Green and Productive? Metrics Can Show You the Money

By Bob Best

Greening your office bears many fruits, but balancing the competing imperatives of sustainability and workplace productivity can be a challenge. Sustainability initiatives can cut energy costs and boost your company’s reputation as a socially responsible organization. But when green workplace initiatives actively thwart employee comfort — think: unpleasant thermostat settings — they can actually undermine employee productivity. With metrics-driven analysis, you can pinpoint exactly where sustainability programs are helping — or hurting — employee health, wellbeing and productivity.

Side-by-side comparisons reveal opportunity

Who doesn't want to improve productivity while scoring corporate social responsibility points? Until recently, however, most organizations have looked at sustainability and productivity as separate domains. The new thinking is that sustainability and productivity are linked and should be assessed in tandem. The catch: The two are not always aligned. Sometimes green investments are not productive, and vice versa. Understanding which green features are good for employee productivity in a particular building can be critical to determine investments in green building or green office programs.

A new report from JLL and the World Green Building Council, Health, Wellbeing and Productivity in Offices: The Next Chapter for Green Building, provides compelling evidence that green offices can be more productive with an analysis of more than a decade’s worth of research on the impact of green office practices on employee health, wellbeing and overall productivity. New software can assess how and where green office practices are working for or against productivity, and where gains might realistically be achieved.

The lucky three rule of thumb

Consider the “3-30-300” rule of thumb, which proposes that the greatest financial savings from greening a workplace can emerge not in resource conservation, but in productivity gains. If an organization spends $3 per square foot on annual utilities, $30 on rent and $300 on payroll, a 2 percent energy efficiency improvement equals savings of 6 cents per square foot. More impressive, achieving a 2 percent productivity improvement would result in a whopping $6 financial gain in revenue per square foot. As beneficial as energy savings can be, any green investment that increases employee wellness and productivity can have exponentially greater value.

The trick is to determine gains or setbacks in both green practices and productivity in tandem, holistically tracking metrics for their impact on the broader organizational goals. Today’s new software track a wide range of sustainability and productivity metrics in one building or across many, and benchmark your company’s scores against other companies’ metrics to identify potential — achievable — sustainability and productivity goals. The software also measures your company’s assessment against the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, an important measure for corporate social responsibility and reputation.

You can use the software to assess and assign scores across a wide range of activities in the key categories of energy, water, waste and use of resources; space use efficiency and layout; and employee wellness and productivity. Metrics can be applied to characteristics of lighting, heating and cooling, plug loads and server rooms, green purchasing, use of paper, recycling programs, commuting, green tenant programs, workplace configuration, acoustic and visual comfort, thermal and indoor air quality, amenities, and more.

Benchmarking provides an objective understanding of a facility’s strengths and pinpoints where productivity gains could be achieved via modifications to sustainability features. The results might suggest that employees need more access to natural light, for example, or that an investment in computerized lighting could save energy without compromising employee workspaces.

For example, a facility achieving energy savings may achieve a high "green" score, but a low productivity score because employees are too hot or cold. The right metrics will enable a company to quantify the impact on annual revenue. It might earn a high productivity score for a work-enabling office layout, but a low green score for lack of onsite recycling.

One JLL client’s experience reveals the value of benchmarking various green practices in an even more tangible way. The client used the metrics to identify green investments that will ultimately achieve more than $160,000 in productivity gains in a single facility.

Key concepts for data integration

For metrics to do their job, first consider the company’s current level of effectiveness in balancing sustainability and productivity:

1. Can you prioritize employee comfort and energy efficiency equally, by purposefully choosing green practices that optimize both?


2. Do you monitor how well and how often employees engage in green programs, such as recycling?


3. Does your facility use space designed for the work to be performed, offering optimum environments for individual tasks, employee interaction, team building, operations and customer service?


4. How well does your facility support employee wellbeing? To what extent have you established environmentally friendly features such as temperature and noise control, pleasing indoor air quality, and access to natural light?

Ultimately, the use of a wide range of metrics and related analyses will provide insights far beyond stating the face value of any single initiative — all in one metrics-driven fell swoop. Enormous potential lies in analyzing data across these traditionally separate realms of sustainability and productivity. Side-by-side impact comparisons can support long-term strategic thinking that strengthens both sustainability and productivity efforts. Let the metrics show you the money — and the happy, healthy employees.

Image credit: Flickr/kodomut

Bob Best directs energy and sustainability business operations – with responsibilities that include new business development, energy reduction programs, client sustainability efforts, performance metrics, operating standards and training. He is a LEED^® Accredited Professional through the U.S. Green Building Council and a Green Globes Professional through the Green Building Initiative. Best co-authored "Green + Productive Workplace: The Office of the Future…Today."