Effects of Reducing Enclosure on Perceptions of Occupancy Quality, Job Satisfaction, and Job Performance in Open-Plan Offices

Transcription

1 Much debate has occurred around the choice between private, enclosed offices and the openplan office, with little field research available to support either side. Of the research that exists, results are generally not favorable toward openplan offices. Nonetheless, many organizations move from private offices to open plan, using the rationale that this transition has a positive effect on organizational effectiveness. This paper reports the results of two studies that gauged the effects of degree of enclosure on open-plan office employees perceptions of occupancy quality. The first study evaluated the impact of reducing enclosure on users perceptions of privacy, personalization, job satisfaction, and willingness to contact co-workers. The second study compared user ratings from two environments with differing levels of enclosure. Results from the first study showed that the change from higher to lower panel heights generally had a negative impact on users, although there may be some advantages defined at the group level. Results from the second study reinforced the point that workstation enclosure has mixed effects on occupant perceptions of the quality of their work environment. Effects of Reducing Enclosure on Perceptions of Occupancy Quality, Job Satisfaction, and Job Performance in Open-Plan Offices by: Jay L. Brand, Ph.D., and Thomas J. Smith, Ph.D.

2 Effects of Reducing Enclosure on Perceptions of Occupancy Quality, Job Satisfaction, and Job Performance in Open-Plan Offices Jay L. Brand Haworth, Inc., Holland, MI Thomas J. Smith Orfield Laboratories, Inc. and University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN Results from two field studies are reported: a quasi-experiment of changing from inch to inch partition heights at a multi-national corporation, and a comparison of two office areas at a global manufacturer. In the first study, both control and experimental participants endured moving, but only the experimental group experienced any change in partition height. A quantitative, subjective survey provided work environment ratings before, immediately after, and six months after the change. The results show that in general, this was a negative change for users, although some non-significant trends suggested that defined at the group level one or two outcomes may have been positive. Using a much more extensive instrument, the second study found several differences in occupant ratings of workplace design as a function of differences in the physical environments. A framework is outlined for interpreting these results in terms of individual (i.e., privacy) and group (i.e., communication) needs. INTRODUCTION Although many questions and concerns have swirled around the choice between private, enclosed offices and different versions of the open-plan office, relatively little field research has been conducted comparing these two alternatives (Block and Stokes, 1989; Evans and Johnson, 2000; Kupritz, 2000; O Neill, 1994; Sundstrom, et al., 1994). Results from studies that have been done generally are not favorable toward open-plan offices (De Croon, et al., 2005). Nonetheless, in architectural and design practice, ambitious claims based on architectural determinism (the physical environment controls behavior) for successful transitions from traditional, private offices to more contemporary, open-plan offices often are made. Frequently, practicing designers argue that such things as corporate culture, dominant work styles, and dwindling motivation and performance can all be positively affected by changing the office environment from a relatively private, enclosed to a more open, less enclosed work space. Alternative perspectives are offered by Rousseau (1997) and Weick and Quinn (1999). Unfortunately, despite the importance of this issue in terms of the sheer number of people affected by this choice particularly in North America there has not been an adequate corpus of empirical investigation. For example, to the authors knowledge, there has been one field study of this or similar variables published that employed a quasiexperimental design (Oldham, 1988). A more recently published field study (Brennan, Chugh and Klein, 2002) used a pre-test, post-test with follow-up longitudinal design but without a control group. Furthermore, in practice, when designers change corporate office environments, they include many possible confounds to any specific independent variable (i.e., access to daylight; ambient lighting design; access to common areas or teaming environments; workstation size; degree of enclosure; panel height; occupant density; storage space; and/or work surface space). These considerations provide the underlying rationale for the work reported here, which features results from two different studies of the effects of degree of enclosure on open office employee perceptions of occupancy quality. The first longitudinal quasi-experiment evaluated the impact of reducing enclosure on user ratings of privacy, personalization, job satisfaction, and willingness to contact co-workers. The second, cross-sectional study compared two environments differing primarily on enclosure, utilizing user ratings of a broad range of different occupancy quality attributes. METHOD Study 1. The first study involved a quasi-experimental field evaluation of a change in the physical environment of the corporate offices of a large, multi-national, telecommunications firm. In order to better control for the presence of confounding factors, an office design project involving a change from inch to inch panels surrounding workstations was followed for six months after move-in. Using a between-subjects design, quantitative measures of occupancy quality were collected before (stage 1), immediately after (stage 2), and six months after (stage 3) the completion of the office design project, with a subjective survey claiming unpublished test-retest reliability estimates from 0.72 to Overall, 110 male and 33 female volunteers participated-- -of these, 6 classified themselves as clerical/administrative staff, 121 as technical staff, 14 as managers/executives, and 2 as other employees. The experimental group experienced the change in panel height between the first two measurement stages. The control group experienced a move from one office location to another, but no change in panel height occurred. Between the 2 groups at all three measurement stages, contingency coefficients showed no proportional differences based on sex or job category [control-1 (N = 24), experimental-1 (N = 33); control-2 (N = 19), experimental-2 (N = 37); control-3 (N = 8), experimental-3 (N = 22)]. While there were several other design intents included in this project, they were similar across both the experimental and control groups (i.e., more common areas for teaming; more conference room space proximal to individual workstations).

3 Study 2. The second study involved a comparative analysis of effects of workstation panel height on perceptions of two groups of office workers employed in two different open office areas of the headquarters of a major manufacturer in the Upper Midwest. The L-P group sat in low-panel workstations (42-54 inches; with glazing above 42 inches), the H-P group in high-panel workstations (64-72 inches). A 227-item occupancy quality perceptual response survey questionnaire was administered to all L-P and H-P employees. The survey asked respondents to rate: (1) attributes related to 6 major indicators of occupancy quality (overall employment, work environment, job, organization, compensation, and work station quality); (2) perceived levels of job productivity; and (3) the relative importance of different occupancy quality attributes for job satisfaction. The L-P group area included customer service, logistics and distribution areas. H-P group employees held information technology and financial service jobs. Demographics for the two groups were comparable, with 46 L-P group respondents, 54% female, mean age 40.5 years, and 49 H-P group respondents, 55% female, mean age 38.9 years. ANOVA, followed by post-hoc unpaired t-tests, were used to compare mean rankings by the two groups for different occupancy quality attributes. RESULTS Study 1. Results from the first study suggest that the change from higher to lower panel heights for work stations resulted in largely more negative perceptions by occupants regarding the quality of their immediate work environments. Moreover, contrary to the frequent claims of designers, participants failed to adjust to this change six months after moving into their new work environment. Thus, Figures 1 and 2 show persistent perceptions of reduced privacy and a sense of less personal control over their work stations in the experimental group six months after the change. Nevertheless, despite these negative effects of the change, job satisfaction seemed to be unaffected (Fig. 3). Study 2. A series of two-factor MANOVAs were carried out to assess mean differences between the L-P and H-P groups ratings for different sets of occupancy quality attributes. These attributes pertain to the 6 major indicators of occupancy quality noted above. Group differences on perceived productivity and job satisfaction also were assessed. ANOVA results reveal no significant differences in mean ratings for the L-P versus the H-P groups across sets of occupancy quality attributes related to overall employment, job, organization, compensation, and work station quality, or to productivity and job satisfaction. In contrast, ANOVA results indicate significant differences between the L-P and H- P groups for sets of attributes related to the quality of the physical environment (F 13,81 =6.14, p<.001), and to work station quality (F 5,89 =8.59, p<.001). Post-hoc analyses to delineate the bases of these differences are summarized below. Figure 5 plots mean ratings by the L-P and H-P groups for 13 specific attributes of work environment quality. A rating of 7 denotes high quality, 1 low quality. The top bar in each histogram set plots the mean L-P group rating, the bottom bar the mean H-P group rating, for the specified indicator. The error bars represent 95% confidence intervals for the means. An asterisk following the descriptor for a given indicator on the vertical axis denotes that the mean difference reached significance (p<.05), based on an unpaired t-test. Results in Figure 5 indicate: (1) no significant differences between the groups for mean ratings of overall work environment, overall lighting, task visibility, thermal comfort, and air quality (mean differences were marginal, p<.10, for the latter two attributes); and (2) significantly higher ratings by the L-P group for overall visual appearance, color, daylight, and outside view quality; (3) higher ratings of marginal significance (p<.10) by the L-P group for thermal comfort and air quality; and (4) significantly higher ratings by the H-P group for privacy, general office layout, noise level, and ease of speech communication quality. Post hoc analyses of results related to work station quality indicate that, relative to the H-P group, the L-P group rated their chairs significantly lower but their computer work stations significantly higher in quality. DISCUSSION Based on these results as well as other unpublished prepost research designs of similar office-environment transitions, there are some empirical reasons to suggest that while a move from more to less enclosure results in largely negative perceptual consequences to occupants regarding the quality of their personal, individual work environment, there may be some advantages defined at the group level. Thus, results from the first study in Figure 4 show that six months after the change to lower enclosures, the experimental group reported a somewhat lower tendency to try to avoid contacting people because of the effort required. Although the effect did not reach statistical significance, one might be tempted to equate the 6-month difference between the two groups in Figure 4 with heightened capability for social tracking between co-workers provided by lower enclosures (thus lending potential support for designer claims). Results from the second study reinforce the point that workstation enclosure has mixed effects on occupant perceptions of the quality of their work environment. Noise, speech communication, and privacy quality are rated higher by the H-P group, yet these same respondents perceive visual appearance, daylight, and outside view to be of lower quality than do their L-P group counterparts. Relative to the L-P group area, the H-P group s office area conveys a visual impression of regimented, isolated enclosures. Perhaps not surprisingly, team spirit quality receives notably more lowquality ratings by the H-P group compared with the L-P group. Yet panel height effects on perceptions of physical environment quality do not carry over to concomitant effects on perceptions of other major indices of occupancy quality, for which comparative ratings between the two groups did not differ significantly. These findings indicate that enclosure effects on occupant perceptions are more complex than designers may typically assume. As might be expected, more research with better defined measures is needed to validate these observations.

4 REFERENCES Block, L.K., and Stokes, G.S. (1989). Performance and satisfaction in private versus nonprivate work settings. Environment and behavior, 21, Brennan, A., Chugh, J.S., and Kline, T. (2002). Traditional versus open office design: a longitudinal field study. Environment and behavior, 34, De Croon, E.M., Sluiter, J.K., Kuijer, P.P.F.M., and Frings-Dresen, M.H.W. (2005). The effect of office concepts on worker health and performance: a systematic review of the literature. Ergonomics, 48(2), Evans, G.W., and Johnson, D. (2000). Stress and openoffice noise. Journal of applied psychology, 85, Kupritz, V.W. (2000). The dynamics of privacy regulation: aconceptual model for HRD and organizations. Journal of industrial teacher education, 38(1), Oldham, G.R. (1988). Effects of changes in workspace partitions and spatial density on employee reactions: a quasiexperiment. Journal of applied psychology, 73, O Neill, M.J. (1994). Work space adjustability, storage, and enclosure as predictors of employee reactions and performance. Environment and behavior, 26, Rousseau, D.M. (1997). Organizational behavior in the new organizational era. Annual review of psychology, 48, Sundstrom, E., Town, J., Rice, R., Osborn, D., and Brill, M. (1994). Office noise, satisfaction, and performance. Environment and behavior, 26(2), Weick, K.E., and Quinn, R.E. (1999). Organizational change and development. Annual review of psychology, 50, I have adequate privacy in my primary work area (1) Yes (7) No Adequate Privacy in Primary Work Area Between-subjects versus F(2, 133) = 5.40, p <.01 Figure 1, Study 1. Mean privacy ratings as a function of time-of-measurement, by group (defined by panel height). For Figures 1 and 2: top set of data = experimental group; bottom set of data = control group. I can personalize my workspace (1) Yes (7) No Between-subjects versus Personalize my Workspace F(2,124) = 1.75, p =.18 Figure 2, Study 1. Mean ratings of ability to personalize workspace as a function of time-of-measurement by group.

5 Job Satisfaction Rating Right now I would rate my job satisfaction as (1) High (7) Low Between-subjects versus F(2,131) =.03, p =.97 Figure 3, Study 1. Mean job satisfaction ratings as a function of time-of-measurement by group. Top set of data = experimental group. Bottom set of data = control group. I avoid trying to contact people due to effort required (1) Yes (7) No Avoid contacting people due to effort Between-subjects versus F(2,133) = 1.66, p =.20 Figure 4, Study 1. Mean ratings of willingness to contact other people at work as a function of time-of-measurement by group. Top set of data = experimental group. Bottom set of data = control group.

6 Average Employee Perceptions of Major Indicators of Physical Work Environment Quality (Low Panel Group versus High Panel Group) Overall Quality of Work Environment Privacy Quality * General Office Layout Quality * Quality of General Visual Appearance of Office * Color Scheme Quality * Noise Level Quality * Ease of Speech Communication Quality * Overall Lighting Quality Daylighting Quality * Task Visibility Quality Outside View Quality * Heating/Cooling Comfort Quality Air Quality Low Panel Group High Panel Group Average Ranking (1=Lowest Quality; 7=Highest Quality) (Error Bars = 95% Confidence Intervals; * = p<.05) Figure 5, Study 2. Mean rankings by L-P and H-P group respondents for different specific attributes of physical work environment quality. Top bar in each histogram set = L-P group. Bottom bar in each histogram set = H-P group.