Benefits Package - Fitwel and WELL Requirements

Theresa Lehman

Director of Sustainable Services

Miron Construction Co., Inc.

LEEDuser Premium Member

40 thumbs up

July 9, 2019

I'm going way outside of my skillset and comfort zone...venturing into HR territory to do an analysis of my company's benefits package to see if it meets exceeds or falls short of the requirements of Fitwel and WELL. Has anyone else done this within their organization? How was this received by your company's executive team?

When presenting this information to the senior executive group, is it good idea to do an analysis to also compare the benefits package to others' in the industry, as well as outside the industry? Is anyone aware of where to find this information or anyone will to share a summary of their company's benefit package?

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Mara Baum

Partner, Architecture & Sustainability

DIALOG

LEEDuser Premium Member

449 thumbs up

Tue, 07/09/2019 - 15:28

Hi Theresa, I did this a while back, for WELL v1 – that process gave me enough answers to more or less also understand our status with respect to WELL v2 also. We’ve looked very closely at Fitwel for several of our locations, but there’s less firmwide policy that directly impacts that rating system (as compared with WELL). The devil is in the details, but here are a few of my takeaways: * US and international offices are completely different. I only looked at this for the US. Canada and London tend to fare better. Other countries are a mixed bag. * Only a handful of our benefits translate directly across every office. Within HOK most of the policies and programs relevant to WELL are decided locally (healthcare excepted). * Most of the relevant firmwide benefits related to healthcare. Several of the features are tricky to evaluate because they ask us to subsidize certain services by 50%. This is a little wonky to calculate because HOK offers many different options for healthcare plans that function in different ways – e.g. either employee-only, employee + spouse/partner; employee + family and also high deductible, low deductible, and Kaiser. At the end of the day it felt like we more than accomplished the WELL requirement, but there’s a lot to wrap your head around. * There are several sets of benefits that almost no US-based employer will meet, particularly related to family support, maternity leave, etc. * Our HR staff are especially busy October through March. If yours are like ours, then now is good time to work with them. They were really interested in this and appreciated the dialog. I’ve regularly sought their ideas and input when working with clients’ HR staff – they’re great resources to have. I hope that helps. Mara MARA BAUM FAIA, LEED Fellow, WELL AP, WELL Faculty Principal | Sustainable Design Leader, Health and Wellness HOK 1 Bush St., Suite 200 | San Francisco, CA 94104 USA t +1 415 356 8660 m +1 415 691 9782 mara.baum@hok.com hok.com | connect | privacy policy AIA California Honors HOK with 2019 Firm Award From: Theresa Leh