The impact of healthy workplaces on employee satisfaction, productivity and costs

Purpose: This paper aims to explore the added value of healthy workplaces for employees and organizations, in particular regarding employee satisfaction, labour productivity and facility cost. Design/methodology/approach: The paper is based on a narrative review of journal papers and other sources covering the fields of building research,...

Impact of employee satisfaction with facilities on self-assessed productivity support

Purpose: This paper aims to explore the relationship between satisfaction with buildings, facilities and services and perceived productivity support and to test whether the findings from a similar study of Batenburg and Van der Voordt (2008) are confirmed in a repeat study after 10 years with more recent data. Design/methodology/approach:...

Accommodating new ways of working: lessons from best practices and worst cases

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to explore which factors may explain the high or low percentages of satisfied employees in offices with shared activity-based workplaces. Design/methodology/approach – The paper compares data on employee satisfaction from two cases with remarkably high satisfaction scores and two cases with significantly...

Public Real estate performance measurement: A case study of a Bangkok government complex

Various studies have shown that corporate real estate can contribute to organisational performance. However, the concept of Public Real Estate Management (PREM) has not been well known in Thailand. This paper aims to present the concept of PREM, to describe Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that are being used in practice, to discuss KPIs that...

Pre-occupancy evaluation of patient satisfaction in hospitals

Only when a building has been built it becomes clear if the building works as expected and if the objectives of the clients, customers, end users and other stakeholders are attained. If not, it is difficult and costly to adapt a building-in-use to fit with the needs and interests of the stakeholders. This paper explores how some of the pre-set...

Spatial support of knowledge production in higher education: Research paper

This paper explores the impact of the physical and social dimensions of the work environment on satisfaction and perceived productivity of knowledge workers in Dutch universities of applied sciences. The approach took the form of a literature review, multiple case study of six research centres using interviews and logbook analysis, and web-based...

Performance measurement of workplace change: A comparative analysis of data from Thailand, The Netherlands and Finland

Purpose: A) to record Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that are used in performance measurementin practice; B) to investigate the influence of the work environment on employee satisfaction and perceived productivity, and to explore the impact of culture on employees’ appraisal of their work environment and prioritized aspects.<br/>Methodology:...

Impact of workplace change on satisfaction and productivity: A comparative analysis of case studies in Thailand and the Netherlands

This paper presents the findings from a case study in Thailand on the use and experience of a new working environment, five months after the organisation moved to a new office building. The purpose of this study is to collect new data about employee satisfaction and perceived productivity after a workplace change, to find out which aspects...

After the fire: New ways of working in an academic setting

Purpose – This paper presents the research findings of a Post-Occupancy Evaluation of new ways of working at the Faculty of Architecture of the Delft University of Technology and the lessons that can be learned from this particular case in connection to research findings from similar cases.<br/>Design/Methodology/Approach – The article is based...

Measuring employee satisfaction in new offices - the WODI toolkit

Purpose: This paper presents a toolkit to measure employee satisfaction and perceived labour productivity as affected by different workplace strategies. The toolkit is being illustrated by a case study of the Dutch Revenue Service.<br/>Methodology: The toolkit has been developed by a review of literature and tools for data-collection. The...

Do facilities matter?: The influence of facility satisfaction on perceived labour productivity of office employee

Purpose: Companies spend a lot of money to provide facilities such as a nice, effective and efficient building, well designed ergonomic furniture, sophisticated IT, cleaning services, catering, and safety services. Both from a theoretical perspective as well as from a managerial point of view, it is important to know if and how strongly...

Performance of office buildings from a user's perspective

In the field of environmental psychology a long tradition exists in Post-Occupancy Evaluation (POE) or building-in-use studies. Nowadays facility managers and real estate managers seem to show a growing interest in ex post evaluation of buildings, too, particularly in connection to ex ante assessments in the briefing and design phase. The aim of...

Productivity and employee satisfaction in flexible workplaces

In the early 1990s, a few organisations in the Netherlands began to experiment with flexible workplaces. Traditional cellular offices and the open‐plan offices or team‐oriented bullpen spaces in which everyone had their own fixed workplace were no longer a matter of course. Making use of modern information and communication technology, the...