Erin McDannald – CEO at Elevated | Unlocking Workplace Wellness: Strategies for Productivity and Well-being

Erin McDannald boasts an impressive career spanning more than two decades in lighting design and construction. Currently serving as the CEO of Lighting Environments Elevated, she has been instrumental in pioneering IoT integration and workplace management, driving digital transformation in the commercial real estate sector. Notably recognized as the 2022 Bisnow Innovator of the Year in commercial real estate, Erin’s extensive experience as an interior designer and lighting manufacturer’s representative has uniquely positioned her to lead the charge in creating expertly designed, connected, and flexible workspaces tailored to enhance the well-being and productivity of today’s workforce.

Transcript

Frank Cottle [ 00:00:42 ]: Erin, welcome to the Future Work podcast. Really excited to have you here today. Learn about elevated mostly learn about what got you involved, from the real estate side to the Internet of things side, and how you’ve mixed the two of them together. Can you tell everybody a little bit about yourself? 

Erin McDannald  [ 00:00:59 ]: Hi Frank. It’s nice to see you. Thanks for having me. My name is Erin McDannald. I’m the CEO of Elevated. A little bit about myself. I started as an interior designer about 23 years ago in the industry and went into lighting not long after I got out of college and became a lighting manufacturer’s representative for the last 20 years. Lighting changed somewhere in the early 2000s in the inception of leds, it became electronic. And when we learned how to talk to things and get them to talk back to us, I realized that pretty quickly. If you can talk to a light, you can pretty much talk to anything. So we started to get a little curious and seeing if we could kind of expand and the pandemic hit, and that’s kind of how it all started. 

Frank Cottle  [ 00:01:59 ]: Well, it’s funny when you talk about lighting, the mix of. I go back to the days, as you can tell by the gray hair of nothing worse than solid ceilings of blue fluorescent four foot tubes and things of that nature. And it was awful. Then we started warming those up a little bit. Then we went to two by twos, and now we do everything in a whole different format and we are blending. Lighting becomes a well being issue, a health issue. In fact, in some countries, as you’re probably aware, scandinavian countries in particular, natural lighting has to be mixed in in a certain percentage, which is tough on a five and a half hour day in Norway, a sunlight day with artificial lighting, or you’re not in compliance with the law, you’re not providing a good wellness environment. So lighting and sound, both are two elements that are critical as we go forward. And why did you pick lighting versus sound or lighting versus design? That brought in nature. How do you blend those things together? 

Erin McDannald  [ 00:03:21 ]: How did I pick lighting versus sound? What do you mean by that? 

Frank Cottle  [ 00:03:26 ]: Well, sound and background noises are as important to our well being and to our focus and concentration at a desk as lighting is. Some would actually say equal or more. We get used to the lighting, but we are constantly disrupted by sound. Of course, if you have a flickering light, nothing’s worse. Nothing is worse. I saw you just shutter. How do you settle on lighting, and how do you use that as a focal point to get everything else working around it? 

Erin McDannald [  00:04:03]: Well, I think it’s because it’s the main part of the electrical grid. It starts with lighting. It’s the backbone. It can be the backbone or the bridge to all of the Iot devices. So I think that’s where maybe it started. I didn’t even think about sound until I heard a podcast once that said, something about, the health of the rainforest is measured in sound now in decibels. And I thought, oh, that was inspiring to me. And that’s when sound came into my realm of thinking. And in that, it was like, oh, it can’t just be sound. What are all the other things that we’re not thinking about, about in our environments that can be considered here? When we were lighting people getting into Iot, I think we were only three months in, and I said to my partner, I’m like, oh, this is much bigger. This is huge. This is much bigger than lighting. And it’s hard for lighting people to understand that, but it serves a real purpose. And I think we’re kind of. 

Frank Cottle [  00:05:19]: When you say Internet of things, the bandwidth is immeasurable. It’s so broad. How do you focus it down? What does lighting connect to, in your view, in the perfect office environment that’s created, what does all connect to, and how does this Internet of Things function in a manner that enhances the workplace for everyone, not just for the engineers, or not just for the people that have to maintain the HVAC or things of that, but for the well being of the office itself. 

Erin McDannald [  00:05:58]: Yeah, well, we’re at the very beginning stages of learning that, in the sense that we have enough data, like three years’ worth of data now, to really understand what happens when people are in a space and how they affect the space. And so that was really interesting. I guess my inspiration was the idea that employees weren’t coming back to work, and I had to figure out how to get them back to work. And I started looking at the data that we were collecting on our IoT system and asking a lot of questions about why everybody went home in 2020, and why haven’t we really fixed the problem yet. But we’re asking them all to come back, and maybe the resistance might be in that. So I started looking at the IoT data, and I’m learning about how when you put this, we put our sensors in the lights and they measure sound, and we have air quality sensors, and you have other sensors that can kind of be attached to the lighting system so that you still have a clean architectural space without 7000 sensors all over. 

Frank Cottle [  00:07:16 ]: Are you able to sense occupancy? Let’s say it’s open workspace, say, well, sally’s in this cube, or at this desk, and George is at this other desk. You’re able to sense occupancy, get time of occupancy, and through the energy levels, workforce energy, yes. 

Erin McDannald [  00:07:36 ]: I think it’s better to measure people and the things going on in your space, rather than the space itself. And I think that IoT has kind of gotten it wrong, and building IoT has gotten it wrong in the sense that I think if you move to Mars and you’re going to monitor the space or the health of your habitat on Mars, because if you walk outside, you would be dead. And we don’t think about how we should monitor our own spaces here on Earth because we were born here, but we should really be looking at these things that are affecting people in our data that we found. And the data I’m talking about are things that we found specific to my office and what’s going on with my company. But we found that collaboration dies when co2 levels hit 600 parts per million. And we found that out because we’re trying to understand decibels. We’re tying in our back-end productivity data to it. And we understand that we’re asking people to come in and collaborate, but they don’t have an environment that keeps them healthy enough to collaborate in a meaningful way. 

Frank Cottle [ 00:09:00]: Well, for decades, we’ve heard of smart buildings, but they were smart from the building owner’s perspective, in that they help the building owner operate the building more efficiently. From a cost point of view, first, from an occupancy point of view, they help manage airflow, things of that nature, to an optimization, or they thought, to an optimization. But to your oxygen and collaboration issue, if you want any proof of that, any proof of that at all, go into a Vegas casino at 10:00 and they start pumping oxygen, okay? It’s like, well, they proved it. Let’s go talk to Steve Wynn. He’s figured it out. Nice guy, by the way. You know these things, but we don’t pay attention to them oftentimes in the workplace, and a lot of times it’s nobody’s fault. The building does the best job it can and offers to space, and it has to make a profit to be sustainable, or you don’t have an office. The occupier moves into the building thinking everything is going to be good, brings their team in, and they don’t have a way of measuring these things to understand. And even if they do, what can the building do about it? Let’s say I take a floor of space in a building that’s a ten year old building. Your average mid rise, high rise building anywhere. No, let’s say it’s in a central business district, so it’s in a relatively polluted environment. Okay. And as an occupier, I install all your stuff. And then I go to the building, I say, hey, fix this. What can they really do? Can they do something? Or is it just awareness and then I know not to renew my lease and move out? 

Erin McDannald [ 00:11:02 ]: I guess that’s a good question. From our perspective, we’re asking for outside air, but I think that it depends on the building and the architecture and the circumstance that you’re in and who you’re dealing with. There’s so many factors that go along into that. Can you. 

Frank Cottle 00:11:24 –
If that’s the case, if that’s the case, and I agree that it probably would be, started going into older buildings that are institutionally owned, that haven’t done any air handling upgrades for decades? What checklist? I’m an occupier. I’m going to go take a floor of space and put 100 people into this floor. When I go out to find space, when I go out to seek new space, what checklist do I need? Is there a checklist that says, aha, I need a building that meets this criteria? And will that criteria allow me to still get space at a market rate or will I have to pay double? And I can’t afford to pay double, so I’ll sacrifice my team for the economy of what I can get the space for because I have to be in a certain city. This is all things, all battles that have to be fought in order to recognize the outcome that we want for everybody, which is increased wellness. Your purpose is not lighting. Your purpose is increased wellness. 

Erin McDannald [00:12:39]: It is. 

Frank Cottle [00:12:39]: Okay, so you’re not a lighting company, you’re a wellness enhancement company overall. But we need a path to accomplish that where we have all the parties involved in it, not just the monitoring party. We accomplish that. 

Erin McDannald [00:12:57]: I saw an Instagram reel yesterday and it was a Gen Z walking through right there. 

Frank Cottle [00:13:04 ]: And I’ll say, I’m sorry for you. 

Erin McDannald [00:13:08]: I’m trying to understand the mindset and get in it. But they were talking about the amenity spaces in a lot of the buildings that are going unused. And I think to myself, we’re spending money in the wrong places. We’re trying to compete in a way by giving these amenities that aren’t sustainable. When I always go back to the age old idea that the biggest form of flattery is mimicry, when it comes to going to the human being and saying, you’re cared for and your health is cared for, it seems like a much more sustainable option. I think that tenants should be asking for smart buildings. I think that the ability to scale and be agile companies is greater with an Iot infrastructure in place. I think that developers and tenants can grow together. 

Frank Cottle [00:14:16]: I would think you’re right. It’s funny, this goes back into the, I guess the mid eighty s that we used to see this oftentimes. I know I’m really dating myself there, but we used to see buildings go up and they would advertise that they had a gym in the building. We have a gym you can work out in this building. And then we’d go in and look at the building because we were seeking buildings that had good amenities. We’d look at, say, hey, I got a good gym. They’d show us a gym and everything. No showers. You go, wait a second, you just took empty office space and put some bikes in it. You didn’t build a gym. 

Erin McDannald [00:14:50]: Yeah. 

Frank Cottle [00:14:51]: So a lot of times the amenities are marketing purpose amenities only. They really don’t care whether it’s used or not. They don’t care. It just helps you make the decision to take the space in the first place. And that’s the thing, it’s much easier. Okay, let’s go like this. I’ll take myself as an example. If somebody says, hey, Frank, let’s go out at lunch and take a run, have a run, we’ll be in better shape afterwards, versus, hey, Frank, I’ve got this really great restaurant in town. Do you want to go to lunch? I don’t know. I’m going to go to the restaurant. I’m going to take the easy, fun, instant gratification choice that’s attached to it. So how do we get people, building owners, no, institutional investors that invest in buildings with developers that build the buildings to focus on these things to convince the employer, to convince the employee that all this extra effort actually means something to them. Overall, what metrics are out there that says if you’re in a smart building that meets the well standards, you will live three years longer? If you’re there for ten years, where’s the metrics that give me the data that says I have to spend this extra money? If I do, I’ll find people that value it because it’s been proven that these things benefits actually occur and we have to get that all the way up to the institutional investor level. Ultimately to make this thing, the whole bandwidth has to be involved. 

Erin McDannald [00:16:49 ]: I think there’s layers of savings on IoT in every level, right? So you can save on energy, but then you can also take your data all the way down to the end user. So we know that when our co2 levels are in check and our decibels are around, I guess it’s 50 to 60 decibels somewhere around there. That’s our office buz that our close rates go up, we have energy in the office and people are collaborating. I think if your developer, if the developer said, listen, this is an interesting time for all businesses right now and I’m going to partner with you, I’m going to provide you with an IoT infrastructure and we’re going to figure out how to teach you how to take advantage of it and the data that you are going to get to move your business forward. I think that the amenity spaces, the instant gratification, the need for that can probably go away. And the marketing and branding that goes around. Having a building that’s actually healthy would increase employee retention. But as far as the data is concerned, that will I live ten years longer if I’m not exposed to unhealthy co2 levels? I don’t think we’re there yet. It hasn’t been long enough or I haven’t myself, haven’t deep dived into all the data for that. 

Frank Cottle [00:18:34]: The data probably is there but not consolidated there for this purpose. There’s probably medical data. A massive study could be done. I’m going to use maybe an interesting example, a well known example. One of the biggest crusaders for back to the office is Morgan stanley’s Jamie Dimon. Okay, Jamie Dimon. Well, we can’t do this. We can’t do that. You got to get back. Got to get back. I’m going to fire everybody. Then I’m to going get back on and on and on and on and on. Does Morgan stanley, to your specific point in Morgan stanley’s offices, they have a massive number of employees which are in the sales, security, sales, investment banking, financial services, et cetera, that are closers to your point, and you wouldn’t know about their specific offices, I’m sure. But how do you make a pitch to the CEO that his business is going to run, that he’s going to sell more securities because of the instrumentation that can be installed that will change the energy level or the long term productivity level or the fatigue level, which is really what you’re doing. You’re reducing fatigue. You’re not increasing energy, you’re reducing fatigue. How do you do that and make that a motivation to where Jamie, instead of saying, you got to get back, or I’m going to fire you, says, if you come back, we’re in this magic environment. I know our sales are going to go up by 10%. I can afford to pay more. Is that part of a process, that it’s doable? Or do we just have to keep bumbling along and hoping as we go forward? 

Erin McDannald [00:20:30]: Well, I think it’s doable. I mean, I think it all started with JLL 300 and 3300 3000. And the 3000 was something. I’m like, okay, I don’t see it. Let me break it down. Let’s take my data that we’ve been. Because the problem I’m trying to solve, one of the problems I was trying to solve is IoT is great for a Fortune 500 company, but if for a mid market company, can you get the return on your investment? And how, and if JLL’s theory is right, that $3,000 per, I think it’s per employee in the building, you could get insights backed based on IoT data if parsed correctly. I took the chance to see and ask the questions, to see if I could do it, because I was trying to solve the problem of a hybrid workplace that was pretty siloed and I needed to kind of garner collaboration. So when we started looking at the data points, I was like, okay, who sits next to who? And can we manipulate that when they come in? And who is coming in to be in the office with who? And what happens when collaboration stops? It’s interesting. I don’t know why, but the decibels go up, 600 parts per million hits, and then everybody stops talking. It’s so interesting, and it’s every single time. Or, I was trying to solve the problem of sick days. I don’t want Covid outbreaks or any flu outbreaks, for that matter. Here we have a big space. We have room to breathe. It shouldn’t happen, but anytime our tvocs were over a certain threshold, I think it was 500 parts per billion. 

Frank Cottle [00:22:38]: Will you explain cbocs? 

Erin McDannald [00:22:41]: Yeah. Total volatile organic compounds. 

Frank Cottle [00:22:45]: Okay. Never would have guessed. 

Erin McDannald [00:22:47]: It’s the junk in the air, right? And then elevated co2 levels. It was those moments when those thresholds peaked, when we had outbreaks, and I thought that was interesting. What is it about that? When we’re all gathEring, it’s because we’re not opening our doors and we’re not letting fresh air in. And even when you increase, the air turns on your hvac, your co2 still stays until you get fresh air. 

Frank Cottle [00:23:21]:
You’re just recirculating dirty air at that point. 

Erin McDannald [00:23:23]: Yeah. And to see that on my own was kind of jarring, because I think the outside air is somewhere around. Co2 levels are somewhere around two to 300 parts per billion at times in places, and at 600 parts per billion, humans stop collaborating, and you can sit in a room for 90 minutes and get the co2 levels up to 600 parts per billion. It doesn’t take long to kill collaboration. What does that mean for humankind? I think we need to build buildings a little bit differently. I think we need to have a little bit compassion for the end user in the spaces. I think that compassion can translate into investment in humans, therefore translate into a better performing piece of real estate. 

Frank Cottle [00:24:23]: Well, I wouldn’t disagree with that at all. I think the productivity output that we all want to accomplish, everything we want to accomplish, you, me, everybody that works with us, for us, around us, we want that productivity. It gives us not just a security and economic impact, but it gives us an emotional impact. We feel good about it. When we’re productive, we feel good about ourselves. That makes us generally want more, because we like that almost endorphin feeling of accomplishing things. But I go back to the challenge of, if I take a floor in a 50 floor building, what can I do about it? Unless I’ve got that checklist, and unless the building is motivated as an occupier, there’s not much I can do about getting increased fresh air into my particular space, because the system, whatever it is, itself, only has so much fresh air intake capacity for the whole building. And my space really, in that regard, can’t be. Let’s take, you know, how. If I’m in any one of the major buildings in Manhattan, how do I accomplish this? How does Jamie Dimon accomplish this? Down in the financial center where JPMorgan. 

Erin McDannald [00:25:57]: Is located, keep your meetings to less than 90 minutes. That’s the first one. 

Frank Cottle [00:26:03]: When you gather, meeting in enclosed space, like in an enclosed conference room, less than 90 minutes. Well, I would say if you don’t have meetings, then you’re already screwed up operationally. Okay, that’s good. So you can create guidelines and a checklist. If I’m going to go take new space, you can give me a checklist that says these seven things you have to have in order to accomplish the minimum standard. 

Erin McDannald [00:26:32]:
Right. 

Frank Cottle [00:26:32]: Then within your own space, there are these other five things that you need to do to accomplish that standard. Okay. Do those checklists exist? Do you have that? 

Erin McDannald [00:26:45]: We’re writing them. 

Frank Cottle [00:26:49]: Will you make me a commitment then? 

Erin McDannald [00:26:51]: Of course. 

Frank Cottle [00:26:52]: When you have those. When you have those, will you write an article in all work that we can share that with our millions of readers? 

Erin McDannald [00:27:00]: I would love to. 

Frank Cottle [00:27:01]: Okay, I’m not shilling here. I’m just saying I’ve never seen this, and I’ve been around commercial real estate for four and a half decades, and I’ve never seen the wellness standard for the occupier, as opposed to the wellness standard on a generic base for the building. And I know that one impacts the other, but I’ve never seen it broken down to the workstation occupier level. 

Erin McDannald [00:27:26]: Yeah. 

Frank Cottle [00:27:27]: And I think that there are certain things, you start from the top down, and there are certain things that really need to be addressed from the bottom up. And I think if we look at the individual and build this from the bottom up, we will ultimately have more success and we can make it an economic demand standard. Right now it’s cutting edge stuff. 

Erin McDannald [00:27:49]: Right. 

Frank Cottle [00:27:49]: But the cutting edge is always a little bloody. That’s why they call it the cutting edge. But if we can make it a demand edge issue to where? If I’m looking at three buildings and I go to each of them and say, do you have this? Building number one says, no. I say, well, I can’t take space in your building. Then I go to building number two. And they say, no, but we’ll put it in for you. I say, well, I can consider you. Then I go to building number three. And they say, yes, let me show you how it works, and you can see if this meets your requirements. I’m really not going to talk to those other two buildings. I might talk to the one who says they’ll put it in for might, but if I have a need, I’m going to go to the one that says, yes, I have this. Let me show you. That’s a demand because I’m not taking the other space. I’m saying no, not going to buy your stuff. You don’t have this. We have to elevate wellness inside of buildings at the individual level to a demand standard where most smart building standards are around. Hey, our building is more efficient. We use less power, we use less this, we use less that. Therefore it operates more efficiently. Therefore, your rent is going to be lower. 

Erin McDannald [00:29:10]: Right. 

Frank Cottle [00:29:11]: But it doesn’t say your people are going to be healthier and you’re going to be more productively in that space. 

Erin McDannald [00:29:17]: Correct. 

Frank Cottle [00:29:18]: So that’s the crossover that we really need here, I think. 

Erin McDannald [00:29:21 ]: Yeah, I think we just really need to kind of look at it like a beehive, if you will. Like, how healthy is the hive inside? It’s interesting, I think, about from the developer perspective and the investor perspective, you want to know what your retention rates are going to be. And you can easily predict if you know that people aren’t inhabiting the space and there’s no energy inside that’s happening. You can really understand how that business might be doing. And there are things you can do to intervene, like offer remodels or other things that we can do based on the insights that we get from these IoT systems. Right. Go ahead. 

Frank Cottle [00:30:11]: This is a massive educational issue. Massive educational issue. I’m not capable of leading this charge. I would venture that while you’re at the point of the spear and the thinking on it, that you can’t change the way. About a $7 trillion industry runs overnight. Can lead the charge, but can’t change it overnight. Are there educational institutions that are blending wellness into their architectural studies courses, into the training of engineers that deal with the human aspect rather than the space efficiency? And is that a place to start with the major engineEring and architectural schools that can teach the next generation of building designers of how to accomplish this wellness standard, not from the building’s point of view, but from the occupier’s point of view. Is that something that you’ve seen anywhere? 

Erin McDannald [00:31:25]: Not a lot. Although I just did get invited to talk at a few just recently, so it’s just starting to happen. That’s interesting. That’s a really good point, Frank, because I think that would be a great place to really start. I also think that the thing that keeps ringing in my head when you talk is this idea of a more feminine economy where you’re kind of where it’s about investing in people and having a more softer approach. I always wondered why people would say one in one makes three, because it never really did. Just doesn’t even make any sense. But it does when you invest in people. It does in branding and in brand ambassadors and in retention and loyalty and things like that. So I think it does make one in one does make three when you invest in people. But if you’re not investing in them and you’re just paying them to do your employees, to do a job, and you don’t take the time to understand why they don’t want to come back. 

Frank Cottle [00:32:43]: Well, I think we need to go from putting ping pong tables and things, pool tables in venture driven technology companies, and focus on the real wellness issues. Overall, I do believe that companies invest in people, but are they making the right investments? Yeah, it’s more of that issue. I know we invest in our teams and our staff and education and benefits opportunities. Tremendous amount, hopefully at the highest standard possible. But I also know that we’re in a variety of office buildings, and I couldn’t tell you one way or the other what the standards are. I just couldn’t. Some of them are large, high rise buildings where we have a lot of people, 8100 people at a time, and some of them are small buildings where we have five people. And I can guarantee you there’s no standard in the smaller buildings at all. So do you do this from a big building down? And we’re running out of time here. But one more question from a big building down, where do you find the density to impact? If this level of wellness is a production standard and a health standard that will attract and allow people to be more productive and happier and healthier, where’s the greatest density of people that you can impact the most quickly? Where this standard could be applied so as to become an effective model for everybody else to say, hey, I want that. I want that for my people. Or for. I mean, when it comes down to it, we talk about taking space and having a checklist. What if I’m an employee? Okay, and I say, well, I’d like to come to work for you, but tell me about this, this and this. I guarantee you no HR manager can answer it. No HR manager on the planet can answer that question from an employee. Are you going to support me in this way and this way and this way? Oh, no, but we’ll give you a raise. How do you get this going? 

Erin McDannald [00:35:05]: Well, I think culture, the workplace has shifted right since pre Covid. Give you an example of how our IoT system played into that. I saw that people were coming in to use the gym because we had a trainer for our employees. This was before we had forced everyone to come back for a certain amount of time per week. And I’m like, okay, so they’re using the gym. We’re still siloed. We’re not talking to each other interdepartmentally, but they’re coming in to use the gym. Well, this is not the intent of what we were offEring. So it’s like, okay, so we’re going to have to scrap culture, start over, and rebuild from the ground up with a hybrid workforce that works a little bit better for us. I think that the highest concentration of people is in the middle. It’s that mid market sector that needs to be able to get a return on their investment on IoT systems. And also they need to know that it’s accessible for them from a pricing standpoint. It’s not too expensive, and it will give you a return on your investment within the first year. 

Frank Cottle [00:36:23]: Okay, if that’s the case, I’m going to challenge you, if I can, to write that article. Give us that checklist, and I’ll tell you, when you say it’s in the middle, you hit a chord with me. In the middle of the hybrid office issue process is the co working business center flexible workspace industry that is in the middle. That is the fastest growing sector of commercial space use globally as a percentage of growth, tons of things happening there. The individual generally makes the decision on space a or b. It’s not a corporate decision at a high level or this or that. It’s usually the individual occupier. Give me a list that we can distribute globally of the things that the individual should be looking for, and then we’ll help create that demand curve instead of the bloody edge for that middle market. Because this is very important. Health, well being, productivity, happiness, all those things we take for granted as external things. But they really do start with your environment. And if we can impact the environment where people spend 6810 hours a day, a third of their life, then we can make some pretty interesting progress. 

Erin McDannald [00:37:57]: I agree. I couldn’t agree more, Frank. 

Frank Cottle [00:37:59]: So you up for that? 

Erin McDannald [00:38:01]: I’m up for it. 

Frank Cottle [00:38:04]: Okay then, everybody, next Monday, we’ll work on this and see if we can bring this forth. I think this is a great opportunity. 

Erin McDannald [00:38:15]: Such a pleasure. Thank you. 

Frank Cottle [00:38:17]: Thank you. Thank you for your time, Erin. Really looking forward to continuing to work with you. 

Erin McDannald [00:38:21]: Yeah, me too. Thank you, Frank. Bye