Not all explosions are bad.

Some signal momentum–the start of something new. The Asia-Pacific region closed out 2021 with a big bang of 80 million square metres of real estate adoption of WELL. Such an explosion signifies a promising trend that 2022 will turn the corner on human and social capital performance for everyone, everywhere.

This is a twofold increase in adoption of all WELL offerings in the past year for the region. An 80-million-square-metre explosion is something to notice.

In Australia, WELL’s market penetration through achieving or pursuing WELL Certification, the WELL Health-Safety Rating for Facility Operations and Management and other WELL strategies at single asset or portfolio level, set the country apart: Australia is a leading country for WELL building’s market saturation in commercial real estate.

Approximately 25% of all commercial office space in Australia is engaged in a WELL pathway, due largely to an increase in organisations pursuing strategies to support the return of people to their workplaces–during a historically tenuous time no less. And globally, our region is in good company: IWBI crossed a milestone 300 million square metre mark of spaces applying WELL offerings worldwide in 2021. Our neighbours in India, Thailand, China and Hong Kong are among the top-10 performing markets across the globe.

Through the lens of the COVID-19 pandemic, WELL’s holistic, evidence-based approach has provided a roadmap for organisations to promote human and social capital performance, as well as enhance their ESG strategy. Driven by this demand for people-first places as our region fights our way out of the pandemic, organisations are engaging in new and inaugural ways to incorporate WELL at scale, highlighting the increasing prioritisation of well-being for office workers, remote workers, residents, tenants and everyone in between.

As a result, leading companies have shifted from largely utilising WELL for a single asset to making decisions across their entire real estate footprint, embracing solutions at a portfolio or enterprise level.

And we’ve got some great examples that showcase this:

• Over a dozen portfolio-wide WELL adoptions and WELL Community projects from the region lead the global trend to scale health and well-being impact. Leading organisations include Lendlease, JLL, Charter Hall, Investa, Shanghai Expo UBPA, Xintiandi, Cbus Property, National University of Singapore, Forestias, NEO Properties, Ting Ho, Aoyuan, Embassy REIT and Guangzhou Yuexiu.
• Market leaders blazing the trail of WELL Health-Safety Rating in the region include Carrier, Brookfield, Netflix, Eden Park Stadium, Standard Chartered, Menarco, Hub Australia, Dexus and Built.
• The community of WELL Accredited Professionals (WELL APs) went up by 1,540 in the past year to reach nearly 7,000. Oceania’s WELL AP community grew by 23 percent in the past year.
• Oceania continuously leads the charge in reporting on Global Real Estate Benchmark (GRESB) with the highest regional score in recent years, closely followed by Asia. Australia has been the top-ranking country for the past 11 years of ESG scoring by GRESB. Participating organisations in this region leverage WELL achievements on GRESB reporting and other ESG rating platforms. Approximately 80% of the GRESB Sector Leaders from Oceania use the WELL Building Standard.

There is a never-before-seen urgency to act on health and social sustainability. Which is ultimately good news for charting a more inclusive, just recovery. Because investing in health is not just an investment in a company, but in its people.

As we make our way into 2022 and what’s to come, that’s certainly an explosion to celebrate.