One of the most fascinating employer case studies presented at this year’s Watercooler was by pharmaceutical company GSK on how it created, what it calls, “Britain’s Healthiest Building”.
This was following the firm’s decision, three years ago, to move from its headquarters in Brentford to a new office near Tottenham Court Road station, birthing this bold ambition and the start of ‘Project Emerald’.
GSK Head of EMEA Chris Higgins began his presentation by pointing out the problematic nature of even calling a building “most healthy” because that is still something businesses are trying to define.
Healthy workplace?
As he said:
“With the new GSK HQ, we set out to create one of the world’s healthiest workplaces. But what does that mean? How on earth do we do that? Is that Julian, or Sheila, in accounts doing arm presses and bicep curls at their desk? Or star jumps? Or is it everyone being mindful, sitting on the floor cross-legged?”
To answer these questions, the first step was to “onboard partners”, like the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI), which Higgins co-presented with, early in the programme to define the strategy. The team had a very short amount of time – nine months – to fit out the 150,000 square foot space.
In short, the team concluded that creating a healthy workplace was primarily about “removing barriers” and thinking differently about what has been done in the past. The employer had already done a lot of thinking on this topic, having hired ART Health Solutions in 2018 to audit its previous site, GSK House, when it created the ‘Workplace Performance Hub’. This was all about how you improve the performance of individuals, by looking at variables like office temperature, energy levels, lighting, colours and scent.
Flip metrics on head
But with project Emerald, GSK wanted to “accelerate this even further” and one of the most innovative things it did was flip its measurement metrics on their head:
“Instead of focusing on performance in the post-Covid era, we started focusing on health. Working with people so closely in this industry, we knew that when you drive and support health of individuals, performance naturally follows.”
Consequently, with its partners, GSK started measuring health-related activities, rather than performance per se, such as heart rates, sleep patterns, daytime activity levels, stress levels, cognitive performance at the office versus home, working memory, etc.
“The other important piece that we measure is the human impact of what we’re creating,” said Higgins.
No standard gym
Its innovative and health-rather-than-performance approach to the company gym exemplifies this approach.
Higgins explained:
“Normally a corporate gym is in the basement. It’s a second thought. A really small area. And people are charged to use it. But we elevated it up to the ninth floor, where the entire floor is taken up by wellness, with full state of the art technology and equipment. And it’s free.”
GSK saw a significant change in behaviour. “I often go up to the ninth floor now and see people with compression trousers on, or sitting on a Teams call while looking out the window, or coming into the office to use the premium gym, and this is just the healthy behaviour we want to see,” said Higgins.
The gym also serves an additional purpose – as well as creating a space where people can get fit and connect with others – and that’s to supply valuable data which measures progress.
Tracking improvement
For instance, the state of the art tech in the gym monitors a raft of variables of individuals such as their mindfulness activity, flexibility improvement, physical wellbeing, etc. This information all feeds back into a central hub, which aggregates the data so GSK knows results such as how many miles have been run on the treadmills, or kilometres cycled on the bikes, etc.
“We can see the marked improvement in the activities but, most importantly, we’ve made it competitive for them as well. People can see how they’re doing individually, or by team. This gamification of health and wellbeing removes barriers too,” he said.
The fact that the gym is open to GSK employees and contractors, but also their guests who come into the building, reflects a wider approach to building: a focus on community building.
Community building
With its food strategy, for instance, the healthy food it serves is available to buy by the public, and the employer hosts groups of school children to learn about nutrition, too.
“We’re giving back into the community and impacting, not just the staff within our space, but people around the building in a positive way too” said Higgins.
“This means that the business case also includes positive impact on the community and creating a place where people are proud to work, and want to come to. The revenue generated from the public also removes the need to subsidise the food.”
Any produce not used in its restaurant, which is all UK-sourced, is given to local foodbanks, too.
Concierge service: why?
GSK’s innovative thinking is also reflected in how it’s making the office a more desirable place to be such as its concierge service, which helps do errands such as picking up dry cleaning, sorting emergency childcare, booking a holiday/theatre tickets and getting a plumber.
“Why would we do that? There are a few reasons,” said Higgins. “People are probably doing these things at work. We’ve all done them. So we are taking these tasks away and giving them an easier option which enables them to focus on their work and reduces their stress and makes them more productive.”
He estimates that this service saves roughly 1.5 hours for every request received.
ERGs fundamental
The new office has already been awarded various accolades and builds on GSK’s engagement in IWBI’s WELL at scale programme, which helps leaders prioritise health and well-being across their organisation or real estate portfolio. GSK has enrolled 67 of their locations across more than 195,000 square metres in 23 countries, which impacts nearly 11,000 people. Already, the company has achieved two WELL Certifications at the Platinum level, two Gold level WELL Certifications and 67 WELL Health-Safety Ratings.
Higgins puts success at Project Emerald partly down to the way that teams across GSK have been engaged in the project. For instance, ERGs have been “fundamental”:
“You can’t create the world’s healthiest building without knowing who your client is. And you can’t be inclusive if you don’t work with the groups that have to work in that space, especially those that don’t necessarily have the loud voice of the masses.”
Employees more productive in office
At time of publishing, GSK couldn’t share “exact numbers” measuring the success of the building, but was working on a white paper to this end. However, Higgins confirmed that the employer could prove “a significant reduction in stress and an improvement in working memory”. Additionally, the results show that employees are more productive when they come to the office.
The reason that GSK is so keen to share its experiences and share them at events like The Watercooler is the hope that it will inspire other employers to set the same healthy ambitions. Higgins explains:
“We want other companies to strive to create the healthiest buildings in the world and that’s why we share the information that we can, and why we’re continually evolving our site and want to work with world leaders.”
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