WELL and LEED Standards at The Exchange Raleigh

At The Exchange Raleigh, we’re proud that our first office building—1000 Social—will also be the first office building in Raleigh that is both LEED and WELL certified. The most widely used green building rating system in the country, LEED has been around since 1993 and has become synonymous with sustainable building practices. WELL, on the other hand, is a newer standard (launched in 2013) that focuses on human health and wellbeing. Both programs are administered and certified by the Green Business Certification Incorporation (GBCI).

The WELL Building Standard® is the world’s first architectural benchmark focused exclusively on human health and wellbeing. Essentially, it is a roadmap for building spaces that put people first with design decisions that facilitate healthy and sustainable practices. From our perspective, investing in the WELL process is indicative of our belief that healthy people are happy and productive people, and that luring folks back to the office requires something more than break room ping pong tables and beers on tap. We believe that people want to be in a place where they feel good, and that working well means more than punching the clock and burning the midnight oil.

A 2022 study in the Journal of Building and Environment finds WELL certification boosts occupant perceived satisfaction, health, well-being, and productivity: