Commercial real estate services firm JLL created a program and online tool called Green + Productive Workplace to find out which ties green office space investments to employee productivity gains. The results show that a green workplace make employees more productive, as environmental sustainability experts have long argued. "Contrary to popular perception, not all green offices increase productivity," explains Simone Skopek, Operations Manager, Energy and Sustainability Services, JLL. "Shrinking your office space can reduce heating and cooling costs -- but lead to over-crowding or excessive noise. As beneficial as energy savings can be, green investments create exponentially greater value when they also improve employee wellness and productivity. What works is a holistic approach that tracks metrics for both sustainability and productivity." Challenging the notion that green offices automatically lead to greater productivity, the Green + Productive Workplace tool compiles scores for both sustainability and productivity measures. These scores are benchmarked against other corporate scores, and also against the Dow Jones Sustainability Index criteria for an organization's corporate real estate. "Green" scores rate the use of energy, water, waste and other resources. "Productive" scores assess factors known to influence employee productivity and engagement, including: thermal comfort, indoor air quality, access to natural light, sound control, etc. While studies have long suggested a connection between green workspaces and productivity, the World Green Building Council is undertaking a major research project to further explore this relationship. JLL is among the partners of the landmark project, which will build on existing information -- including JLL's Green + Productive Workplace benchmarking -- to propose green workplace best practices and standard metrics for implementing, measuring and quantifying health, wellbeing and productivity. The study will be released in October 2014. JLL's Energy & Sustainability Services (ESS) group helps commercial building owners and occupiers improve the energy and environmental performance of buildings. The gLAWcal Team POREEN project Wednesday, 30 July 2014 (Source: The Wall Street Journal)