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The Worlds of Facility Management and Workplace are, by definition, highly mobile and evolutive.

On these pages, you will find technical articles, news, reports on congresses and conferences in which Spaceonmove took part as well as positions or “mood tickets” which should give you a particular insight into these two fields. Nice readings.

Workspace concepts and productivity…

Posted on by Christian Hadorn | Article

Do workspaces have an impact on productivity? To ask the question is to answer it, even if other factors, such as tools and technology, processes, skills delegation, etc. play an equally important role…

New concepts in workspaces - which in fact are no longer very ‘new’ - are key factors in success, satisfaction and productivity. Allowing employees flexibility in a much more fluid environment than in the past is becoming a must, across all generations.

However, looking at employee productivity solely in terms of workspaces seems a little short-sighted, although for some company managers, buying a few ‘attractive’ pieces of furniture from a discount store and repainting the cafeteria is already a giant leap into the future.

Productivity in the workplace is very difficult to quantify, because the very definition varies from company to company. What’s more, there are countless parameters that come into play to increase or decrease productivity. Here are a few examples:

• Acoustics and noise: no noise will be sinister, too much noise will be annoying. (For example, there are proponents and opponents of “white noise”).

• Lighting and/or natural light, variations during the different phases of the day and different needs depending on the activities, which makes the exercise difficult.

• Materiality and colour of vertical and horizontal architectural elements.

• Tones and materials in harmony with the company’s image, not necessarily in line with employees’ physiological needs.

• Air quality, air renewal, ventilation, temperature.

• Harmonious flows and processes to enable efficient activities.

• Delegation of skills and competent, caring management.

• Interest in the activities carried out and interactivity with colleagues.

• And finally, incentive workspaces.

• Playful and/or recreational spaces and elements.

• Opportunities to work from home (“home working”).

The list is not exhaustive. For ‘honest’ specialists, it is very difficult to calculate productivity precisely: it is often preferable to put it in the ‘before/after’ balance and add up the ‘incentive’ measures.

To put it another way, using an example: having exceptional air quality in an office run by an incompetent manager using irrational flows will not boost productivity, even though the quantity of CO2 in the air is intrinsically decisive for productivity!

Workspaces have an impact on productivity, but any specialist worthy of the name will always mention the multi-factorial nature of the results. That’s why experts in work design always insist that it’s not possible to ‘copy and paste’ work design, even if the basics remain the same.

In conclusion, and without wishing to undermine the credibility of certain “mathematical gurus”, calculating “true” productivity in the workplace is more wishful thinking than a reality known to specialists or experts.

In the end, it is more important to pool the various areas for improvement in a pragmatic way and to ask your staff about their satisfaction at the workplace, than to theorise this exercise to the extreme.

Happy reading and see you soon

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