International Researchers Affirm the Rigor of IWBI’s 12 Competencies for Measuring Health and Well-Being in Peer-Reviewed Study

NEW YORK, October 9, 2025 /3BL/ - The International WELL Building Institute (IWBI) announced today that its pioneering 12 Competencies for Measuring Health and Well-being at the Workplace (12 Competencies) has been peer-reviewed and published in the Journal of Corporate Real Estate. This validation affirms the framework’s scope, rigor and relevance for global organizations to leverage when seeking to track and improve their workplace health and well-being strategies.

The 12 Competencies is a framework that maps out areas of health leadership and offers a comprehensive framework for organizations to evaluate key workplace well-being factors, such as mental health, physical health, social connection and organizational culture. Organized across five interconnected levels—individual, organizational, environmental, community and global—the framework helps companies dimensionalize well-being strategies and identify what they are measuring and where opportunities remain for deeper impact. The 12 Competencies can help companies monitor, track and demonstrate their impact on health, and in turn identify health improvement opportunities while reducing exposure to material risk.

The 12 Competencies, first announced by IWBI in 2022, is the result of an integrated approach to understanding how to measure commitment to and progress in health and well-being, drawing on the expertise of the IWBI’s Research Advisory, the science backed WELL concepts, and industry-leading best practices that IWBI has gathered through its decade-long work with thousands of forward-thinking companies around the world who are elevating workplace health and well-being. Together, these knowledge streams shaped a robust and practical framework designed to move the needle on measuring workplace health and well-being.

“Today’s announcement signifies a major step forward in our mission to provide actionable and science-backed KPIs for organizations focused on improving workplace health and performance,” said Rachel Hodgdon, President and CEO of IWBI. “The peer review of the 12 Competencies and its publication in the Journal of Corporate Real Estate validate the framework’s relevance and effectiveness in transforming workplaces.”

Industry experts advocating for workplace health and well-being are celebrating the growing momentum around this important shift. “In my decades-long experience helping global organizations advance workplace health and well-being, I’ve seen how challenging it can be to measure what truly matters for employees,” said Despina Katskakis, Global Chair Strategic Consulting, Cushman & Wakefield. “The 12 Competencies provide a practical framework that helps companies align measurement and strategy across diverse workplaces, turning good intentions into meaningful outcomes.”

Eleven esteemed researchers participated in the independent peer review article, including academic scholars from seven top universities in the United States, Canada, Australia, Belgium and South Africa, as well as leading experts from the organizational and building health sectors. Their collective expertise and independent validation underscore the strength and credibility of the 12 Competencies.

“Measuring health and well-being is inherently complex. We designed the 12 Competencies to turn that complexity into clarity—and to solve a problem that so many companies face when measuring health and performance. In doing so, we help companies align their investments, reporting and people outcomes across five levels of impact,” said author Dr. Whitney Austin Gray, Senior Vice President of Research at IWBI.

“Validating a company’s investment in people is critical. Leading certification systems around the world provide strategies, but it is challenging to know if these systems comprehensively measure health, or only a portion of health, such as environmental health versus organizational health. The 12 Competencies show how to track, measure and manage how you’re measuring health,” added author Dr. Christhina Candido, Professor and International Advisory Board Member.

In the article, the authors say, “The 12 Competencies identified five interconnected levels known to impact health and well-being, within which 12 competencies are nested. Each competency is broad enough to enable benchmarking. Detailed domains and dimensions help organizations understand what to measure and track for health and well-being and can adapt as research evolves. The framework addresses industry gaps by connecting leading and lagging indicators to allow for a more systemic approach to measuring health and well-being.”

“Too often, organizations don’t know what to measure when it comes to employee health and well-being—or how those metrics connect to performance, thriving and social impact,” said Angela Loder, Executive Director of Greening the City in Denver, Co., and the lead author of the article. “The 12 Competencies framework changes that. It’s an adaptive, evidence-based tool that shows leaders where they’re strong, where they need to improve and how to prove the impact of their investments in health and well-being.”

Leading the charge to operationalize the 12 Competencies, IWBI plans to incorporate the framework in its WELL Standard and program offerings, helping to support organizations’ in leveraging them to measure their multi-tiered investment in health.

Since its 2022 launch during a landmark event at Nasdaq focused on embedding health into corporate strategy, the 12 Competencies are now positioned to provide organizations with a clear, actionable guide to evaluating and strengthening their social sustainability efforts. The competencies include:

Health and well-being
Thriving
Performance, energy & motivation
Employee effectiveness
Organizational performance
Organizational culture & engagement
Risk management
Environment of care & support
Ambient environmental quality
Occupant & market perceptions of indoor environmental quality
Community & stakeholder engagement
Environmental, social and governance (ESG) transparency & reporting

The publication of the 12 Competencies is another important step in IWBI’s mission to support and equip organizations with the tools to advance and validate healthier, more resilient workplaces.

Authors of the peer-reviewed paper include:
Angela Loder, PhD, Greening the City, Denver, Colorado, USA; and formerly IWBI
Christhina Candido, PhD, Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia
Sergio Altomonte, PhD, Architecture et Climat, Louvain Research Institute for Landscape, Architecture, Built Environment, Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium
Whitney Austin Gray, PhD, IWBI, Washington, DC, USA
Casey Lindberg, PhD, Department of Environmental Design, University of Colorado Boulder, USA
Susan Sung Eun Chung, PhD, PhD, HKS Inc., Dallas, Texas, USA
Ina Rothmann, PhD, WorkWell Research Unit – Afriforte, North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa
Avis Devine, PhD, Schulich School of Business, York University, Toronto, Canada
Yoko Kawai, PhD, Yale School of Architecture, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
Usha Satish, PhD, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, New York, USA
Sally Augustin, PhD, Design with Science, La Grange Park, Illinois, USA

For more information on the 12 Competencies, visit IWBI’s original announcement here.

About the International WELL Building Institute
The International WELL Building Institute (IWBI) is a public benefit corporation and the global authority for transforming health and well-being in buildings, organizations and communities. In pursuit of its public-health mission, IWBI mobilizes its community through the development and administration of the WELL Building Standard (WELL), WELL for residential, WELL Community Standard, its WELL ratings and management of the WELL AP credential. IWBI also translates research into practice, develops educational resources and advocates for policies that promote people-first places for everyone, everywhere. More information on WELL can be found here.
International WELL Building Institute, IWBI, the WELL Building Standard, WELL v2, WELL Certified, WELL AP, WELL EP, WELL Score, The WELL Conference, We Are WELL, the WELL Community Standard, WELL Health-Safety Rated, WELL Performance Rated, WELL Equity Rated, WELL Equity, WELL Coworking Rated, WELL Residence, Works with WELL, WELL and others, and their related logos are trademarks or certification marks of International WELL Building Institute pbc in the United States and other countries.

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