Productivity Heaven Series

Worker productivity is fundamental for our economic health. Sadly, UK’s productivity is 35% less than the Germans, and 30% less than the US. The French could produce the average British worker’s weekly output, and still take Friday off. (source – ONS)

This productivity gap is a barrier to UK’s prosperity and efforts to close this gap have failed so far. Productivity is a complex, nuanced problem with many influencing factors.

Nevertheless, there is clear evidence that Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) has a big effect on productivity. Improve conditions, and wellbeing and productivity improves – measurably.

We’ve spent three years researching buildings, wellbeing and productivity, and written a straightforward step by step process for companies to measure and improve the working environment for their people.

For the next five months, we’re serialising these steps. To get all the steps immediately, download the full guide for free here, otherwise, read on below.

Step 1: Engage stakeholders

We suggest you start by talking with your stakeholders to build your understanding of the key drivers of productivity within your business. This will help you to engage appropriately with the relevant internal stakeholders and get their support when you come back to them with proposed measures.

Meet with representatives from finance, IT and senior management to define the benefits, then plan and agree the approach.

  • Identify key stakeholders

Start by ranking your stakeholders according to how much influence they have and the importance of staff wellbeing and productivity for them. Meet each of your stakeholders and set the context of the conversation, perhaps by sharing this guide with them. Explain the underlying concepts and benefits of improving IEQ to gain their support.

  • Ask questions to build your understanding

This will help you understand what their key concerns are regarding staff wellbeing and performance, the strength of their support for improving working conditions.

Finally, you should find out how they track staff wellbeing, productivity, and if they collect feedback from staff about working conditions.

  • Prioritise improvement areas for each stakeholder

Your questions will help you prioritise improvement areas and set the urgency of delivering each one. In turn, it will help you allocate your budget to the areas which will achieve the biggest positive impact for your business and for your stakeholders.

  • Compile a business case and performance metrics

Once you’ve identified the potential areas for improvement you can create outline business cases to define the impact of IEQ. Use research benchmarks provided by bodies such as The World Green Building Council to identity the likely impacts on productivity. You can then scope trial projects to validate the impact for your organisation.

  • Present back to stakeholders to get project sign off

Read here for Step 2 of the Productivity Heaven Series.

Share this post

You may also like

Newsletter mailing list

Sign up for our newsletter

For tips and hints on effective estates management, exclusive events and interesting articles sign up for our newsletter.

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

LCMB Blog

View more of our blog posts

Scroll to Top

Join our Mailing List

Please fill in your details to receive regular updates

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.