Atkins on human centred design for economic well-being
Atkins joined our Healthy Cities Forum on 9th October, explaining to our audience the economic value to improving health and wellbeing through good office design.
The firm has developed digital tools to assess how companies might design their office environments, for the benefit of employees.The tools which have won awards are able to assess employee needs in office design, test solutions and post occupancy value.
Atkins believes that improving office design could add £20 billion to UK GDP and any investment in high quality design could be recouped in two to six years. Atkins has been working with Imperial College London to research these figures and findings show that the uplift cost in improving design is estimated at 21% maximum. Circa £30 billion Atkins says is lost annually to our economy in sickness absence due to poor working conditions, which equates to 570,000 hours.
Atkins UK Design Director Philip Watson says that only 1% of costs to a business come from energy needs but 90% from staff, so he believes it is vital to assess qualities of light, air, temperature, connection to nature and views if companies want staff to perform at their best,
Watch Philip's video clip above to understand more about this fascinating research.