Indoor air quality (IAQ) is a critical aspect of your workplace, but you may overlook its importance. Your business’s indoor air likely holds contaminants like carbon dioxide, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), dust, and mold. Some of these are naturally derived. Others may be generated from things inside the office or enter from outdoors. Often, these elements build up in the air, making it decreasingly healthy. Here are some specific ways that poor air quality negatively impacts your business and your valued employees.

Short-Term Health Effects

The unhealthy gases and particulates in indoor air can create numerous immediate short-term health effects for your team. With poor air quality, your workers can suffer from symptoms like sneezing, coughing, sore throats, dizziness and headaches. These common and unpleasant symptoms could lead to poor productivity and increased absences.

Long-Term Health Effects

Your employees breathe the polluted air at work for long hours throughout most days, so long-term health effects are possible as well. Poor IAQ’s serious effects on human health include bronchitis, asthma and lung cancer. These directly affect your team’s quality of life, longevity, and finances long after they leave the company.

Employee Morale

While employees experience physical symptoms from poor indoor air quality, their mental wellness also diminishes when they breathe the air regularly. Your commercial HVAC system and your company’s indoor air quality play a significant role in your team’s depression, mood, poor concentration, and fatigue. In turn, the business suffers the negative and potentially costly effects of poor workplace morale, reduced productivity, and a higher turnover rate as employees start to leave for a better work environment.

Does your business space need indoor air quality improvements, such as improved sealings, an updated HVAC system, new ducts, or more insulation? Learn more about your indoor air quality by speaking with a professional today.