By Mallika Mitra
America's workplaces have been getting safer for more than a century now -- cleaner, fewer fire risks, auto shut-off switches on tools, and even eye goggles and steel-toed boots.
Today, the transformation is much more about creating offices and factories that are comfortable and pleasant, places that finally get workers out of the homes that they found refuge in for months -- even years -- after the pandemic.
"If you have a return-to-office mandate...you also have to woo people back," said Rachel Hodgdon, president and CEO of the International WELL Building Institute, which describes itself as an organization that promotes human health through healthier buildings.
"If you don't, and you just think it's just enough to have a mandate that the butts have to be in seats, you're going to miss out on an entire segment of the population who have said, 'It's a deal breaker for me.'"
Hand dryer manufacturer Excel Dryer had a major goal when it rolled out a package of upgrades to its headquarters, just outside of Springfield, Mass.: Make the building a good place to work.
For Excel leaders, "good" translated to an indoor air filtration system, walls made of plants to pump oxygen, and lighting fixtures that adjust to the time of day. There are even bees and a beekeeper, who harvests honey for employees to take home.
"There's nothing more important than your employees and making sure they're happy because that goes into the product," Excel's chief operating officer, Bill Gagnon, told Barron's.
Certainly, workplaces have been made safer for more than a century, from the early days of the Industrial Revolution in the late 1800s. But the idea of making offices and factory floors comfortable and pleasant is only a decades-old trend.
A renewed push came during the Covid-19 outbreaks. The buzz was about the 6-foot social-distancing rule, air filtration, and access to the outdoors, said Rick Cook, a founding partner of COOKFOX Architects, which designs structures responsive to social, cultural, and ecological needs.
"All of these things became much more prominent and all of us were talking about things like indoor environmental quality and air filtration," Cook told Barron's. "The things the design community was focused on prepandemic became much more popular."
In the years since the lockdowns, companies have grappled with how to get their employees to leave comfy homes and come back into the workplace.
And they have gotten savvier about the building upgrades they make and the amenities the offer, said Hodgdon, of the WELL Building Institute.
Today, companies want their employees to work smarter, not harder or for longer. Productivity and performance are top priorities. For example, healthy food instead of unlimited free food, and ergonomic chairs and standing desks instead of massage chairs.
Like a growing number of companies, Sanofi has a three-day-week on-site policy. In March, the France-based pharmaceutical opened a new U.S. headquarters in Morristown, N.J., roughly an hour outside New York City, to improve attendance.
The building has a healthcare clinic, quiet zones for neurodivergent workers, a fitness center, a bike room, a public restaurant, and a large rooftop where the company hosts farmers markets.
Now, more employees are coming into the office than before the pandemic, Ashley Gross, Sanofi's vice president of global real estate, told Barron's.
"The on-site participation rate of Sanofi employees reflects their satisfaction with the new building," she said.
Sanofi wants to make its manufacturing plants, research labs, and offices worldwide into comfortable and pleasant places.
All the real estate projects, Fernando Faria, global head of workplace transformation, said are to "make the office not an obligation as part of any return-to-the-office policy, but a destination where people really want to come because they feel good, they feel like their health is being taken care of, and their well-being is being taken care of."
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November 15, 2025 02:15 ET (07:15 GMT)
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