Earlier this month, the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI) released its 12 Competencies for Measuring Health and Well-being for Human and Social Capital. The 12 Competencies were designed to help organizations integrate health, well-being, and other dimensions of human and social capital into their culture, strategy, and corporate reporting. They are organized across five scales of impact: Individual, Organizational, Environmental, Community, and Global.
“When it comes to maximizing returns and boosting profitability in the near and long term, investing in people is the formula,” said Rachel Hodgdon, President and CEO, IWBI. “Smart organizations have long realized that even modest improvements in areas like productivity, health and well-being, absenteeism, cognitive performance, recruitment and retention can have a substantial effect on financial performance. The 12 Competencies will help organizations sharpen their focus on what matters most and what drives results, while also creating a more powerful reporting structure to communicate back to investors, regulators and the general public.”
The 12 Competencies focus on metrics that can scale with an organization’s journey to prioritize human and social capital. They can be benchmarked and integrated into organizational strategies and reporting processes. At the Individual level, for example, the “Employee Effectiveness” competency tracks perceived focus, attention, performance, and job satisfaction. Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum through the Global level, the “ESG Transparency and Reporting” competency tracks an organization’s ESG, corporate social responsibility, carbon disclosure and sustainability reporting and more. Based on their specific needs, organizations can identify competencies of interest and identify supporting metrics from the framework to track over time.
“We are at a great inflection point when companies around the globe are rethinking what it actually means to prioritize their most valuable asset, their people,” said Kyle Bolden, US-East Real Estate, Hospitality and Construction Market Segment Leader, Ernst & Young US. “But how we do that – how we collectively shape and elevate the role of human and social capital – will have a profound impact on the future of corporate success and performance.”
“Smart organizations have long realized that even modest improvements in areas like productivity, health and well-being, absenteeism, cognitive performance, recruitment and retention can have a substantial effect on financial performance.”
Using an adaptive and transdisciplinary approach, the IWBI team used its combined expertise to identify key categories of health and well-being and other dimensions in human and social capital as well as performance criteria for related metrics.
Charter Hall was one of the first companies globally to pursue WELL at scale through WELL Portfolio and report annual achievements on its WELL journey through its 2021 Annual Sustainability Report.
“Companies like ours are at a pivotal point in ESG reporting on human and social capital. In a world where well-being and talent retention are front and center on the agenda, we’re all grappling with what to measure, what to report, and what to manage,” said Natalie Devlin, Charter Hall’s Chief Experience Office. “Clear metrics that measure health and well-being in a holistic and integrated way are what is needed. The 12 Competencies offers a framework to do this across multiple levels that speaks to all our stakeholders.”
