SSR WELL Health-Safety Rating Journey: Let’s Talk About It
As mentioned in several previous posts, the key to a successful WELL Health-Safety project is communication with building occupants. One of the main drivers for projects to pursue the rating is to prioritize and promote the health and safety of their buildings and spaces. The following category for Stakeholder Engagement and Communication awards projects for taking advantage of communication strategies with building occupants.
SS1 Promote Health and Well-Being
This feature requires project teams to establish a health-oriented project mission and to provide a guide to occupants that highlights the features pursued by the project, the relationship between health and buildings, and available health resources and programs. A project doesn’t have to have the final “marketing approved” presentation, just an outline of the information that will be given to building occupants. The Feature Guide should include the mission, the final scorecard for the project, and the intent behind the features pursued. This guide will need to be prominently displayed and/or made widely available to building occupants either physically or digitally. Additionally, projects will need to commit to providing quarterly communications (e.g., emails, modules, trainings) that are sent to regular occupants, and onboarding communications are given to new employees, about health resources, programs, amenities, and policies available to them addressed by the features achieved by the project.
SS2 Share Food Inspection Information
This feature is straightforward – if you have full food service as part of your project space, provide prominently displayed food hygiene or sanitary inspection or scoring reports conducted by a third-party inspection agency. These scores should be displayed on-premises and clearly visible to customers entering the establishment. This requirement makes sense, occupants can feel more at ease knowing the independent review score of the place they are about to eat from. This is required by most local health codes, so if the project has food service, this could be an easily documented feature.
SSR’s Top Picks
One of SSR’s main goals of pursuing the WELL Health-Safety Rating was to provide encouragement and communication with its employees and visitors to their project spaces. Therefore, relating our company mission statement to our health-oriented mission statement and regular health offering distributions was a “no-brainer.” Currently, SSR offices are not in any buildings that include food service or dining establishments that could meet the SS2 Feature. Overall, SSR has gathered at least 14 points towards the minimum 15 required for certification.
Follow SSR’s Journey
During our next edition, our resident WELL Accredited Professional, Hannah Walter, will continue to dive into more detail about SSR’s pursued credits and the coordination and documentation required for each.
Debrief
Let’s Talk About It
Air & Water Quality – Maintenance
Air & Water Quality – Engineer Required
First Things First – How Much?
SSR Pursuing Well Health-Safety Rating
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