauren Moss (25:02):
And second, it’s this idea of what are the services that we’re seeing people react to, whether it’s the gym, whether it’s the TED talks around health and wellness, whether it’s having, when the Knicks are playing on the big screen or we had the, you know, soccer world cup or whatever it is. What can we do on these staircases, and then how do we, during these off times, create a community space that people can come in, work quietly, have a coffee, go to the doctor, meet their friends. You know, we have the benefit of being on top of the busiest transit hub in the world at Penn Station right here. So, we have a huge amount of community influx and outflux all day. And so, how are we messaging to people that were here that we’re a resource? And I think that’s where we’re really excited and we’re so happy to and use outdoor space to connect the buildings, use what’s coming in terms of public spaces and programming outdoors to continue to connect this campus.
Lauren Moss (26:00):
We’ve rolled this out to both the merchandise Mart in Chicago as well as to our San Francisco buildings. This idea of live, work, do, and having access to everything through your app or through just showing up and having people when you walk in the door say: how are you and how can I help you? Which is very different than your typical office building, right? Typically, in an office building when you walk in you have to go to the security desk to get any input. What we’re saying is no, we want someone standing at the door ready to help you. More like you’re in a hotel and sort of that marriage of hotel and traditional office is going to encourage people to come back and create these social environments and hopefully, that really positively impacts their mental health. You come back to some sort of new normal, right, whatever was pre-COVID and now where are we now and how are we helping to create those bonds so people can feel better about the places they’re in.
Keith Lodge (26:55):
How might the trend of combining the workplace and hospitality environments and commercial real estate continue to evolve in the future moving forward?
Lauren Moss (27:02):
Yeah, I mean I think, you know, we’ll start to see as we do this and as you see this real amenitization of office buildings, this sort of idea of how to create what used to be a traditional class A office building and now what is that redefined as? And I think the research will inform it, and what we see as involvement by the community will define it. Is it that we did a great flight through the American Lung Association where you climb 55 flights in PENN 1, and we opened it up to our tenants so they could create teams and sort of those kinds of volunteer opportunities, what resonates with people, and those, that’s how we’ll continue to evolve it. I think what Jenn was talking about also with the terraces and the outdoor space and the biophilia and nature is a big, big piece of what we want to try and figure out. I don’t know that it hasn’t typically been used that you have tenant spaces using outdoor space roof decks and terraces to encourage tenants to come out that they haven’t rented, right? That’s for the building so that you could go sit outside and have lunch and those are the kinds of things we’ll see continue to change and evolve.
Keith Lodge (28:13):
Well, are you seeing architects and designers face some of these challenges when kind of merging the workplace and the hospitality model?
Lauren Moss (28:20):
Yeah, I mean I think we start to see the architects get really excited and designers, which is really wonderful and to try and figure out how you merge this, what used to be I think really either kept in hotels or apartment buildings with office buildings. How do you carve out space in existing buildings, right? So, if we’re making a decision to remove what would’ve been typically rentable space, how are we then putting something in there that still drives value in the building and what are those, what are those offerings that mean that people will want to be in that building and pay more rent? I mean really, we have to drive value in everything that we’re doing. And so how do the employers communicate to their employees? And those employees then are happy to start coming back and journeying back into the office.
Lauren Moss (29:08):
So, we are challenging the architecture and design community, but I also think they’ve probably been waiting for office owners to say do something different. You know? And the PENN district is amazing in that we’ve carved out open space in PENN 2 on every floor. We have beautiful outdoor spaces that’ll be opening this year. We have complete amenities inside the buildings, and we’re connected to the Farley Building and Amtrak and then you keep going west to Manhattan West and then to Hudson Yards. There’s this real strong community of retail health services, et cetera in this corridor.
Keith Lodge (29:52):
Excellent. My next question – I think you answered but maybe you want to establish a little bit more on it – is what would you suggest from a more of a healthier environment for occupants who might not be in the PENN District itself?
Lauren Moss (30:03):
Yeah, I mean I think clearly indoor air quality, and not just from a COVID perspective but from a cognitive perspective, I think is incredibly critical. So whatever office space you’re in, you want to ensure that from the materials you put in place to the mechanical systems, that you are doing the best thing you can to create this sort of baseline healthy environment. And then what is it you’re doing for your employees in that space? Access to daylight, biophilia, flexibility, lighting is a big piece of what we see changing, controlling of systems and ease of getting in and out of buildings. Also, I think we’ve seen a real adoption of getting rid of key cards, using your phone, using your eyes, things like that sort of allow you to get through the space you’re in really simply. And those are the things we see evolving in the tenant spaces. Also, I would say that – I think we talked a little bit about ESG but – most of our tenants have their own goals, right? So, what are their goals for either their employees and or for their environmental, social and governance strategies and how do they pick a building that helps align with those goals that they can implement? All the strategies they’ve deemed are really important to their employees and to their stakeholders. And so, making selective decisions is important.
Keith Lodge (31:21):
Great. Staying on this topic Whitney, what measurements or indicators do developers or employers use to evaluate the success of their mental health and the wellness initiatives?
Dr. Whitney Austin Gray (31:31):
If you invest in people, you are going to gain that they will stay on the job so that you have a retention factor, you have a recruitment factor, so they want to come work for your company. I think that’s pretty standard. People should be aware at this point that when you lose someone, particularly in higher ranks, that’s going to cost at least half their salary for you to recruit the next person that can take six months. So, that’s a factor that we track, but there’s other sort of factors people don’t think about that are part of the business case. So, I highlighted Gallup’s findings on the engaged worker. You can have a full staff of people, but if only 20% are highly engaged and productive, then you’re not really getting what you paid for. So, we really want to be tracking engagement. There’s lots of ways that we do that through annual surveys where you’re asking people how do they want to work; how do they want to work best?
Dr. Whitney Austin Gray (32:25):
I also would expect as you are tracking these things to recognize that the equations that we previously used to measure productivity or engagement, or recruitment retention are fundamentally changing. The pandemic wasn’t two weeks off, it wasn’t the new normal we’ve returned back to, it wasn’t a band aid, you know, this fundamentally shifted us. And so, when we look historically at the years or epics of work, if you will, so the mezzanine years sort of led into co-working years and now we’re moving into, I will argue, the next era of work. And that means the people, as I said, are not working nine to five Monday through Friday and they’re not all 45-year-old white men, which means there’s different demands than what I want, and then you’re going to get different outcomes as a result of that. So, I expect that my time is valued, this was not historically relevant in the same way.
Dr. Whitney Austin Gray (33:18):
If you walk into a building, I own your time. You have to request a half an hour off for doctor’s appointment. When people had flexibility, their time was their own. And that negotiation is going to show up in that recruitment and retention issue that you’re tracking on mental health, right? You’re going to see people in their short and long-term disability claims that are always going to show mental health issues. Addictions, we haven’t touched on that today, but something very interesting about returning to work is that you actually can see people, they’re dealing with addictions differently. So, we can hide addictions in these from hybrid scenarios, such as alcoholism being present and seeing people is also part of that. So, although there are sort of these traditional recruitment retention outcomes that you can track, which HR will track, I would encourage you to go beyond that to think about engagement, investment, flexibility.
Dr. Whitney Austin Gray (34:07):
If you’ve invested in WELL certification, that’s really important for ESG because you’re not just saying to me, you’re a great employer, you’re not saying that we have a hundred random strategies that we’re just trying to see if that works for health. You are systematically following evidence-based research on what happens when we bring the right amount of light, not just better light. What happens when we bring in the right food, right? And not just food that looks like it’s gluten free and pretty, you know, but actually good for your health. What happens when we bring in spaces that allow you to not feel guilty about working out and just allow you to move throughout the day? This is science. This is not an amending package that you sell to people. You have to be able to really understand what we’re doing to fundamentally shift mental health and wellbeing.
Dr. Whitney Austin Gray (34:52):
You need to look beyond individual stats. You need to recognize it’s the next era of work. And if you want to recruit and retain, you can’t just offer people more money. People want something better. And now that they know that they have the flexibility, they basically incurred during the pandemic, those high-level workers are going to ask for something much different as they should in this next era of work. So, let’s get creative, let’s push this, and let’s not just look at top line but also some bottom-line issues. Risk is there. We don’t pay attention to soothe mental health. And then also productivity gains engagement and really driving that you’re a leading company that can make sure they retain the highest talent that is resilient moving forward as we’re going to see a lot of falloffs as people are not really able to cope and manage with these demands, they’re returning to work.
Keith Lodge (35:43):
Lauren?
Lauren Moss (35:44):
Yeah, I would just say, I think when you look at energy and the idea of setting goals around carbon neutrality or net zero, it’s very straightforward, right? The numbers of how much electricity, how much gas, how much steam did you use in a building, you can slice and dice it by intensity, you can look at occupancy, you can adjust for heating degree days, et cetera. And then you look at what’s sort of been categorized as social, which is a not a great name and sort of this other bucket that actually has to do with people. And I think there still isn’t a very clear metric. What Whitney’s saying is to develop metrics, and I think for most employers and even for owners, it’s a question of what is the framework? There’s a lot of science. I wouldn’t argue that the science is correct. I think it’s how do you create a goal? If you have a goal around women in management, how do you determine what that is, and the baseline has to be where you are today and where you could feasibly get in the future.
Lauren Moss (36:46):
And I think, so when we think about engagement, it’s the same thing of what are the programs we feel that our tenants are asking for, looking for, communicated to us, expressed as an offering, and then how successful they are. And looking at success in many different ways is really important. And I think we’re at, or I would say, I think Whitney’s correct, I think we’re at this moment in time where you know, it is this evolution, this new era of work and how do we create metrics for success that allow everybody to be involved and to follow the journey that is the best for their organization at that moment. And there’s probably a lot of different metrics involved there, right? If it’s the start that just says in every one of our offices, we’re committed to all of our employees having access to natural light. That’s a huge step in terms of the design community. It means when you’re looking for space, you’re looking for very specific things. Maybe it’s that all of our employees want to be within one mile of mass transit, whatever it is that you determine, there are so many different components in it. As owners, we’re going to listen – to clearly listen – to the people that want to rent space from us and be part of these communities to understand how to evolve the design to support those metrics, right? And achieving their goals.
Jennifer Taranto (38:03):
One other thing, I just kind of want to weigh in here too. I think that one way to measure, Whitney mentioned the employee engagement surveys, which are hugely valuable, but there’s also those one-on-one conversations, those one-on-one conversations that allow managers to build better relationships with their employees, to hear directly from the mouth of the employee what’s going on and what their needs are. And I think that that is not only a great way to attract and retain and engage employees as to let them know that their opinion counts by having that conversation, but it also gives back to the organization, right? And I think through those one-on-ones is where you can start to develop what is fundamentally, materially important to this culture, to this workforce and what do we need to be doing as an employer to meet those needs.
Dr. Whitney Austin Gray (38:52):
And maybe if I could just add in too, so this is – also if you’re going to ask what the metrics are that companies can track on mental health and wellness – there’s an entire literature and field on this, and it’s difficult to know where to start at times. And although I would agree, you know, that it’s important to know like how close you want to be to transit, is that I think we also need to be a little thoughtful that just choosing xa random list of metrics doesn’t mean mental wellness. In fact, it often is only mental wellness for those people who actually fill the survey out and too often it’s those that didn’t fill it out that actually really mean us to focus. So, one resource that we are really working very hard on is called the twelve competencies for measuring health and wellbeing for human and social capitals.
Dr. Whitney Austin Gray (39:39):
And we work with a hundred of Fortune 500 companies that are tracking, through the corporate social responsibility report, what is material for their company and what matters. And they need metrics to measure. So, it’s not enough to say the effort. So, you can’t just say, hey, we did all these really cool things, we actually need to demonstrate the effect of that. So, the twelve competencies offer 150 different measurement categories and it’s really targeting real estate at sustainability leaders and construction leaders and companies that are saying we want more than just a simple metric. We want to really understand this issue of how do you make people belong. For many they feel like that’s overwhelming, that’s HR, that’s someone else. This job well in know news slash not anymore. You know, if you want to recruit and retain the best talent, we need to be able to track, measure, and understand their mental health wellbeing.
Dr. Whitney Austin Gray (40:31):
And it’s not as difficult as we thought, but I would encourage us to be thoughtful with sophisticated measures. There are some lessons learned in the green building movement with greenwashing. Just because a measure was easy early, doesn’t mean it was the right one, and just because it was easy, it made you look good, doesn’t mean it actually was going to be supporting sustainability and environmental goals. So, we really are providing this a resource to all of our partners to say if we want to create a tool that can track human and social capital for companies, let’s do it in a little more holistic way and support that there are a lot of metrics, it can be overwhelming, but if we step into better tracking and use as a tool across the industry, we also can drive better reporting for ESG. And the last comment I’ll make is that for ESG, CSR, the whole outfit soup out there, the majority of reporting on health is going to be about disease, death, and injury.
Dr. Whitney Austin Gray (41:26):
Very few, if any, are going to ask about health promotion. And that’s also a big shift to Jenn’s point about, if a company like STO is investing in the health of people, you should also be tracking those health promotion outcomes, recruitment, retention, sure, they’re there, they’re good ones to start with, but if we do want to dig deeper, and I really appreciate my colleagues’ comments here, I do want to offer that there are tools that really, I think, step up to saying we need to be highly specified, targeted, scientifically valid, and evidence based in our measurement around mental health and wellbeing for human social capital.
Keith Lodge (42:04):
Thank you. Jenn, how can AEC professionals better partner with clients to design and build spaces to accommodate mental health needs and considerations?
Jennifer Taranto (42:15):
Yeah, so obviously I represent the C here, and so, it would be interesting to, to have Lauren’s take on this question since she’s the client. But from my perspective, and I think from our organization’s perspective, it’s really key that we understand the client’s visions and goals. Like you want to understand those specific mental health requirements for the space, and it needs to be a collaborative approach, right? We want to conduct some stakeholder meetings, really that allows the team to get some user feedback so that the team can better be informed to solve those issues. Whether the issues are around personal space or privacy or acoustic comfort. Technology is such a big piece of all of the work that we’re doing today. Making sure that those spaces are flexible and adaptive for different types of use throughout the day. And I think that when you really listen to the users of a space and you strive to get those things correct, I know they’re not always correct on day one, clients move in and they realize spaces didn’t quite work the way they thought or hoped they work, but we continue to work with them with our great relationship in order to improve the space over time with them.
Jennifer Taranto (43:25):
But all of those things have the potential to contribute to better mental health outcomes for the occupants.
Lauren Moss (43:32):
Yeah, I would say I, I agree actually with everything that Jenn said. I think the idea of engagement early on and frequently to understand what the desired outcome is, is critical to ensure, you know, when we think about our buildings and we think about the goals for our organization as an owner or an operator and we think about the spaces within it, there’s a fine line. We control only so much, right? We then lease out the space within it. So, what we have done and created are guidelines around sort of space fit outs, right? Very much driven around efficiency and energy, et cetera. The concept next is materiality, right? What kinds of materials we want people bringing into the spaces, embodied carbon, if they have terraces, what can they do on those terraces? We look at it not just from the occupant experience but also from water conservation, et cetera.
Lauren Moss (44:28):
Because I do think that engagement with your tenants on the softer side of sustainability also has a positive impact we’ve seen. I think the idea of understanding what the people in the space need and how we can ensure that we give it to them and provide it to them as an option is how we do everything right? And so, how do we determine the programming that we are going to offer people? It is about sort of engagement with those communities to understand what their needs are, what they’re looking for, how do we think through the volunteer efforts or the philanthropy that we do. It’s the communities that we’re part of and the people in those communities giving us that information so that then we can start to understand what we’re doing and measure the impact of the decision that we’ve made. Whether it be through how many people we touched, how many volunteer hours, et cetera. There are ways in which we’re engaging in measurement to try and understand success. And I think that it will continue to grow, which is the really exciting piece of it and the really positive piece that everybody seems invested and interested in creating both spaces to work in that are comfortable and buildings that are parts of communities and allow you to explore the things that you’re interested in exploring, that make you feel as a part of the community that you’re in.
Keith Lodge (45:46):
Great. Jenn, I want to kick it back to you. We kind of hit on this side of the, you know, the designer, the builder. How can we do a better job of promoting mental health and wellbeing on our sites?
Jennifer Taranto (45:57):
I think as an industry we really need to continue to raise awareness and understanding around mental health. We’ve got to keep talking about it so that others feel comfortable talking about it and asking for help. There have been a number of instances where I have been at an internal event and been talking about mental health awareness and had people so grateful coming up to me afterwards. So, I do think that that is a meaningful part of the conversation is just to continue having the conversation. But people need training and education on hey, how to handle situations that arise, right? Our supers on the site, our safety people are often going to be that first line when somebody needs help, and they need to know where to go and what to do when it happens. You know, listen, our field teams and our trade partners are amazing.
Jennifer Taranto (46:44):
They can build the greatest projects, they can build the best buildings, but they can also build a culture of inclusivity and respect and support on that job site. And they can really promote teamwork and discourage bullying and harassment, right? People need to feel safe coming to work, and I think that’s a huge piece of mental health. You know, apart from that, just consistent communication about those resources where to ask for help, and we need to provide opportunities to get feedback back from our trade partners and get feedback back from our field staff. Letting workers provide their own suggestions on how we can improve what’s going on the job site. You know, tell us what’s working and what isn’t. Those are like the big things that we can continue to do well and even improve on as we move forward.
Keith Lodge (47:37):
I’m going to open up the last question for the group. What’s on the horizon for mental health and wellness in the workplace? I’ll kick it off with you, Whitney.
Dr. Whitney Austin Gray (47:44):
Sure. Well, I would just encourage everyone to recognize that mental health is part of health. I said jokingly, but there’s a reason your head’s attached to your body. We have this sort of cultural idea that if someone broke their leg, they get sympathy and yet, we don’t have that same moment when people are burning out or when people need help. We don’t see it oftentimes when we’re dealing with, you know, trauma, when we’re dealing with issues. You wear it like a badge of honor. And so, that is shifting. I think what’s beautiful about what Jenn just said about the culture in construction is that it is so tightly run and so necessary for the team to be functioning its highest. So, any person or member of that team that is has a broken leg, whether you see it or not, you know what I mean, is going to be an issue for the team’s ability to win.
Dr. Whitney Austin Gray (48:31):
So, we have to pay attention to this, and it’s not a bad thing. It’s actually a wonderful thing to acknowledge that we actually can get more resilient by looking at physical and mental health and not just waiting through someone to break their leg to have sympathy or ask them if they’re okay. The big trend that I’m going to be, you know, we’re definitely tracking right now, or I should say it’s something I’m really focused on, is time: the thing you can’t get back, and health’s the thing you can’t live without. And I think people have a very different priority of what they want to do with their time, and they’re going to be demanding and thinking differently about it. So, who they spend time with, where they spend that time, who they’re willing to give their time to or not, whether that’s traffic or whether that’s where they’re feeling like pointless work.
Dr. Whitney Austin Gray (49:17):
And so, there’s going to be, I think a different understanding, and we’re seeing that also isolation’s a big issue within wellness and within mental health. So, start combining these and recognize that there are major companies creating spaces that are about community. So, if anyone like SoulCycle, they’re coming up with a program that’s just about people getting together and they’re not on bicycles to do it. There are country clubs to social clubs, to spotlight environments where people are just signing memberships to be part of something, to be connected to other people because their time matters, and they want to feel like they’re part of something. So, we’re going to see that happen, and I think the leading employers are understanding the hospitality is a great way to understand how to bring that in. There tend to be about 10 to 15 years ahead of workplaces and thinking about how to actually bring in mental health and wellbeing. Think about the time and the priority that people have and think about connection, community resilience, and don’t be afraid that mental health’s not something that’s going to happen. It literally is what you have, and you need to function your best and so do your employees.
Keith Lodge (50:21):
Lauren.
Lauren Moss (50:22):
I mean I think as an owner operator, we will continue to see what the research is and how the communities that we want to serve respond to what is coming out, right? As employers shift to accommodate and integrate mental health into their focus of how they recruit, how they maintain, how they attract their employees, it will come down into how they want to use their spaces and what they want in their spaces as amenities or as offerings or as the basics, like we used to think of giving people however much the fit out should be. Right? Is there an opportunity then to think about, beyond your space in that building, what’s the common space, right? What’s the community building part of an office building as people change their approach to work? And I think we’ll start; we’ll continue to see that evolve, and we’ll continue to look at the spaces that we have and the ability to set aside space to make the buildings change with this change in work. And I think you see that in a lot of the buildings that we have now and the work that we’re doing, and you’ll see it continue to grow and to other buildings as we work through them as well.
Keith Lodge (51:42):
Great. Jennifer, anything to add?
Jennifer Taranto (51:43):
Yeah, I like to think about, you know, when I think about like my wish list of technology, I like to think about how technology enabled support may come about. You know, is it through virtual mental health platforms? Is it through wearables that allow people to get easier access to self-help tools, whether it’s therapy or coaching or stress management resources? And where does AI eventually play into these scenarios? You know, could it be utilized to identify early signs of mental health issues and then provide personalized recommendations? And then I like to think about how does that all fit onto a construction job site, right? We’ve seen some construction companies have put pods on job sites, have provided places for people to have nurses full-time. There are a lot of things that are moving forward. The world is changing faster than I think it’s ever changed before. And so, I think that we really kind of have to open ourselves up to that technology enablement. How do our spaces enable us to be better? And that’s not only in terms of productivity, but also in terms of mental health and wellness.
Keith Lodge (52:57):
Okay. That is all that we had here today. I appreciate your time. Thank you.
Outro (53:05):
Thanks for listening to Building Conversations. For more episodes like this, you can find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, audible, and the STO Building Group website.