Open AccessThe work environment pilot: An experiment to determine the optimal office design for a technology company
Author(s) -
Jegar Pitchforth,
Elizabeth C. Nelson,
Marc van den Helder,
Wouter Oosting
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0232943
Subject(s) - open plan , plan (archaeology) , productivity , work (physics) , office workers , suite , operations management , business , engineering management , marketing , engineering , process management , mechanical engineering , history , civil engineering , archaeology , economics , macroeconomics
Over the past few decades many corporate organisations have moved to open-plan office designs, mostly due to financial and logistical benefits. However, recent studies have found significant drawbacks to open plan offices and it is unclear how office designs can facilitate the best work output and company culture. Current design practice aims to optimise efficiency of space, but no previous research has tested the effect of office design experimentally in a working office. This paper describes an experiment comparing four different office designs (Open-plan, Zoned open-plan, Activity based, and Team offices) against a suite of wellbeing and productivity metrics in a real world technology company. Results suggest that two very different designs (Zoned open-plan and Team offices) perform well compared to Open-plan office designs. Zoned open-plan and Team office designs improved employee satisfaction, enjoyment, flow, and productivity, while Activity based and Open-plan designs performed poorly by comparison. The Open-plan office design was rated more poorly by employees, had higher levels of unsafe noise, and once employees no longer had to be in the Open-plan office design of the experiment, they spent more time at their desks.