Wellbeing Risk Register

Category 1: Strategy & Cultural

1. Treating Wellbeing as a Perk:
Relegating employee health to superficial additions like discounted gym memberships or bowls of fruit in the staff kitchen while ignoring the biological impact of the physical environment.

2. Productivity Paranoia:
Enforcing rigid return-to-office mandates and tracking simple gate swipes rather than measuring actual human output, psychological safety and team engagement.

3. Aesthetic Overload:
Designing a visually stunning workspace for magazine photos that completely fails to support the daily operational and sensory needs of the workforce.

4. Ignoring Inclusion Safety:
Designing a one-size-fits-all environment that alienates neurodivergent staff by forcing them to navigate overwhelming sensory landscapes without providing low stimulation retreat zones.

Category 2: Environmental & Sensory

5. Biological Darkness:
Relying on standard 4000K LED lighting that achieves only 125 to 140 m-EDI lux at the eye, leaving occupants in a state of chronic circadian under stimulation and daytime lethargy.

6. The One-Sided Conversation Trap:
Failing to address speech intelligibility in open plan areas. Allowing employees to hear one side of a nearby conversation spikes cognitive load and destroys deep focus.

7. Superficial Biophilia:
Assuming that adding a few potted plants satisfies the human need for nature while ignoring the implementation of natural light, acoustic greenery and fractal fluency to actively lower heart rates.

8. The Fresh Air Deficit:
Signing a lease on a building without verifying it can deliver the strict British Council for Offices recommendation of 14 litres per second per person of outdoor air, resulting in severe afternoon fatigue.

Category 3: Physical & Infrastructure

9. Sedentary Defaults:
Treating physical health purely as a basic Display Screen Equipment compliance exercise rather than integrating dynamic movement and active sit-stand workstations across the entire floorplate.

10. Density Overflow:
Cramming staff into an 8 square metre footprint rather than adopting the generous 10 square metre baseline required to facilitate true Activity-Based Working and unrestricted spatial flow.

11. Proximity Bias in Technology:
Failing to specify wide-angle cameras and high-fidelity audio in meeting rooms which inadvertently renders remote participants as second-class citizens during hybrid meetings.

12. Ignoring Thermal Equity:
Utilising outdated mechanical systems that blast cold air indiscriminately rather than installing intelligent Variable Refrigerant Flow systems that allow granular climate control across different functional zones.

Category 4: Execution & Measurement

13. Value Engineering the Human Experience:
Cutting the budget on invisible but critical elements such as acoustic ceiling baffles, sound masking and air filtration to save money while protecting purely aesthetic finishes.

14. Skipping the Pre-Demolition Audit:
Sending existing raised access floors and glazed partitions straight to landfill rather than auditing them for reuse which destroys your circular economy metrics and inflates embodied carbon.

15. The ‘Drop and Run’ Handover:
Assuming the project ends on the day of practical completion and failing to execute a Soft Landings protocol to train staff on how to operate the new ergonomic and environmental systems.