Healthy work environment: what the research says makes one, and how to measure it

A company in Riyadh moves into a new floor. There is a games room, bright colours and a coffee bar. Three months later the games room is empty at lunch, the engineers still answer messages at eleven at night, and the team lead who asked for two more people has resigned. The exit interview mentions workload and a manager who never had time.

The new floor was not the problem. It answered a question nobody had asked.

The short answer: a healthy work environment is one where the demands of the job are matched by the resources to meet them, and where senior leaders visibly protect people's psychological health. Research points to the same short list: a manageable workload, a say in how work is done, support from managers and colleagues, clear roles, fair treatment and room to grow. The physical space matters too, mainly through air quality and ventilation, not decoration. All of it can be measured, by team.

What makes a good work environment: three research lenses

Three bodies of research explain most of it, and they fit together.

The job demands-resources model. Arnold Bakker and Evangelia Demerouti sort working conditions into two groups. Job demands are the parts of the job that require sustained physical, cognitive or emotional effort and so carry a cost, such as workload, role conflict and job insecurity. Job resources are the parts that help people reach work goals, buffer the demands and support growth, such as autonomy, support, feedback, fairness and development. In their 2023 review, high demands drive a health impairment process that depletes energy and can lead to exhaustion. Resources drive a motivational process: they meet basic psychological needs, foster engagement, and engagement in turn leads to creativity and better performance. A healthy environment is not one without pressure. It is one where resources keep pace with the pressure.

Psychosocial safety climate. Maureen Dollard and Arnold Bakker (2010) asked where demands and resources come from. Their answer is psychosocial safety climate (PSC): the policies, practices and procedures for protecting workers' psychological health and safety, shaped largely by senior management. In a study of Australian education workers in 18 schools, measured twice 12 months apart, PSC predicted later changes in distress and emotional exhaustion through work pressure and emotional demands, and predicted changes in engagement through skill discretion. The authors call PSC a logical place to start an intervention. Put simply, the climate at the top sets the demands and resources below it.

The WHO guidelines on mental health at work (2022). To prevent risks to mental health at work, the WHO recommends organisational interventions that mitigate, reduce or remove psychosocial risks such as bullying and low job control. According to the WHO team's summary of the guidelines (Malik and colleagues, 2023), these interventions reduce emotional distress and improve absenteeism, job satisfaction and work performance, and are best delivered with meaningful participation of workers. The same summary is candid that most of the evidence for them is of very low quality, because complex organisational changes are hard to evaluate. It also recommends mental health training for managers.

Characteristics of a healthy work environment

Here is what each characteristic looks like on an ordinary day, and how to check it.

The last row is the floor, not the goal. If the problem is harm rather than weak design, start with our guide to toxic work culture before you work on the rest.

Work environment and performance: what the evidence shows

The evidence supports a business case, read with care.

• Resources predict engagement, and engagement predicts performance. This is the motivational process in the job demands-resources model, as Bakker and colleagues describe it in their 2023 review.
• Organisational changes improve work outcomes, on weak evidence. The WHO summary links organisational interventions to lower absenteeism and better job satisfaction and performance, while warning that the evidence is mostly of very low quality.
• Air quality affects thinking. In the Harvard COGfx study (Allen and colleagues, 2016), 24 office workers spent six full working days in a controlled office space without knowing the test conditions. Cognitive scores were on average 61% higher on the green building day and 101% higher on the two days with green conditions plus higher ventilation than on the conventional day. It was a small study in one space. A later study of 302 office workers in six countries over 12 months (Cedeño Laurent and colleagues, 2021) found that higher fine particles and higher carbon dioxide were linked to slower and less accurate responses on eight of ten cognitive test measures.

In the region, starting points differ. In Gallup's three-year averages to 2025, 4% of employees in Egypt were engaged at work and 57% felt a lot of stress the previous day. In Saudi Arabia the figures were 26% and 28%, and in the UAE 27% and 33% (typically about 1,000 people per country). Research on psychosocial safety climate in the region is thin. One study of 318 nurses at Assiut University Hospital in Egypt (Hossny and colleagues, 2025) found that the nurses perceived PSC as low, and that PSC partly explained a small link between motivation and engagement. We found no published PSC benchmark for Egypt, Saudi Arabia or the UAE, so treat the Australian benchmarks below as a reference, not a local norm.

The obvious answer, and why to test it

The obvious answer is to redesign the office: a games room, open seating, plants, new colours, free snacks. It is visible, photographs well and is easy to sign off. Test it before you spend.

Open space can reduce the contact it was meant to create. Ethan Bernstein and Stephen Turban (2018) tracked two company headquarters before and after a move to open-plan space, using wearable sensors and email and messaging data. Face-to-face interaction fell by about 70% in both cases, while electronic interaction rose. People withdrew from colleagues they could now see.

Perks do not touch demands. A games room does not remove a weekly report, staff a peak or give anyone a say.

Employees can read the message. The WHO summary reports that workers see individual-level interventions as a sign that they alone are responsible for their mental health. So the guidelines say these should be one part of a programme that also changes the organisation and how managers work.

Where the space matters, measure it. The physical changes with evidence behind them are about air and ventilation, not decoration. Spend there first, and check it with a sensor.

A pleasant office is not wrong. It is just not, on its own, a healthy work environment.

Positive work environment examples

These are practices, not slogans. Each one adds a resource or removes a demand.

• A meeting-free block. One protected morning a week, chosen by the team.
• Recovery after the peak. A day off or lighter schedule after month-end close or a product launch.
• Weekly one-to-ones that do not get cancelled. Fifteen minutes surfaces a blocker early.
• One written priority per person. Agreed with the manager each quarter.
• Published promotion criteria. The same rules for every team, explained after each round.
• Psychological health on the leadership agenda. A quarterly review of stress risk by team, with an owner for each action.
• Air quality monitors in meeting rooms. If carbon dioxide climbs, ventilate or shorten the meeting.
• A fast route for reports of harassment. A named person, a time limit for the first response, and feedback to the person who reported.

How to measure a healthy work environment

Measure the environment the way the research describes it.

Ask about demands and resources, not only satisfaction. A good survey includes items on workload, control, manager support, team support, role clarity, fairness and growth. For one instrument that reads engagement, culture and experience by group, in Arabic or English, the GK Engagement Survey never reports a group under seven people.

Add a climate measure. The PSC-12 asks how senior management values and acts on employee psychological wellbeing. It has 12 items in four factors (Hall, Dollard and Coward, 2010). In Australian data, Bailey, Dollard and Richards (2015) set a score of 41 or above (on a range of 12 to 60) as the benchmark for low risk of job strain and depressive symptoms, and 37 or below as high risk. They estimated that raising PSC above 37 could cut job strain by 14% and depressive symptoms by 16% in the Australian working population.

Report by team, above a minimum group size. A company average hides the teams where the environment is failing.

Use the data you already hold. Overtime, unplanned absence, resignations in the first year, and the time HR takes to close complaints.

Ask why in small groups. A score tells you where, not why. A well-run discussion with eight to ten people explains a low workload or fairness score.

Check fit as well as conditions. The same job can suit one person and drain another. Our work environment check lets an employee test a job against ten motives in about five minutes. And if an employee asks whether their own job is harmful, point them to is my work environment toxic.

Measure again in six months. Check that the items you acted on actually moved.

Your next step

This week, take the table above to your next leadership meeting. Ask each leader to mark the two characteristics their own team is weakest on, then compare their guesses with the last survey or with the overtime and absence data. Where guesses and data disagree, that is where to look first.

Frequently asked questions

What is a healthy work environment?

It is a workplace where the demands of the job are matched by the resources to meet them, and where senior leaders protect people's psychological health. In practice that means a manageable workload, a say in how work is done, support, clear roles, fairness and room to grow, plus decent air and ventilation.

What makes a good work environment?

Research on the job demands-resources model points to job resources: autonomy, support from managers and colleagues, feedback, fairness and development. Work on psychosocial safety climate adds that these depend on senior management's priorities. The evidence sits with workload, control and support, not with decoration or perks.

What are the characteristics of a healthy work environment?

Ten are worth checking: manageable workload, control, manager support, colleague support, role clarity, fairness, feedback and growth, leaders who protect psychological health, clean air and good ventilation, and freedom from harassment. Each can be checked with a survey item or data you already hold.

What are some positive work environment examples?

A protected meeting-free block each week, recovery days after peaks, weekly one-to-ones, published promotion criteria, a quarterly leadership review of stress risk, and air quality monitors in meeting rooms. Each adds a resource or removes a demand.

How does the work environment affect performance?

Job resources foster engagement, and engagement is linked to creativity and better performance. The WHO's guidelines link organisational interventions to lower absenteeism and better performance, though on weak evidence. Air quality matters too: in one controlled study, cognitive scores were 61% to 101% higher in green and better-ventilated conditions.

Sources

• Bakker, A. B. and Demerouti, E. (2007), "The Job Demands-Resources model: state of the art", Journal of Managerial Psychology 22(3), 309-328. doi.org/10.1108/02683940710733115
• Bakker, A. B., Demerouti, E. and Sanz-Vergel, A. (2023), "Job demands-resources theory: ten years later", Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior 10, 25-53. doi.org/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-120920-053933
• Dollard, M. F. and Bakker, A. B. (2010), "Psychosocial safety climate as a precursor to conducive work environments, psychological health problems, and employee engagement", Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology 83(3), 579-599. doi.org/10.1348/096317909X470690
• Hall, G. B., Dollard, M. F. and Coward, J. (2010), "Psychosocial safety climate: development of the PSC-12", International Journal of Stress Management 17(4), 353-383. doi.org/10.1037/a0021320
• Bailey, T. S., Dollard, M. F. and Richards, P. A. M. (2015), "A national standard for psychosocial safety climate (PSC): PSC 41 as the benchmark for low risk of job strain and depressive symptoms", Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 20(1), 15-26. doi.org/10.1037/a0038166
• World Health Organization (2022), "Guidelines on mental health at work", 28 September 2022. who.int
• Malik, A., Ayuso-Mateos, J. L., Baranyi, G., Barbui, C., Thornicroft, G., van Ommeren, M. and Akhtar, A. (2023), "Mental health at work: WHO guidelines", World Psychiatry 22(2), 331-332. doi.org/10.1002/wps.21094
• Allen, J. G., MacNaughton, P., Satish, U., Santanam, S., Vallarino, J. and Spengler, J. D. (2016), "Associations of cognitive function scores with carbon dioxide, ventilation, and volatile organic compound exposures in office workers: a controlled exposure study of green and conventional office environments", Environmental Health Perspectives 124(6), 805-812. doi.org/10.1289/ehp.1510037
• Cedeño Laurent, J. G., MacNaughton, P., Jones, E., Young, A. S., Bliss, M., Flanigan, S., Vallarino, J., Chen, L. J., Cao, X. and Allen, J. G. (2021), "Associations between acute exposures to PM2.5 and carbon dioxide indoors and cognitive function in office workers: a multicountry longitudinal prospective observational study", Environmental Research Letters 16(9), 094047. doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac1bd8
• Bernstein, E. S. and Turban, S. (2018), "The impact of the 'open' workspace on human collaboration", Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 373(1753), 20170239. doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2017.0239
• Hossny, E. K., Aboelmagd, N. S., Aly, S. E., Abd Elnaeem, M. M., Abd El-aty, N. S., Mahmoud, A. M., Alsheikh Mohamed, I. and Ahmed, A. M. (2025), "Nurses' perception of the effect of motivation, psycho-social safety climate, and work engagement: a mediation analysis", Nursing Reports 15(11), 376. doi.org/10.3390/nursrep15110376
• Gallup (2026), "State of the Global Workplace: Egypt country-level data". gallup.com
• Gallup (2026), "State of the Global Workplace: Saudi Arabia country-level data". gallup.com
• Gallup (2026), "State of the Global Workplace: United Arab Emirates country-level data". gallup.com