Environmental demands and resources: a framework for understanding the physical environment for work

How salutogenic workplace characteristics influence psychological and cognitive responses in a virtual environment

Until today, most research focussed on the effects of pathogenic workplace demands on employee illness instead of on salutogenic resources on health. Using a stated-choice experiment in a virtual open-plan office, this study identifies key design aspects that enhance psychological and cognitive responses, ultimately improving health outcomes. The study systematically varied six workplace attributes: screens between workstations, occupancy rate, presence of plants, views outside, window-to-wall ratio (WWR), and colour palette. Each attribute predicted perceptions of at least one psychological or cognitive state. Plants had the highest relative importance for all expected responses but views outside with ample daylight, red/warm wall colours, and a low occupancy rate without screens between desks were also important. Low-cost interventions like adding plants, removing screens, and using warm wall colours can contribute to a healthier open-plan office environment. These insights can guide workplace managers to design environments that support employees' mental states and health.Practitioner summary: Salutogenic workplace resources that promote health have been understudied. This study aimed to show which workplace characteristics caused positive psychological and cognitive responses to improve health, using a stated-choice experiment in a virtual office environment. Plants in the office were the most important attribute for employees' psychological and cognitive responses.

The reverse buffering effect of workplace attachment style on the relationship between workplace bullying and work engagement

Using the Job Demands-Resources model, this study investigates workplace attachment styles as predictors of work engagement and moderators of the well-established disengaging effect of workplace bullying. As a personal resource, we hypothesized that secure workplace attachment would foster work engagement, whereas both types of insecure workplace attachment (i.e., avoidant and preoccupied) would do the opposite. Previous work also led us to expect the relationship between workplace bullying and engagement to be stronger when targets expect it to act as job resource (i.e., secure workplace attachment) and weaker when their working model is consistent with workplace aggression-i.e., reverse buffering effects. Using the PROCESS macro, we tested these hypotheses in a convenience sample of French office employees (N = 472) who completed an online survey. Secure workplace attachment was associated with higher work engagement while insecure workplace attachment and bullying perceptions related negatively with work engagement. Supporting our hypotheses, feeling exposed to workplace bullying was most associated with disengagement in employees with a secure workplace attachment style and less so in others. Far from recommending insecure bonds as protection, our results rather highlight the need to prevent all forms of workplace aggression, thereby allowing employees to rely on their work environment as a job resource.

Redesigning workspace at Adobe: an Indian perspective

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to describe the success story of a software company, Adobe, in redesigning the workplace environment from cubicles to a connected collaborative workplace, which helped the organization optimize workplace usage. The goals were to design an innovative work environment to optimize the usage of the office portfolio, improve workplace service quality and infrastructure facilities of the portfolio, increase employee productivity, reduce technology costs, engage employees in a better way to enhance employee satisfaction, align workplace design with the brand, mobilize technology and enable a globalized workforce to facilitate higher productivity.

Design/methodology/approach

An exploratory research design method was adopted using the purposive sampling technique to collect data through semi-structured interviews with a team of nine property professionals from the operations team responsible for workspace redesign at Adobe in India.

Findings

The main observations of the corporate real estate (CRE) manager were on what value parameters drive workplace redesign and how different software companies were creating strategies to manage workplace design or redesign change for optimal use of the organization portfolio. To discuss the CRE strategies of global software leaders, IBM and SAP were pointed out in this case.

Research limitations/implications

The number of interviews were limited. The related parameters for workplace transformation are not necessarily complete. However, the parameters are regarded to include the most important aspects of workplace redesign.

Practical implications

This study provides useful insights into how benchmarking in the workplace transformation function of the CRE industry can be applied to address portfolio-related challenges, divergent employee needs and improve workspace usability following energy-efficient policies. Practitioners can use this study as a guide to develop more effective workspace designs.

Social implications

This study may guide other firms on successful workspace design initiatives that may overcome many obstacles in the workplace transformation process to have their intended impact on workplace efficiency and employee satisfaction. The case can be used as an inspiration for developing specific user-focused innovative workspace design in practice.

Originality/value

Adopting the theoretical background of the person–environment fit theory, this study adds to the understanding of the operational model of a digitally connected workspace designed as per real estate needs and strategies to manage the CRE portfolio of the company.

CREM perspective on home office—a consideration of the workplace and its mechanisms of action

The effect between the workplace and work success is a black box whose mechanisms have so far received little theoretical substantiation. In the explanation of the importance of corporate real estate and its management for the success of companies, the influence of real estate on the work productivity of employees through the physical workplace is shown. However, the overall picture has not yet been fully elaborated and the fragmentary knowledge is only partially suitable for attributing organizational outcomes to the characteristics of the physical working environment. Without sufficient empirical data and a solid theoretical foundation for physical working environment studies, it is not possible to draw conclusions with sufficient certainty about the impact of working environments on organizational outcomes.

The fact that millions of people worldwide are working from home for the first time during the COVID-19 pandemic provides an unprecedented opportunity to explore the impact of the home office environment on business success.

This study aims to contribute to filling this research gap by further investigating the impact of the physical working environment at home on productivity by building on the Environmental Demands–Resources model. Therefore, the research goal is to determine which of the four included demands and resources (isolation, family–work interference, equipment/facilities, and building) have an impact on employee burnout and satisfaction, and how this impact affects employee productivity. Partial least squares structural equation modeling is used to analyze a German survey sample (n = 429).

The results suggest that the four included workplace characteristics have significant influence, with equipment/facilities and building increasing satisfaction and isolation and family–work interference increasing burnout. Equipment/facilities is identified as the most important factor affecting productivity in the home office.

Through this study, a contribution is made to establish a more inclusive and integrative framework for physical working environment research. In addition, the results show that workspace characteristics have an impact on productivity. Far beyond the pandemic, the impact of changes in workspace design on employee perceptions and organizational performance will be important to corporate real estate management practice.

How teachers’ expectations influence their experiences with activity-based workplaces in higher education

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of teachers’ expectations on their experiences and satisfaction response dregarding the introduction of activity-based workplaces (ABWs) in a Dutch university of applied sciences.

Design/methodology/approach

The first author executed a three-year at-home ethnographic study as senior lecturer at the university in which the research was executed.

Findings

Teachers have will expectations, should expectations and want expectations that relate to the stages before, during and after the introduction of ABWs. Unmet should and will expectations negatively affect want expectations and not only influence teachers’ affective commitment to their work but also generate dissatisfaction and even anger toward the organization, showing the importance of monitoring all three types of expectations.

Research implications

Users evaluate their expectations against their experiences which can lead to the formation of (dis)satisfaction regarding the introduction of ABWs. To explain the satisfaction response, research should consider expectations and experiences.

Practical implications

Discrepancies between users’ expectations and experiences lead to dissatisfaction with ABWs. Involving users and aiming to capture their expectations in the design support professionals predicting satisfaction and preventing the organization from costly re-refurbishments.

Social implications

Exploring users' expectations creates an understanding of users' everyday processes and underlying values which can improve the fit between users and building and reduce costs. Reducing accommodation costs benefits society, as more money can be spent on education.

Originality/value

This paper integrates Lefebvre’s spatial theory and Oliver’s disconfirmation theory to study the influence of expectations on users’ experiences and describes the process before, during and after introducing ABWs.

Assessing Employee Engagement in a Post-COVID-19 Workplace Ecosystem

This article has aimed to better understand employee engagement in a post-COVID-19 workplace ecosystem. We identified a knowledge gap in the relationship between employee engagement and the physical workplace environment through an interdisciplinary literature review. We subsequently tested this gap by comparing employee engagement metrics proposed by leading academics in the field of organisational psychology with a sample of commonly used real estate industry approaches to monitoring workplace design/management. We focused specifically on industry-projected post-COVID-19 workplace ecosystem scenarios, and the results suggest that traditional employee engagement metrics and industry approaches to monitoring workplace design and management do not fully reflect the recent shift to hybrid work patterns. We shed light on the implications that this can have on our existing knowledge of “sustainable” property markets in a wider city context.