5. Role of Workspace Attributes in Employee Recruitment, Satisfaction and Retention
Monk (1997) reports that open-plan offices have lower levels of occupant performance and job satisfaction. They also increase employee stress and reduce their autonomy, task identity, supervisory feedback and privacy. They argue that ultimately, this compromises the productivity, motivation and well-being of the entire organization. In a longitudinal study conducted by Brennan et al. (2002) it was found that employee moves from traditional offices to open offices were associated with lower levels of occupant satisfaction with their physical environment. A similar, earlier study by Oldham (1988) found that employees who moved from an open-plan office to either a low-density open-plan office or to a partitioned office experienced significant improvements in task privacy, communication privacy, crowding, and office satisfaction. Cullen (2006) reports that as offices move toward more open workspaces such as cubicles, more employees are seeking privacy, fewer noise distractions (especially coworkers’ phone conversations), flexible work hours and the ability to telecommute at least several days each week. These appear to be significant employee recruitment issues for organizations. It is also apparent that there a lack of consensus in the literature on the relative merits of open-plan vs. greater use of private offices and other office layouts, and the effects these may have on employee satisfaction, recruitment and retention. The key issues may be how to customize office space to the specific needs of the individual organization, and how to minimize disruptions and stress during the renovation and moving process. Questions such as how to determine the optimal office layout for an organization or unit, and how to implement these changes smoothly are deserving of research and discussion.
Vischer (2008) relies on extensive research on the use of space in office buildings to develop a user-centred theory in the context of one type of built environment. This theory “enables links to be made between knowledge accumulated both at the micro scale of the users’ experience and at the macro perspective of how the built environment is produced and delivered.”