JLL achieves well-being milestone with world’s first WELL Portfolio Scores for building occupiers

JLL is the first corporate occupier in the world to receive a WELL Portfolio Score from The International WELL Building Institute (IWBI) by applying the WELL Building Standard to its own office portfolio.

The WELL Portfolio process allows JLL to benchmark its full range of workspaces and move its offices toward one global standard, ensuring JLL offices around the world meet the highest standards of sustainability and health and well-being.

Currently, JLL has 194 properties in 18 countries with more than 23,000 people in the WELL Portfolio program. These offices are in North America and Asia Pacific, including three WELL Certified at the Platinum level. JLL will learn from the successes in North America and Asia Pacific, with the intention to bring 80-90 JLL offices in Europe and the Middle East (EMEA) into WELL Portfolio from October 2020.

JLL intends to go beyond certifying its own offices to help clients get started with the WELL Portfolio program and provide their employees with the highest standards of sustainability, health and well-being in their office spaces.

“The well-being being of our people and our clients is of utmost importance to JLL. We have long been supportive of WELL as the industry benchmark for health standards in buildings. That’s why we undertook this project to enroll our portfolio last year. Along with Lendlease, we are leading the way as first occupier and first owner to achieve WELL Portfolio Scores at scale,” says Matthew Clifford, Global Product Owner, Energy and Sustainability Services, JLL.

“More than ever, we need to ensure that our buildings and workplaces support the physical, psychological and social health of those who occupy them. Our WELL Portfolio Score is a further step in our commitment to improving our work environment and amenities for all our employees so they can experience a greater sense of happiness and wellness at work.”

The WELL Building Standard is the industry’s leading health-focused benchmark for buildings, helping businesses impact the well-being of their employees through sustainable, forward-thinking office design. And with health and well-being in the built environment being an increasing focus for developers and companies considering Covid-19, JLL’s WELL Portfolio Score is a significant metric that showcases that WELL features are applied across its workspaces.

The WELL Portfolio program was launched by IWBI in 2018 for owners, developers and tenants to streamline and scale health and wellness strategies across multiple assets in their real estate portfolios and throughout their organizations.

“WELL Portfolio is a mechanism that can guide organizations on a journey to implement, assess and celebrate proven wellness strategies and performance at scale,” says Rick Fedrizzi, IWBI Chairman and CEO. “It enables participants to impact the well-being of many (within their portfolio) while improving the organization’s competitive advantage.”

Importance in a post-pandemic world

The worldwide trend towards healthier indoor spaces was gaining traction before the COVID-19 outbreak. Against the backdrop of the pandemic, the integration of health and the built environment is more urgent than ever.

According to research from Harvard University’s Healthy Buildings Lab, buildings are able to promote better health and help stem the spread of infectious disease through improvements in elements such as air quality and humidity levels. From reviewing heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems (HVAC) to having better microbe and mold controls, there are a host of ways to ensure healthier workplaces.

“Amid this global pandemic, our buildings play an even greater role in promoting public health. We believe that buildings and those who tend to them – owners and developers, facilities managers and HR professionals – can be frontline caregivers in terms of being agents of health,” says Rachel Gutter, President IWBI.

JLL is a long-time strategic partner with IWBI and share a vision for spaces that can positively impact people’s health and deliver strong investment outcomes. More information on WELL can be found here.