Better Water: An Essential Part of Workplace Wellness

A healthy, thriving organization relies on its team members to be alert and engaged, to work with the motivation and confidence that come from feeling cared for. In other words, the wellness of a business relies in large part on the wellness of its employees.

Providing consistently clean, high-quality water is one of the simplest, most cost-effective workplace wellness investments that offers demonstrable returns—for individuals and companies.

Hydration influences how people feel and function day to day.¹ A team member’s hydration impacts not only workplace culture but whether agendas are efficiently tackled, project goals met, and company KPIs achieved. This applies whether the work environment is a school, a traditional office setting, a construction site, a healthcare facility, a gym, or a spa.

Does Hydration Really Affect Employee Productivity?

Yes, though it’s important to be precise. Much water filtration-system marketing around workplace hydration leans on dramatic productivity-drop percentages that are hard, if not impossible, to verify. But the most reliable peer-reviewed research does point to clear, specific conclusions: good hydration is important to a person’s cognitive ability, mood, concentration, and response time.

A 2024 study from Penn State, published in the American Journal of Human Biology, followed adults middle-aged and older for more than three months. While the study concluded that everyday dehydration didn’t significantly impair working memory, it did find that under-hydration was associated with poorer performance on tasks requiring sustained attention over roughly fourteen minutes.²

Similar findings were reported in a 2025 study of adults aged 18 to 30, published in the International Journal of Academic Medicine and Pharmacy. Slower mental processing speed, reduced working memory and problem-solving skills, delayed neuromotor responses: all resulted from inadequate hydration.³

As if these findings weren’t enough to corroborate the value of upgrading workplace water, studies published in the Journal of Nutrition and the British Journal of Nutrition discovered that, in young men and women, mild dehydration of roughly 1-1.5% of body weight worsened mood, increased the perceived difficulty of tasks, and reduced the capacity to focus.⁴

Hydration Is a Measurable Performance Variable

Dehydration has a negatively compounding effect on people’s daily performance:

• A moody colleague who brings down office morale.
• A stressed-out trainer who offends a gym client.
• A depressed or low-energy teacher who fails to inspire.
• A caregiver or doctor whose judgment isn’t all that it should be.

Time and again, the growing body of research indicates that staying adequately hydrated supports sustained focus, steadier mood, and quicker response times—attributes most needed for team members to do the best work they can for themselves, their students, patients, clients, and employers.

Does Dehydration Increase an Employer’s Healthcare Costs?

Again, it’s worth being precise here, because this is an issue where wellness marketing tends to overstate. No single study pegs dehydration as a direct cause of higher healthcare costs to employers. What the evidence does highlight, however, is that the conditions associated with under-hydration—headaches, fatigue, digestive problems, urinary tract infections—are documented causes of sick days and reduced job performance.

For example, there is a well-studied link between low fluid intake and recurrent urinary tract infections. A 12-month trial published in JAMA Internal Medicine revealed that women with recurrent UTIs and low fluid intake cut their risk of recurrence by 48% when they drank an additional 1.5 liters of water per day.⁵

A single UTI episode, including diagnosis, treatment, and complications, costs roughly $2,000 to $7,700 depending on the country.⁶ An expense that, especially if it recurs, can increase the cost of a company health plan.

And then there’s “presenteeism”—when employees are physically present but unable to function at full capacity. According to a study in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, on-the-job productivity losses resulting from common health conditions—like headaches, fatigue, digestive problems, and urinary tract infections—exceeded direct medical expenditures.⁷

A Wellness Upgrade that Pays for Itself

A widely cited 2010 Harvard meta-analysis published in Health Affairs found that for every $1 invested in employee wellness, companies save approximately $3.27 in healthcare costs and $2.73 in absenteeism costs. The authors of the analysis have since noted that more rigorous research is needed, so the figures they report are best read as directional rather than definitive.⁸

Why Does Water Quality Matter?

Taste, appearance, and confidence in a water source determine whether people regularly hydrate throughout the day. If what’s on offer at a workplace comes from a kitchen tap or public water fountain, people tend to think it’s not safe.

A survey conducted by the Environmental Working Group found that only about a quarter of Americans drink water straight from the tap, with 40% refusing to consume it altogether⁹.

Team members might bring their own bottled water to work, of course. But aside from the health risk of microplastics, they could find that too costly over time.

When delicious, filtered water is available, consumption tends to go up. When it’s not available, most people either go without or default to dehydrating beverages like coffee, energy drinks, or carbonated beverages¹⁰.

Readily available water from a trusted source, certified by IAPMO to NSF standards for the reduction of up to 84 contaminants, does away with the barriers that keep team members from hydrating and performing at their optimal level.

How Does Better Water Bolster Employee Trust, Engagement, and Retention?

People notice when a company invests in the details of their daily environment. Providing clean, purified water in shared spaces signals that leadership takes employee wellbeing seriously. That kind of visible commitment is a motivator. It builds trust and job satisfaction, leading to long-term retention.

What Is the Most Practical Way for Businesses to Improve Water Quality?

Improving water quality doesn’t have to require infrastructure overhauls or a significant outlay of capital. AquaTru Pro Series filtration systems are easy to install, low maintenance, and scalable across multiple spaces and locations. They require no major plumbing changes and are designed to meet the demands of high-traffic settings, including hospitality, healthcare, commercial real estate, fitness, and education.

For organizations looking to strengthen their wellness programs with a sensible, high-ROI improvement, water from AquaTru Pro is a great place to start.

Explore AquaTru Pro

Citations

1. Jéquier, E; Constant, F. “Water as an essential nutrient: the physiological basis of hydration.” European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, vol. 64, no. 2, 2010, pp.115-123. https://doi.org/10.1038/ejcn.2009.111
2. Rosinger, A.Y., John, J.D., & Murdock, K.W. “Ad libitum dehydration is associated with poorer performance on a sustained attention task but not other measures of cognitive performance among middle-to-older aged community-dwelling adults: A short-term longitudinal study.” American Journal of Human Biology, vol. 36, no. 6, 2024, pp. e24051. DOI: 10.1002/ajhb.24051. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajhb.24051
3. L K Sumitra, Swetha M, Gopireddy Aniruddha. “Hydration Status and its Impact on Cognitive Performance and Reaction Time in Young Adults: A Comparative Study,” International Journal of Academic Medicine and Pharmacy, vol. 7, no, 2, 2025, pp. 157-162. DOI: 10.47009/jamp.2025.7.2.33. https://www.academicmed.org/Issue/29.
4. Armstrong, L.E., et al. “Mild Dehydration Affects Mood in Healthy Young Women.” Journal of Nutrition, vol. 142, no. 2, 2012, pp. 382–388. https://jn.nutrition.org/article/S0022-3166(22)02889-9/fulltext — and Ganio, M., et al. “Mild dehydration impairs cognitive performance and mood of men.” British Journal of Nutrition, vol. 106, no. 10, 2011, pp. 1535-1543. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007114511002005 https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/3388AB36B8DF73E844C9AD19271A75BF
5. Hooton, T.M., et al. “Effect of Increased Daily Water Intake in Premenopausal Women With Recurrent Urinary Tract Infections: A Randomized Clinical Trial.” JAMA Internal Medicine, vol, 178, no. 11, 2018, pp. 1509–1515. DOI: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2018.4204. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30285042/
6. Zemdegs, J., et al. “Water intake and recurrent urinary tract infections prevention: economic impact analysis in seven countries.” BMC Health Services Research, vol. 23, no. 1, 2023, pp. 1197. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-023-10234-y. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10623695/
7. Goetzel, R., et al. “Health, Absence, Disability, and Presenteeism Cost Estimates of Certain Physical and Mental Health Conditions Affecting U.S. Employers.” Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, vol. 46, no. 4, 2004, pp. 398–412. DOI: 10.1097/01.jom.0000121151.40413.bd. https://journals.lww.com/joem/fulltext/2004/04000/health,_absence,_disability,_and_presenteeism_cost.13.aspx
8. Baicker, K., Cutler, D., & Song, Z. “Workplace Wellness Programs Can Generate Savings.” Health Affairs, vol. 29, no. 2, 2010, pp. 304–311. DOI: 10.1377/hlthaff.2009.0626.
9. Stoiber, Tasha. “EWG Survey: At Least 50 Percent of People Surveyed Think Tap Water Is Unsafe.” Environmental Working Group. August 2022. https://www.ewg.org/research/ewg-survey-least-50-percent-people-surveyed-think-tap-water-unsafe
10. Kleiner, S M. “Water: An Essential but Overlooked Nutrient.” Journal of the American Dietetic Association, vol. 99, no. 2, pp.200-206, 1999. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0002-8223(99)00048-6. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9972188/

Additional Sources:

“Exposure to Drinking Water Trihalomethanes and Risk of Cancer: A Systematic Review of the Epidemiologic Evidence and Dose–Response Meta-Analysis,” PMC, 2025 pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11750423

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412023003069

https://www.usgs.gov/news/national-news-release/tap-water-study-detects-pfas-forever-chemicals-across-us