Employee discomfort, ill health and reduced performance can be linked to a poor-quality office environment. Good quality lighting can already help to increase employee productivity up to 23%. [1] Apart from lighting, there are other environmental elements that impact employee health and wellbeing. For example, higher indoor temperatures and relative humidity can correlate with sneezing, skin redness, itchy eyes, headaches and sore eyes. Poor thermal comfort control leads to a 6% drop in staff performance when offices are too hot, and 4% when too cold.[2] In addition, employee performance can decrease by as much as 66% when there is distracting noise[3], and it can take an average of 25 minutes to return to a task after an interruption.[4]

The new sensor bundles can monitor occupancy, the number of people, temperature (at room and at desk level), noise levels, daylight levels, relative humidity and are Bluetooth enabled, to provide indoor positioning and navigation capabilities. Bundling and delivering these sensing capabilities into one unit eliminates the need for multiple sensors and is also much more cost effective for businesses. The ability to differentiate the office working experience can help to create a healthy place to work, and help organizations reduce absenteeism.

These new sensors are smaller than a match box and are easily upgraded on premise with a simple click and swap via an upgradable sensor slot, a unique feature across a range of Philips professional office luminaires. There’s no need to take the luminaires out of the ceiling as the sensors can be fitted from the front of the luminaire. This future-ready solution means that luminaires can now be upgraded with different sensors at any time. This gives organizations the flexibility to benefit from increased functionality coming along in the future or for example, when a new tenant wants increased functionality.

One of Signify’s customers is EDGE, an OVG Real Estate company. EDGE embraces wellbeing, sustainability, design and technology in all the buildings it develops, including their own. “EDGE has worked with Signify from the first disruptive power-over-ethernet LED in The Edge building, towards the latest innovation in Signify light infrastructure implemented in EDGE Olympic Amsterdam. Driving health and productivity of building users through technology,” said Erik Ubels, CTO of EDGE. “The extremely accurate localization and superior people counting capabilities allow us to optimize user experience and facility management in our buildings. The new environmental monitoring capabilities are an additional contribution to our employees’ wellbeing.”

The new Philips sensor bundles for Interact Office will be available by May.