Sample documentation is available for this feature part–be sure to reference this resource as you prepare your documentation.
This article will identify some of the most common reasons that the documentation for feature C02.2 - Promote Health-Oriented Mission - is marked as pending in preliminary documentation review (WELL Certification) or round 1 (WELL at scale) reviews. This guidance does not include all possible reasons for a pending status, but provides information and context based on common review issues.
Provide project-specific content
A common reason that reviewers mark this feature as pending is that project teams provide generic information or copy and paste the WELL feature requirements into their health-oriented mission statement. You must provide a statement that:
- Outlines the project’s or organization’s objectives for health promotion.
- Includes a statement about supporting and improving occupant health.
- Incorporates relevant organizational goals or strategies established during the stakeholder charrette.
- Is made available to all occupants.
Be sure to include a statement specific to your project or organization that meets these criteria.
Document how the health mission is made available to all occupants
Requirement d states that the health mission must be made ‘available to all occupants.’ Your documentation must include a plan or schedule that demonstrates how this requirement is met and not simply state that the health mission will be made available. Your documentation should indicate where occupants can access the health mission (for example, a company website, within an employee resource guide, etc.) and how that location is communicated to occupants.
To see an example of compliant documentation, download the sample documentation for this feature part from your Scorecard.
Stakeholder charrette integration
Your health-oriented mission statement must incorporate the feedback that you obtained during your stakeholder charrette. This feedback should inform the goals that your organization sets and includes in the mission statement.
If the goals you identified during your charrette are:
- Stand up an internal team dedicated to employee health.
- Incorporate health and wellness in a holistic manner that drives our company mission, values and pillars of excellence.
- Invest in employee programs and policies to support overall health and well-being (e.g. mental, physical, social, etc).
- Achieve a WELL Health-Safety Rating [e.g. within 3 months].
- Align health and well-being initiatives with [COMPANY’S] culture and commitment to excellence and innovation.
- Achieve full WELL Certification [e.g. within 1 year].
Your mission statement may be something similar to the text below:
[COMPANY] is built on an image of promoting health through [e.g., our healthy food products]. Employees are the face of [COMPANY] and their health is paramount to the company’s image. Therefore, [COMPANY] invests in robust employee health benefits programs and policies. [COMPANY] also invests in health and well-being focused space design and construction to benefit the health of employees and customers.
Note that the example text specifically mentions goals that were identified in the list above:
- “Health and well-being focused space design” reflects the goals to achieve a WELL Health-Safety Rating and WELL Certification, as well as aligning health and well-being initiatives with the company’s culture
- “Investing in robust employee health benefits programs and policies” reflects the goal to invest in employee programs and policies to support overall health and well-being
Documentation format issues
A common issue identified by reviewers is that the documentation describes future conditions rather than current conditions. Your health-oriented mission policy must describe the conditions at your project as they currently exist at the time of submission, i.e., if you are submitting for Certification, your documents must be implementation-stage, not intent-stage–your document should state what has happened, not what will happen (e.g., “Our health-oriented mission policy is included in the employee handbook which is distributed to employees during onboarding”, not “Our health-oriented mission policy will be included…”)
If you are using existing policy documents, consult the documentation annotation guide to learn how to properly annotate documents for use in WELL documentation.