Local opinion: Let’s design our office spaces like the spa industry does it

Re: the Dec. 4 article “Few employers try incentives to bring workers back of office.”

Wyatte Grantham-Philips’ Associated Press article indicated that few employers are adding amenities to attract employees back to the office. Yet, many are mandating back-to-the-office work replacing work-from-home. The result is that many workers, especially Gen Z’ers, are refusing to comply with these mandates and are leaving companies that do not allow flex work or offer amenities to attract people back.

In Tucson, I live a ten- to twenty-minute drive from at least five world-class spas. None mandate people to come to them. The moment you walk into one of those places you feel relaxed, and ready to let go of any tensions you may have. They are designed to do so, from the shape of the buildings to the colors and textures on the walls and floors and furniture, to the air you breathe, and the calming sounds you hear, the lighting and beautiful views and access to nature.

So why can’t organizations who want their office workers to return to work, create environments to attract employees to the office, rather than forcing them back?

I’m not advocating that offices should be spas, but my over two decades of research with the U.S. General Services Administration, using wearable devices to measure the health, stress, and wellbeing impacts of workspaces in five federal buildings across the U.S., is providing a prescription for how to design workspaces to enhance both physical health and emotional wellbeing. We know from this research the precise sound levels that enhance physiological wellbeing; the precise humidity levels that reduce stress; the office layouts that most encourage movement during the day, reduce stress in the evening, enhance sleep quality at night, and reduce fatigue the next day; the precise light levels and time of light exposure (morning light) that improve sleep quality, help you fall asleep faster and leave you in a better mood the next day. If all this sounds like it is reminiscent of what a spa does, you’re right. And the GSA is using this data to inform post-COVID re-entry into the office across the federal government.

Clean air and good ventilation are also essential to reduce spread of germs and allergens, but that’s not enough. Workers will not be attracted back to a dark, noisy, high-walled cubicle farm, no matter how great the ventilation. Designing spaces to attract people back to those now only 30-40% occupied downtown office towers, will help head off the predicted “downtown apocalypse” when companies shrink their footprints while renewing their leases.

More importantly, it will help employees stay resilient. The Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine has defined seven domains of integrative health. There’s resilience (reducing stress); movement; environment (green spaces, nature, clean air, light); relationships; nutrition; spirituality; and sleep. It may be hard to actively remind yourself to engage in these practices on a daily basis. But if your workspace helps you passively engage in integrative health practices, it could be your new gym – or spa, if designed right.

Americans spend an estimated 90% of their time indoors, much of that in their workplaces. We can and should design and operate workspaces, as the spas do, to support all seven domains of integrative health. The guidelines that we and others have identified through our wearables research provides a roadmap for wellbeing workspaces that enhance movement and relationships, offer spaces for mini-meditation breaks, provide acoustic solutions to optimize sound levels to reduce stress, optimize lighting to improve nighttime sleep quality and humidity levels to reduce stress and protect from infection, and offer healthy food choices at work. Importantly these spaces must be designed with the individual in mind.

Intentionally designing to optimize wellbeing will both attract people back to those half empty shared workplaces and help keep workers happier, healthier, and more resilient.