Oxford Wellbeing Priorities
What are the highest priority wellbeing features for our customers that we should focus on?
That’s the question that a global team of Oxford team members leaned into in 2018. The team studied leading standards (WELL and Fitwel), surveyed our customers and debated a wide range of issues.
So what did they come up with? Here is their list of 7 priority areas – (1) Air Quality, (2) Water Quality, (3) Nutrition & Hydration, (4) Individual Health, (5) Shared Space, (6) Lighting and (7) Biophilic Design.
The team has begun benchmarking our global portfolio in each of these areas and will be recommending coordinated action based on their findings as well as continued dialogue with our customers.
The Year of Yoga
2018 was the year of the downward dog and sun salutations across our global office and retail portfolio.
Our customers told us they were interested in Yoga classes and our teams delivered in spectacular fashion.
Sony Center in Berlin, Germany, introduced outdoor yoga classes on the terrace as its first wellbeing initiative for customers. The yoga series began as a three class trial and quickly became a weekly ritual for our customers.
Dix30 Shopping Centre in Quebec held an outdoor yoga event in June with radiant coloured mats and yogis of all ages participating. With more than 400 participants, over $21,000 was raised to support lung cancer patients at a local
hospital. And Royal Bank Plaza in Toronto introduced well attended lunchtime yoga classes on their outdoor terrace throughout the summer.
These wildly successful yoga classes allowed customers to connect, get healthy, and relax during their work day. A great win for all involved!
An Outstanding Shared Space
How do you revitalize an underutilized 11,000 square foot space on the lower level of a downtown Boston office building?
You convert it into a leading edge multi-purpose amenity center. The team at 225 Franklin Street had a vision and executed on it to deliver a beautifully designed meeting and event space that includes a bar and catering
service area, with formal and informal seating. Customers can book out “The Foundation” for external events and meeting space as an extension to their own suite.
Wellbeing amenities, such as men’s and women’s locker rooms, bike storage and even two professional golf simulators were also added to enhance the customer experience.
NYC Wellness Week
Oxford’s 450 Park Ave office building in New York City held their highly anticipated 2nd Annual Wellness Week in October, 2018.
Customers were greeted each morning with freshly brewed organic coffee, fresh fruits and lots of healthy snacks. By midday, customers got to work up a sweat on a fun run to Central Park, yoga classes as well as self-made smoothies
via pedal power a la “sweetcycle” in the Plaza. The week of healthy goodies, body care and mindful activities wrapped up with Friday “game-day” where customers got to unwind and enjoy floor scrabble, mini basketball, tennis ball
darts and an office favorite, cornhole.
This year also marked the first round of “puppy therapy” which was the clear winner with everyone. We are very happy to announce that multiple adoption requests were submitted and a new little puppy named Murphy was officially
adopted by one of the tenants!
Well by Design (& Certified Too)
MNP Tower (Vancouver) was the first new building in Canada to become WELL Core & Shell certified.
Given that we spend 90% of our time indoors (and over half our waking hours in the office), it’s clear that a healthy environment at the office can have substantial health and productivity benefits.
The WELL Standard aligned with our objectives at MNP Tower. Actions taken by our team that were recognized under the standard include: rigorous indoor air quality testing; the installation of MERV 13 and carbon filters throughout
the building; secure bicycle storage, shower facilities, and a state-of-the-art fitness facility; access to stairwells to encourage regular use from customers; enhanced natural light levels, and biophilic design.
The certification proved to be a valuable learning experience and is helping to inform our investment and approach to world-class wellbeing amenities for our customers in the future.
Learning About Biophilic Design
There is much to be learned in success and failure.
Our team was intrigued by the concept of biophilic design – basically the concept of incorporating natural elements into the design of indoor environments. There is evidence to suggest that biophilic design can enhance relaxation,
increase productivity (in an office environment) and increase sales (in a retail environment).
So our team set out to explore a biophilic design element in two of our Canadian shopping centres. After considerable effort, the team concluded that it is very challenging to introduce world class biophilic design into an existing
asset in a manner that is accretive to the value of the asset. It is much easier to include in the original design.
It is difficult to characterize the effort as either a success OR a failure, but it is definitely a key learning that we will apply in future developments.