Space Meets Status Designing Workplace Performance

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SPACE MEETS STATUS Jacqueline C. Vischer

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Space Meets Status Designing workplace performance

Jacqueline C. Vischer

ISBN 978-0-415-70104-4

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Space Meets Status

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Employers everywhere are reducing space in office buildings by decreasing the size of individual offices and workstations. Many employees who see their workspace as ‘home’, as a retreat, as their territory, and as a symbol of their position in the company, feel threatened by this change. As managers decrease space to increase efficiency, employees lose their territory, status, and control over privacy. This book examines the dilemmas created by these countervailing forces, affecting not only managers and workers, but also architects, designers and facilities managers.

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The book offers a whole new way of looking at how people inhabit their work-

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space. It shows managers, designers and workers in office buildings how to

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use this new knowledge to increase comfort and efficiency. Expert in the

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psychology of workspace, well-known lecturer, and author of several previous

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books, Jacqueline Vischer summarizes significant research findings on office-

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space design and behavior from fields such as Environmental Psychology,

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Architecture and Interior Design, and Facilities Management, employing terms

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that are accessible and interesting to practicing designers as well as to busi-

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ness managers. In addition, recent examples and case studies illustrate that

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space is a resource and not just an expense to companies that learn how best

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to design workspace from the users’ perspective.

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Vischer examines the practical aspects of planning workspace, such as: lighting; ventilation; temperature; noise and furniture layout. She proposes a new way of designing the environment to help people work, making sure that workspace supports peoples’ tasks. By understanding more about how environmental factors affect work performance, corporate managers and design professionals can plan, design and manage the layout of the work environment more effectively.

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Jacqueline C. Vischer is an Environmental Psychologist with over 10 years

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experience providing workplace consulting and design services to a variety of

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significant corporate and government clients. Her method of measuring the

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human impact of environmental conditions in offices is widely cited and used

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world-wide. She is now professor of design at the University of Montreal, and

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founder and director of the New Work Environments Research Group (Groupe

2

de recherche sur les environnements de travail ).

To John Zeisel

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Space Meets Status Designing workplace

6 7

performance

8 9 10 1 2 3 4 522 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 302 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40 1 2

Jacqueline C. Vischer

First published 2005 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada By Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group © 2005 Jacqueline C. Vischer Typeset in Univers by Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Vischer, Jacqueline. Space meets status: designing workplace performance/Jacqueline Vischer. – 1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Office layout.

2. Organizational behavior. 3. Work environment.

I. Title. HF5547.2.V57 2005 658.2′3–dc22 2004024944 ISBN 0–415–70105–8 (Pb) ISBN 0–415–70104–X (Hb) ISBN 0–203–79961–5 (Eb)

4. Performance.

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In all times and places human beings have resisted the idea that

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they are nowhere for no particular reason and for no particular

2

purpose. They have almost always managed to find somewhere

3

to be and a reason to be there.

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Paul Riesman, 1966

122 2 3

Contents

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Illustration credits

ix

Preface

xi

3

Foreword

4

Fritz Steele

xiii

522 6 7 8

1 2

1 2 3 4 5

1

The organization–accommodation relationship: what is it about change?

24

3

Territoriality examined: being at home at work

52

4

Comfort and productivity: space as a tool for work

79

5

Environmental improvement: taking control

107

6

The workspace transformation imperative

131

9 20

Kingdom, castle, office: are we losing ground at work?

6 7 8 9 302 1

Appendix

The Building-In-Use Assessment Questionnaire

155

Bibliography

159

Index

164

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40 1 2 vii

122 2 3

Illustration credits

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Bruce Simoneaux ©, 3.1

1

Corbis ©, 1.2

2

Grant Mudford ©, 1.4

3

John Boutet ©, 3.26

4

John Zeisel ©, 3.4

522

King Features Syndicate ©, 1.1 (Sally Forth and Bizarro cartoons)

6

Knight Features ©, 1.1 (Dilbert cartoon)

7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 302 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40 1 2 ix

122 2 3

Preface

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This book was written in stages. It did not know what it was going to be

1

when it grew up. Starting out several years ago, my intention was to write an

2

article in which the environmental psychology concept of territoriality could

3

be applied to analyzing and understanding people’s behavior at work. Coming

4

out of a series of workspace change projects in which I had been variously

522

designer, facilitator, researcher and work environment specialist attached

6

to a design team, it seemed to me that the same behavior patterns were

7

presented in every case, regardless of cultural differences in the organization

8

and of the different kind of workspace change problems that were being

9

addressed. It also seemed to me that people everywhere expressed an

20

emotional and what I have characterized in this book as a non-rational attach-

1

ment to their space at work, quite regardless of the physical attributes of said

2

space. As a result, I began to reflect on the psychological and social dynamics

3

that could be underpinning such attachment and how and why it came to the

4

fore when space change was imminent.

5

In its next iteration, months or years later, the article had become

6

a book about managing workspace change. The urge to shrink offices and put

7

workers in an open concept seemed to be sweeping the world of business,

8

but no-one was looking hard at the effects of such changes on workers or on

9

their productivity. It seemed to me that, with change going on at such a vast

302

scale and affecting so many people, there was a need to analyze the stages

1

of successful change management. We needed to draw attention to and illus-

2

trate the dilemmas and problems that occurred when space change was

3

imposed on employees and not managed at all.

4

Pressures of work intervened, and months or years later, I started

5

to write again. By this time it seemed clear that people like me and doing

6

work like mine were accumulating experience and competencies that could

7

be characterized as a new area of knowledge: the environmental psychology

8

of workspace. So analyzing territoriality at work, along with its outriders,

9

privacy and control, understanding how people perceive environmental con-

40

ditions and why these perceptions do not always align with physical measure-

1

ments and the standards based on them, and addressing and managing the

2

process of workspace change all came together as a theory of how people xi

Preface

relate to the space they work in. And not just as a theory: research is being done, knowledge is accumulating, and best practices are being synthesized and applied in practical, change management situations. However, to embrace this new knowledge area successfully, a revolution is needed. Corporations need to change their view of workspace from just being an overhead, or the one-time costs of construction or moving, or as unrelated to the ‘core mission’ or to business objectives. Organizations need to become aware of their ongoing relationship with their accommodation. Space is a key component of any organizational system, along with work processes, technology, employees and financing. Where does the organization live? And how does its choice of a place to live and how it lives there affect its performance? Because it does. This new field, the environmental psychology of workspace, is defining the knowledge and skills that are needed to enable organizations of all sizes and purposes to make better and more aware decisions about where they live, and how to make the best use of the accommodation they have chosen. I am grateful to many thoughtful and competent people for helping me move through the various stages of writing this book, continuing to believe that something useful and worthwhile would come out at the other end. Most significant were the courses I taught both alone and with Francis Duffy to professional architects, designers and facility managers in the Executive Education program at Harvard Graduate School of Design, where many of these ideas first saw the light of day. I would also like to acknowledge the support of GRET (Groupe de recherche sur les environnements de travail ) at the University of Montreal. I am profoundly appreciative of the time and effort expended by Albert Low, Roger Korman, Gustave-Nicolas Fischer and Joan Harvey on providing me with their guidance, comments and reviews, all of which came at precisely the right time to un-stick me and help the writing move forward. Thanks also to Monique Canuel for her careful readings of the manuscript, to Grant Mudford for permission to use his photographs of the Chiat-Day offices, and to Bruce Simoneaux for use of one of his slides. I would especially like to thank John Zeisel for his enthusiastic support, his patient editing of the manuscript and his good ideas. I am grateful to the dog Toby and the cat Dolce as well as to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for getting me through the long lonely days of articulating these ideas in writing. Jacqueline C. Vischer 16 August 2004

xii

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Foreword

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I was very happy to be invited to write a short introduction to this book

1

because I think it fills an important place in the development of our knowledge

2

of human ecology – that is, the reciprocal relationships between people and

3

their physical and social settings.

4

It’s been a relatively slow road to this development. Historically

522

there was a general sense of the importance of such influences, as for

6

example with Winston Churchill’s often-quoted phrase that ‘we shape our

7

buildings and then they shape us’. But real exploration of the variety of human

8

ecology experiences in context has been surprisingly slow, especially in the

9

workplace. Much of the leadership of organizations tend to take long-standing

20

assumptions about workplaces for granted, showing little curiosity about how

1

they might be influencing the members of the system in ways both useful and

2

challenging. There has also been relatively little education or training in spatial

3

awareness, at almost any level of the educational sequence in this country.

4

One of my choices for a critical eye-opener which helped lead

5

to the arguments proposed in this book was E. T. Hall’s classic, The Hidden

6

Dimension (1966).1 He brought together a wide range of information from

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anthropology and sociology about people and space: how they perceive it,

8

how they use it, how they shape it, and how it shapes them, especially at a

9

broad cultural level. He helped people see patterns that had always been

302

there but were usually overlooked as just part of the background to daily life.

1

Prior to Hall, there were interesting research findings in the early

2

Western Electric workplace studies (F. Roethlisberger and W. Dixon, Manage-

3

ment and the Worker 1939), which looked at the effects of productivity of

4

changes to the work team’s immediate environment (lighting, temperature,

5

etc.). These were hard to interpret, though, and actually had a greater impact

6

on human relations management, since the results were that almost any

7

change had a positive effect on production rates. The inference was made that

8

the process of making the changes was the main driver, providing workers

9

with a positive sense of importance and being focussed upon, overshadowing

40

the effects of physical changes.

1

Another important early contribution was Robert Sommer’s

2

Personal Space: the Behavioral Basis of Design (1969),2 which described xiii

Foreword

innovative research on how people manage space and their relationships with others, including interaction patterns, group norms and cultural or different spatial behaviors. Many of his examples were public settings or shared community spaces. Following on Sommer, I tried to bring this point of view into the work world with a small book called Physical Settings and Organization Development (1973). I proposed a small set of basic ‘functions of settings’ which describe what people get from their environments. These included safety and security, symbolic identification, social contact, task accomplishment, pleasure and growth. My intention was to provide a diagnostic lens through which people could better understand both what they were trying to do in an environment, and why they may not be as successful at that as they would like to be. I feel that Space Meets Status follows in this spirit, providing a very compatible look into the real effects of work settings on people’s day-to-day lives. From about that time there has been a much steadier growth in workplace theory and research over the last thirty years. Key contributors have included Franklin Becker, Francis Duffy, Michael Brill, Gerald Davis and Francoise Szigety, myself, and many others, including Jacqueline Vischer. This book is an interesting addition to the field for several reasons. First, it examines a number of human experiential dilemmas in workplace design innovation, which has often emphasized system functionality and real estate management while making fairly simplistic assumptions about the likely impact on the occupants involved. In this sense Space Meets Status fits well with a couple of other early classics in socio-physical analysis: Chermayeff and Alexander’s Community and Privacy (1963)3 and Oscar Newman’s Defensible Space (1973).4 They, like Vischer, were sorting out complex relationships among individual styles/expectations, group norms, cultural assumptions and physical structures and resources. My own work in this area has convinced me that it is the pattern of influences among these factors that shape people’s experiences, satisfactions and effectiveness in new settings. One of the most fundamental (and problematic) examples is reducing or removing the effect of office size/ location as an indicator of organizational status. This change can provide much-needed flexibility through allowing people to shift locations quickly and cheaply in order to create new or temporary social groupings to meet changing external demands. But, as Vischer is well aware, it can also be viewed by occupants as confusing and felt as a loss by people who have dutifully done as they were told for years. The missing piece here is usually a parallel process whose object is to change the symbolic meaning of space in the company culture. It takes a conscious effort to get across that offices and their trappings are no longer meant to be signals of one’s worth to the xiv

Foreword

122

system, nor should they be read that way. Other signals need to be sub-

2

stituted, and top leaders need to be seen and heard as both driving and

3

supporting such a change. Middle managers especially need to be made

4

aware of inadvertent tendencies to send messages which reinforce the

5

old status language.

6

Vischer very rightly (in my view) includes the actual change

7

processes (à la Roethlisberger in the Western Electric Studies) as key factors

8

in the resulting impact (and ability to use) new workplace paradigms. All in

9

all it is a very interesting discussion which provides a more sophisticated

10

array of the actual experiences and challenges of people in new work settings.

1

We need to be adapting our places and policies to the realities of new work

2

world environments and challenges; but we also need to be paying attention

3

to the real difficulties which these adaptations create for the people who

4

have to live with them.

522 6

Fritz Steele

7

Boston, August 2004

8 9 20

Notes

1 2 3 4

1

Hall, E. T. (1966) The Hidden Dimension, Garden City, NJ: Doubleday.

2

Sommer, R. (1969) Personal Space: the Behavioral Basis of Design, Englewood-Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

3

5 6 7

Chermayeff, S. I. and Alexander, C. (1963) Community and Privacy, Garden City, NJ: Doubleday.

4

Newman, O. (1973) Defensible Space: Crime Prevention Through Urban Design, London: Architectural Press.

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122

Chapter 1

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Kingdom, castle, office Are we losing ground at work?

6 7 8 9 20 1 2

A major change is taking place in the way we think about the buildings in which

3

people work. The office is not what it used to be. Managers lucky enough to

4

get private offices find themselves away from the windows, in rooms with

5

glass walls so that people passing by look in. People who have studied for

6

years to become technical experts and professionals in their fields find them-

7

selves in small, box-like enclosures that all look alike. Everyone can see what

8

they do and they can hear everyone sneeze. No matter how nice-looking and

9

functional the workspace, it is not likely to be a private office, and the chances

302

are it does not have a window. Senior executives find themselves moved

1

out of their large corner offices into an ‘open office concept’ in some kind of

2

experiment to show solidarity with the troops – oh, and where did the

3

secretary go?

4

What do all these changes mean? And where is it all leading? Does

5

anyone like it? Does it help or hurt productivity? Until recently, the office was

6

a private enclosed space or room in which employees carried out their work

7

in relative isolation – with the degree of isolation increasing with seniority in

8

the company. Office size and location in the building, as well as furnishings

9

and desk accessories, communicated the status of the employee in the

40

company. Historically, employees at relatively unimportant levels in the organ-

1

ization did not have a room, they only had a desk and chair; and it was only

2

as they moved up to more senior and responsible positions that a room was 1

Kingdom, castle, office

allocated to them. It follows then that as they became more successful they were moved into larger rooms until – as president of the company and chairman of the board – their office was a suite on the top floor of the building, with its own bathroom, the boardroom close by, a reserved parking space under the building, and a view! But this is not happening nowadays. The last decade of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first have seen the typical workspace change from an enclosed room with a window opening on to a corridor and bordered on both sides by other similar rooms, to a sleek combination of work surfaces, file cabinets, shelves and partitions known as the ‘open-plan’. The much-touted space efficiency and flexibility of open-plan configurations have brought about their own problems for users, resulting in a widespread practice of dismissively referring to the open-plan concept as ‘cubes’, ‘cubicleland’ and ‘cube farm’.1 Office furniture manufacturers thrive as increasing numbers of companies of all sizes and types take down walls and invest in desktops attached to partitions that carry wiring laid out in uniform ways across the large open floors of modern office buildings. The people who occupy ‘cubes’ seem to tolerate rather than to like them. Popular newspaper cartoons regularly poke fun at the uniformity, monotony and small dimensions of ‘systems’ furniture 2

1.1 Cartoonists tell us how people feel about cubicles

Kingdom, castle, office

122

– not only Dilbert, who is famous for his lunatic views of office cubicles, but

2

also New Yorker cartoons and national strips such as Sally Forth. For the vast

3

majority of white-collar workers working in this kind of office, the cubicle is a

4

sort of inside joke, meaning ‘this is not really who we are’.

5 6 7

The losing/gaining ground dilemma

8 9

If the bland expanse of standard, grayish-beige partitions topped by uniform

10

fluorescent light fixtures in rigid rows are not who we are, then why are

1

millions of office, knowledge, and professional workers spending half to a

2

third of their time in this kind of workspace? Senior managers, while sitting

3

comfortably in their airy corner offices, as well as office furniture manufac-

4

turers and design professionals, pronounce on the emergence of ‘design

522

trends’ that include the shrinking dimensions of individual office space, the

6

increasing power of communications technology, more dynamic interactive

7

team space, more collaborative work and greater worker mobility. But, in

8

another reality, most people find cubicles too small, too uniform, demeaning

9

of their status and training, and not as dynamic or high-tech as their manu-

20

facturers promised. Were someone to offer it to them, most office workers

1

would find a windowed corner office more dynamic and enjoyable. So, why

2

the rush to give everyone cubicles?

3

Corporate accountants across North America and the world argue

4

that getting more people on a floor reduces occupancy costs, increasing share-

5

holder value by reducing company overhead. In addition, they point out that

6

building operating costs are reduced because moving furniture around is

7

easier than tearing down and rebuilding walls when people and groups need

8

to be moved. And finally, the purchase of office furniture has tax advantages

9

that constructing rooms for offices does not. The force of these economic

302

arguments obliges companies to move more people into a smaller number

1

of square feet while at the same time claiming to provide a more dynamic

2

and interactive work environment. Meanwhile, employees in corporations

3

resist the widespread installation of open-plan workstations, considering

4

such moves, at the very least, with distrust and disappointment: the open-

5

plan concept is seldom welcomed with open arms. Traditional companies,

6

or companies with traditional senior management teams or a traditionalist

7

clientele, like law firms, banks and universities, have tended to keep to the

8

old models. The private enclosed offices are along the windows, and the few

9

open-plan workstations (cubicles) are occupied by ‘lower-ranking staff’,

40

including secretaries, clerical staff and back office operations.

1

When decisions are made to change the space people work in,

2

specifically to shrink it, standardize it and open it up, the symbolic importance 3

Kingdom, castle, office

workers attach to office size, position and furnishings is suddenly and jarringly thrown into question. Financially-driven corporate decisions to demonstrably increase efficiency have little to do with how employees work, or with their needs and expectations regarding the space they work in – does smaller, more open and more uniform workspace increase employee effectiveness?2 Shrinking offices means losing ground for most employees, not just in terms of physical space but also in terms of status. The dilemma of the new office design trends is simply this: while companies downsize and standardize workspace to increase efficiency and reduce reconfiguration costs, their employees fear they are losing territory, status and control and, depending on the type of work they do, may be working less effectively. Thus, in a worst case scenario, both workers and their employers are losing ground: workers physically and employers in terms of workers’ productivity. In a best case scenario, managing the transformation of workspace constructively allows office workers to gain back lost ground in terms of territory, status and control while companies gain ground from meeting their objectives of reduced occupancy costs. This book addresses this dilemma by exploring the implicit deal between employee and employer that gives workspace its symbolic power. To fully understand the power of workspace symbolism, we need to analyze the organization’s relationship to its accommodation, that is, the long-term impact of decisions that organizations make about the workspace they occupy, which in effect generate the usually implicit terms of the employer–employee deal. This deal, or implicit agreement, is called the sociospatial contract. The most critical of the unexamined assumptions on which the sociospatial contract is based are territoriality, job performance or productivity and environmental control. The book examines these three critical components of workspace psychology closely. What causes people to feel so attached to what are often small, gloomy, ugly offices? Why is space change so threatening? And how can this revolution in work and the design of space for work be turned to advantage for the corporation? An old adage says, ‘an Englishman’s home is his castle’ and, indeed, the office we occupy and identify as our own is our castle at work, and a pox on anyone who tries to take it away! The basic assumptions of the sociospatial contract become clear when we examine worker territoriality in the office, environmental influences on the performance of tasks at work, and the meaning of environmental control and empowerment. If managers and designers want to understand and manage workspace change so that it becomes a positive force in the organization, they must become aware of how these three forces operate. Only then can companies take advantage of the possibilities offered by redesigning their space to improve organizational structure and work processes. The positive force of workspace transformation converts the threat of losing ground into a gaining ground scenario for all parties. 4

Kingdom, castle, office

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Space as a social contract

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The progression through ever larger workspace as a marker of advancement through the company is evidence of the implicit social contract between employer and employee.3 This contract, never made explicit and rarely acknowledged unless violated, includes space as a key component of the deal that both sides make when an employee joins a company. In addition to salary and benefits, new employees receive certain rewards and recognition in return for contributing their mental and physical energy to the tasks assigned by the employer. The space the company assigns to employees, and the fact that they occupy it in order to perform work for the employer, symbolizes other implicit terms of the contract, for example, the employee’s loyalty, reliability, honesty and productivity. In addition, space is a reward for good performance and a symbol of an employee’s status in the organization. The sociospatial contract exists between all employees and the companies they work for. The employer promises to exchange physical space, along with pay and other benefits, for the work the employee has been hired to do. Workspace is a symbol of a contractual agreement between employers and their employees that is implicitly understood and rarely questioned. It is a powerful mechanism for communicating the meaning of work, and its symbolism underpins the importance of territory in the workplace.

3

As a society we are in the midst of a sea change in the meaning

4

of work: it is going on around us and we have not yet emerged on the other

5

side. While economic reasons are often cited for changing space, there are

6

also solid technological and social reasons for thinking differently about work-

7

space. But while work and workspace is changing, the terms of the socio-

8

spatial contract are not. As new concepts of work and workspace emerge, are

9

the terms of the contract still valid? Is the implicit contractual understanding

302

adjusting to changes in society? Change is not only evident in the proliferation

1

of standardized open-plan layouts. Other workspace concepts are even more

2

radical with respect to the traditional notion of an office as a place to work.

3

Companies are experimenting with non-territorial approaches, such as shared

4

desks or ‘hot desking’, mobile or remote officing, and various forms of tele-

5

commuting and telework. Some companies go through a stage of having no

6

offices at all, using communications technology and their laptops as ‘virtual

7

offices’. We know little about how these non-territorial alternatives affect

8

employees in both traditional and non-traditional jobs whose image of work-

9

space might still be a wood-paneled corner office with oak furniture and

40

leather chairs, and perhaps a secretary sitting outside the door.

1

Traditional workspace design, which we might call ‘bureaucracy’

2

after the sociologist Max Weber, is oriented to providing a place for each 5

Kingdom, castle, office

individual in the company. One might say ‘a place for everyone and everyone in his place’. This symbolism of the individual office, desk or workstation transmits values and information. It communicates the fact that the individual has been hired by and works for this organization, and beyond that, the loyalty of the individual to the organization, the commitment to perform as required, and the responsibility of the organization to look after, support, respect and pay the employee. It communicates how important the employees are and with whom they are expected to interact. Most of all, it transmits the fact that the individual is just that: a single, somewhat autonomous cog in a large multifaceted wheel, whose performance is evaluated individually, whose pay level is set individually, whose responsibility to arrive and leave at certain times, to respect rules, and to perform the work assigned is basically their own and no-one else’s. In short, the individual office, desk or workstation is a powerful and deeply rooted symbol of the individual’s and the organization’s mutual rights, responsibilities, expectations and commitment – the sociospatial contract! At some level and to some degree, contemporary trends towards shared offices and flexitime, hoteling, hot desking and other mobile work styles, not to mention design trends towards replacing walled offices with cubicles, reducing the square footage of individual workspace and standardizing workspace through the use of systems furniture, all violate the deeprooted symbolism of the individual workspace. To challenge this symbolism is to attack the very roots of people’s perceptions of themselves as members of the workforce. Sociologists tell us that a person at any time occupies a number of roles, each of which is more or less important depending on context: parent, child, voter, shopper, customer, patient, teacher. One of the most significant of all these roles in terms of self-image is that of worker, whether it is doctor, sales rep, secretary, janitor, bus driver, dancer or fisherman. Space is important because, all other things being equal, the features of the physical environment in which work is done communicates the importance of the work and therefore the importance of the role and rank of those who are doing it. These three elements – the person’s job, self-image, and social role and rank – are all at issue in relation to the space in which work is done. However dysfunctional the space a person works in, its very familiarity ensures that it plays its part in sustaining one’s identity or sense of self as defined by job, self-image and role.4 Every change is therefore inevitably and profoundly threatening: take away my walls, door, furniture, window and you change not just my space, but also my work, my sense of myself, my role in society. High stakes indeed! Workspace change also risks violating the terms of the sociospatial contract, and thereby makes this previously implicit understanding dramatically 6

Kingdom, castle, office

122

evident. This is one reason why emotional upheavals and resistance have

2

accompanied workspace change in many companies. This book focuses on

3

examples of workspace change to analyze not just how the sociospatial con-

4

tract works, but also to demonstrate the broad-ranging value that companies

5

can derive from using workspace change explicitly to engage employees in a

6

renegotiation of the sociospatial contract. The future of work in our society will

7

likely result in a radical redefinition of what workspace means, and conse-

8

quently in a new definition of the sociospatial contract. The book shows how

9

well-planned and supportive workspace can add value to organizations through

10

a better understanding of human psychology at work, particularly in relation to

1

the physical environment. It guides managers and designers through the pit-

2

falls of transforming workspace, and proposes ways of managing new work-

3

space design to harness the energy of the employee–space relationship

4

constructively, and not to let it escape in the form of resistance to change. To

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make workspace change a positive and transforming experience for a

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company, managers and designers must understand how people define their territory at work and the effects on their sense of status and control; they must become familiar with the complex layering of environmental effects on work behavior. This book offers new ways to design workspace to meet the challenges of a changing business environment. The places where people work today, the work that they do, and the way they work bear little relation to a bureaucracy. Now it is time to think of space differently. Today’s corporate employees merit an approach to workspace design and planning that is based on new principles and on a different psychology of the relationship between worker and work – a different definition of the sociospatial contract.

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Cultural meaning of workspace

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Think of the space you occupy to do your work. First of all, note that you do indeed identify a space for work. Even people who work at home, and whose work requires few technical supports, find ways of defining space for work

4

just as they define space for play, sleep, eating and personal hygiene. The

5

spaces we build to accommodate and distinguish this grouping of activities

6

reflect the cultural values we hold towards those activities. The inviolable

7

notion of the nuclear family finds its expression in the single-family house. Our

8

belief that specialists and specialized equipment are needed to treat illness

9

finds its expression in the hospital and clinic. Our belief that children need

40

education outside the home and separate from adult work finds expression in

1

the school building. Other cultures, which adhere to other values, build

2

different types of buildings and use them differently. 7

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Although the notion of buildings as an expression of cultural values may seem obvious, it can be a useful tool when turned in reverse. For example, what values do the spaces we occupy tell us about the activities that happen in those spaces and about the people that occupy them? Historically, the architecture of public institutions such as prisons and mental hospitals expressed not only new philosophies of treatment and rehabilitation as these emerged, but also the raising or lowering of the social status of the people in these institutions. In cultures where the mentally ill are held under restraint in conditions worse than those of animals in Victorian zoos, we readily comprehend that mental illness is not pitied or treated, as it is (now) in our culture: it is held in contempt. Prisons designed primarily for surveillance have an architectural form and environmental design different from those for prisons designed for rehabilitation of offenders. So what can be learned from the way our society designs and builds office buildings? Growing tentatively out of space for paperwork attached to factory floors early in the nineteenth century, the first high-rise architecture was seen in cities by the end of the century, and now office buildings crowd the downtown of almost every major city in the world. Indeed, so much so, that city skylines from Europe to Asia to South America look increasingly alike. The office tower is the pinnacle of expression of today’s cultural values: the importance of jobs, the predominance of big business in the economy, and the significance of money. People in cities all over the world spend hours every day getting to and from these buildings, and they spend years of their lives inside them. Now, at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of a new millennium, we are coming to think differently about these office spaces. Work has a meaning and an importance in modern society that it did not have when the architectural concept of the high-rise office building was first embraced. Contemporary culture places an ever-higher value on work, including being trained, holding a job, earning a living and ‘getting ahead’. If office environments are changing to express new values and new meanings of work, what is the future of high-rise office building architecture, and are new forms for buildings to house work going to evolve? This change is too important to be left to architects, facilities managers and real estate professionals; it will come from within. The space a company designs for itself is increasingly an expression of its identity, as well as communicating its image and providing a means for attracting the right type of employees; it is accommodation and not just square footage. Space is decreasingly a characterless, costly necessity that functions as a backdrop for the real work of the organization. It is becoming more of an investment, an expression of cultural values and increasingly, a tool for work. Thus decisions about workspace are becoming management decisions and workspace planning is becoming a management responsibility. Managers need to learn 8

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the skills to make good workspace decisions. This means understanding

2

more about the meaning workspace has for employees and the ways in which

3

space can be a resource to the organization and a support to work. It means

4

business managers ‘partnering’ with facilities managers and design profes-

5

sionals to ensure good quality workspace decisions and actively managing the

6

sociospatial contract. Managers who recognize the resource they have in

7

workspace see buildings less as a commodity and more as directly related

8

to the performance of work.

9

At the heart of this challenge is the dilemma that arises out of the

10

strong pull between rational and non-rational ways of thinking about space.

1

Every good dilemma has two equally convincing defensible positions. On the

2

one hand, responsible corporate executives make apparently rational, cost-

3

containing, business decisions about acquiring or selling buildings, office-

4

space moves and changes, leasing new space, acquiring new furniture, and

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who gets private offices when the company moves into a more open concept.

6

On the other hand, a range of not-always-rational ways of thinking or feeling

7

about space exists that leads to less rational – and somewhat cost-indifferent

8

– behavior by all stakeholders. These might include renovating an outdated

9

older building because it is beloved or a symbol of a valued past; allowing a

20

vice-president to occupy a 600 square foot office instead of respecting the

1

corporate standard because she has been 30 years with the company; letting

2

the CEO’s wife ‘decorate’ office interiors because she did such a good job

3

on the CEO’s new home; and re-renovating recently renovated office space

4

because a new boss wants to impose her own ideas.

5

At some non-explicit level, a double standard exists about office

6

space and buildings. A company may make responsible cost-saving decisions

7

by reducing the number of private enclosed offices, giving everyone stand-

8

ardized, open-plan workstations, reusing old furniture and squeezing more

9

people in on a floor. However, executives making these decisions rarely apply

302

the same standards to their own workspace, preferring to forego cost consid-

1

erations in order to keep the corner office, the executive dining room and the

2

customized furniture for emotional and symbolic reasons. Employees who

3

are informed of these decisions are more likely to respond emotionally than

4

rationally. They see ‘cubicleland’: their workspace looks like everyone else’s,

5

they do not always want to see and hear everything going on around them,

6

they need more space, they cannot concentrate. In extreme cases, they

7

experience loss and grieving. They may become suspicious of management’s

8

motives: perhaps the changeover from traditional offices to workstations

9

means their needs are secondary to cost-cutting and their comfort is being

40

sacrificed for the books.

1

At senior levels of the organization as well, space has a non-

2

rational, emotional hold over decision-makers, as evidenced by the CEO or 9

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board chairman who exercises non-rational control over supposedly rational building decisions. For example, one company president initiates a major building project for the organization and has a strong say in decisions about the architecture, the look, and the interior office layout. Before the project is completed, a new president is installed and all the work done to date is overturned and the project reworked to reflect the values, philosophy and image of the new executive. Architects are familiar with this syndrome, from which they are occasionally able to make a lot of money. Even if there is no change of regime to make space decisions, there are other signs of the link of space to power and personality traits. For example, the CEO of Sun Microsystems disliked the artwork in his new headquarters and insisted that it all be changed before he moved in; a new vice-president at Steelcase changed the design of the distinctive pyramid-shaped office headquarters at the last minute; and a department head at the World Bank had the entire floor of his staff’s offices reconfigured so that he could keep a space for visitors outside his own office.5 One of the effects of this implicit double standard is that executives are often unwilling to take on workspace projects for the company. The new building or a proposed move is frequently a hot potato passed from hand to hand. Eventually, a senior manager has the project handed to him, because he is new, junior or happens to be sitting next to the CEO that day at the boardroom table, and not because he is experienced in project management, understands the company’s accommodation needs, and can balance rational and non-rational decision-making. Another effect of the double standard is that companies are reluctant to do anything too drastic that might affect space meaning and use, such as trying new technologies or ways of working. They hold back from telework or mobile officing – solutions that seem radical, in that not only do employees lose symbols of their status and the importance of their work inside the organization, they also lose their connection to a ‘home base’ and to the company’s values and culture. Experts on options such as working at home advance incontrovertibly rational arguments in favor of implementing new work strategies, including rethinking the design of existing workplaces.6 The logic of the arguments is irrefutable, but still companies hesitate to act on them. And why? Because workspace decisions are more emotional and less rational than the ‘need to hold down occupancy costs’ argument would have us believe. Decision-makers do not yet have a holistic model of space-in-the-organization/the-organization-in-space with which to resolve the dilemma created by rational, space-as-a-cost versus non-rational, space-as-symbol decision-making. Senior executives are not the only ones with gut-level reactions to the space they occupy – innumerable studies have determined that employees resist workspace change even in situations where the existing 10

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space is cramped and uncomfortable. The fact that new offices promise

2

greater comfort and functionality is not enough to convince people to give up

3

what they know and what they have. Managers in all types of organization

4

need to learn and understand more about this gut-level relationship that exists

5

between people and the space they work in: their territory at work. We need

6

this knowledge to understand and prepare for the future, and to avoid one of

7

Parkinson’s more prophetic Laws, to whit, ‘The decline of a company begins

8

right after moving into a new building’! Economic reasons go just so far, and

9

technology takes us a good bit further. But we need to understand people and

10

their behavior in space to help companies act effectively and successfully in

1

defining the space they occupy.

2 3

The history of workspace: why the office

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Cosimo I, first patriarch of the De Medici family in sixteenth-century Florence,

7

probably built the earliest purpose-built offices in western culture. Cosimo

8

placed clerical workers performing essential services for the public together

9

in ‘the offices’ to increase their efficiency by being close to each other, and to

20 1 2

have them where he could see them and the public could find them. 1.2 The Uffizi in Florence, Italy

Construction of the Uffizi – now one of the world’s great art galleries – was started by the architect Giorgio Vasari in 1560 and later completed by

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Buontalenti to house the administrative offices (or uffizi) of the Government because the Palazzo Vecchio had become too small to hold them all. These reasons for the existence of offices (efficiency, surveillance, public access and outgrowing previous space) have not really changed over the years. Offices for private companies would not be found in purpose-built buildings for another 200 years. Offices in cities, if they were needed at all, were often located in houses. In the early nineteenth century, large insurance companies in London, England, began to build decorous headquarters in landscaped grounds. In industrial areas, such as the north of England, office space was added on to the factory floor where the main work was performed. Offices were not thought of as distinct from space for manufacturing equipment or plant; but half a century ago the space in which an organization operated was considered as important a component of the plant as its machinery, its systems and its personnel.7 The office was simply a separate area occupied by clerical staff and supervisors to protect them from the rougher factory floor. Managers’ offices were usually equipped with a window into the machine area that enabled supervisors to monitor workers from off the factory floor. As the functions of office areas increased in importance, the inclusion of space as part of the whole system addressed by strategic business planning and decisionmaking was somehow neglected. Injunctions to decision-makers to consider ‘all aspects of the physical environment . . . as elements of other physical and technical systems to be investigated . . . for the purpose in hand’ went largely ignored.8 The first office tower was built in Chicago in the 1880s – a result of new materials (steel for high-rise construction), new technology (elevators, cranes) and new modes of transportation that made the centers of cities desirable places for businesses to locate. The offices in such buildings were created partly in response to new office technology, such as the typewriter and the telephone. Early in the twentieth century, the architect Le Corbusier pointed out that the typewriter standardized paper size, which led in turn to standardized means for printing, binding and storage, thus imposing a form on office equipment for decades to come.9 Another strong influence came from Taylor’s time-motion studies in the second decade of the twentieth century, designed to increase manufacturing efficiency by breaking down work processes into a series of standardized tasks that could be performed serially by human workers with a minimum of movement and in the shortest time possible. Taylor and others favoring this approach wrote about the impersonal bureaucratic virtues of order, regularity and thrift. Any trained worker could substitute for any other trained worker in the performance of standardized tasks on assembly lines of machines. Calling this a ‘scientific approach’ to management, Taylor’s influence continues to be felt in the planning and design of work environments to this day in the form of standardizing office 12

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1.3 Modern office buildings in Brisbane, Australia

space for reasons of speed, efficiency and easy substitution of one worker for another. The office building represents the architectural expression of these values. In fact, it has been said that the last great management revolution

8

had its major expression through architecture and design.10 The management

9

principles of Taylor and, later, Henry Ford were expressed through the designs

302

of modernist architects such as Gropius, Le Corbusier and May. These prin-

1

ciples include cost-efficiency priorities, clean shapes and minimalist forms

2

and imply use of rational design methods and mechanized building practices,

3

as well as mass-produced materials and ‘neutrality, efficiency, planning’. They

4

complement the notions of organizational change prevalent at that time,

5

directed at increasing standardization of tasks and processes, separating task

6

conception from task execution, implanting a formalized job hierarchy, and

7

reducing ‘chaos, disorder, waste . . . and lack of control’.11

8

Office building architecture has evolved since the era of Sullivan,

9

Van Der Rohe and other great skyscraper architects. One contemporary archi-

40

tect writes that in North America, ‘architecture is used to express the import-

1

ance of corporate discipline’, whereas in Europe, companies seek ‘to enhance

2

interaction among staff . . . and to promote individual self respect’.12 He points 13

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out that the office tower is one of the great successes of western architecture. However, the cultural concept of the office as a place where people do mundane and backstage work in unimportant surroundings did not undergo any real change until the late 1960s, ‘when technicians and specialists began to replace unskilled paper pushers and typists’. The combined influences of Taylor’s legacy on management philosophy, as well as ‘bold inventions in construction, in building services, and in real estate practice’ have created a form and an industry that is resistant to change.13 In the twentieth century, the office tower as an architectural form has consolidated nineteenth rather than twentieth or, still less, twenty-first century values, in part because of the homogenizing influence of the architecture on office interiors. In spite of major social changes, the multistorey office building is still the form of choice for accommodating workspace. By the end of the last century, the seeds of the next great revolution in office design had been sown with the large-scale introduction of computer technology. Logically it would seem that the revolutionary advantages of the new technology would cause a swing of the pendulum away from task standardization towards more flexibility in how work is done and customization of tasks to suit the needs and skills of individual workers.14 Un-standardizing tasks and increasing employee autonomy and responsibility have indeed become trends in management thinking. Business is being exhorted to embrace chaos as the progenitor of creativity and to replace individuals doing work as a supervised collective with self-managed teams working on projects collaboratively. Equal access to information through electronic technology and telecommunications is replacing the individual focus on discrete tasks designed in an assembly-line fashion with a sense of the whole and an ability to participate in the big picture. But workspace design remains mostly unchanged. Changes in the world of work are characterized as shifting from the production of objects to the manipulation of abstractions, of ideas and concepts. As industry and agriculture decline in importance to the economy, so the importance of the secondary and tertiary activities that form the socalled service economy grows. Major influences on changing the world of work include new job creation in various sectors of the service economy, specialized jobs requiring technical and scientific expertise, explosive growth of information technology, prolongation of life and aging of the population, and major expansion of the entertainment and media sectors of the economy.15 These changes contribute to the dematerialization of the economy and thereby to the breakdown of fixed space–time barriers that characterize work in traditional corporations. They include increasing reliance on outsourcing and contract workers, rapid acceleration of mergers and acquisitions, as well as 14

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divestments, and flattened organizational hierarchy. Fewer layers of manage-

2

ment are accompanied by a growing variety and complexity of work relation-

3

ships, communication and tools. Competition is more pronounced and most

4

companies today consistently re-evaluate their position and their strategy to

5

ensure flexibility and responsiveness to their markets. Speed characterizes

6

modern business: the design-develop-deploy cycle must be compressed for a

7

company to sustain its competitive advantage. However, downsizing the

8

workforce and speeding up work processes in an effort to stay ‘lean and

9

mean’ can create an atmosphere of instability for workers. As a result, workers

10

themselves are changing, no longer seeking lifetime careers in one company,

1

but moving from company to company to gain promotion and learn new skills.

2

Tomorrow’s office workers will accept a certain amount of job-related anxiety,

3

seeking opportunities rather than a job for life, and making time for non-work

4

activities such as recreational travel or family needs; they are likely to take a

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more autonomous and entrepreneurial perspective.16

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What kind of new thinking is evident in office design and architecture to accompany these changes? Could it be that this next ‘great management revolution’ will also have its major expression through architectural design – perhaps more through changing office interiors than through architectural form? So far, the swing away from Taylorism to a less rigid, efficient and planned management philosophy is expressed not so much in new and different building types as in flexible workstation configurations and shared offices, shared team and collaborative workspace, hot desks, cafés on every floor, workgroup ‘neighborhoods’, encounter spaces and furniture on wheels. But the fundamental discipline of the standardized time–space view of work remains little changed. People are working harder and longer, and performing a greater variety of tasks with a greater number of tools at their disposal. Office buildings are fuller of equipment, the cabling and wiring is expanding exponentially, the norms for lighting office work and for ergonomic comfort are changing, but multistorey buildings are still being built, people still tend to arrive there and leave them at the same times of day, and everyone expects

3

to have a personal workspace at their disposal. By and large, the traditional

4

sociospatial contract still holds.

5

Perhaps factors other than steel and concrete and the tyranny of

6

building industry economics keep office workers tied into traditional patterns

7

of work. Could these be related to fundamental human emotional ties to space

8

as territory? People’s gut-level connection to the space they occupy is evident

9

in all work environments and at all levels and status of worker, although the

40

nature of the connection is complex and has many forms. A look at some

1

recent examples of corporate efforts to transform workspace sheds light on

2

what is known about people’s psychological ties to physical space. 15

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The famous case of Chiat-Day In 1993 Jay Chiat, the head of the large advertising agency Chiat-Day, announced that employees would no longer use traditional cubicles, desks and desktop computers and that futuristic ideas of a virtual office would guide the design of their new headquarters in Los Angeles.17 L.A. architect Frank Gehry and sculptors Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen were hired to design an office of the future that would dispense with encrusted traditions of private offices, half-height partitions and executive suites to provide an environment where people could be creative outside a rigid nine-to-five framework using new technology and opportunities for dynamic exchange and interaction. Much heralded in the business press, the virtual work environment eliminated personal desks, providing teamwork areas, couches and coffee tables, project rooms and reservable laptops. Jay Chiat’s vision was to replicate the freedom of college life, where students turn up at specific places and times to get information, and then go off and do the work by themselves. He wanted to add color and energy to the traditional concept of workplace, freeing people to be as creative as possible, while at the same time having access to information, tools and colleagues as needed to get work done. Shortly afterwards, the agency built its new offices in New York along the same lines.18 In spite of tours of European offices, in-house brainstorming sessions and opportunities for employee participation, it seems that the virtual

16

1.4 The revolutionary Chiat-Day workspace in Los Angeles, California

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office was not a success. According to reports, people could not find each

2

other, creative brainstorming groups felt exposed in the open, no one had

3

enough storage space, and people started taking the shared laptops home for

4

the night to ensure they could continue working on them the next morning.

5

Jay Chiat had to police his own staff to ensure that the limited number

6

of shared project rooms were not ‘permanently’ reserved, and, in spite of his

7

effort to make a distinction between ‘personal space’ and ‘private space’,

8

his staff continued to insist on the need for their own individual offices.

9

The death blow to the new concept came in 1995 when the company merged

10

with another advertising agency, Omnicom. As with all territorial behavior,

1

newcomers tend to bring their own values with them, and in this case the

2

new, more traditional CEO demanded his own, enclosed corner office. It was

3

only a matter of time before new space was built for the new, merged

4

company, this time according to traditional office space principles, and the

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virtual office disappeared.

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Jay Chiat’s ideas were in many ways ahead of their time: for example, the notion of eliminating personal (but not private) space, using technology to let anyone work anywhere at any time, and allocating workspace equally at all levels of seniority. However, he has been quoted as saying that, in spite of the value of the underlying ideas, ‘my fault was not recognizing that emotional reasons were the reality’. Chiat is not the only a charismatic CEO to implement a new workspace concept. As far back as the 1980s, the National Association of Home Builders designed non-territorial work areas for its new headquarters in Maryland. Instead of conventional desks, staff sat at moveable worktables, they had limited file storage space with no space for personal files or telephone calls, and a few shared enclosed rooms were available for individual work and project team meetings. Executive Director David MacFadyen, whose idea this was, based his ideas of team communication on the work of Tom Allen at MIT.19 However, instead of dynamic team workspace, MacFadyen found himself policing the shared, enclosed rooms to make sure there were no squatters, and fielding complaints about lack of

3

privacy and not enough desks. As at Chiat-Day, he ultimately faced a staff

4

mutiny. Workers’ complaints revolved around the lack of an identifiable ‘home

5

base’, no privacy, and no place to call their own.

6

Another attempt to ‘virtualize’ an office was implemented by

7

Accenture, formerly Arthur Anderson Worldwide. Starting in Paris and London,

8

this non-territorial office concept was implemented in Accenture offices across

9

the globe. As management consultants, the senior partners argued, staff

40

should be working in their clients’ offices, and only need a home base for

1

housekeeping tasks and for meeting co-workers at the beginning and end of

2

the week. Open workstations were available to staff, and a limited number 17

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of private, enclosed offices could be reserved by Accenture managers; variously-sized workrooms and meeting-spaces for collaborative work were also available and could be reserved for predetermined time periods. By providing workspace in a limited ratio of one desk for every four employees, the company realized important economic returns from the non-territorial concept, which has since been applied in many other companies. Although no official account exists of how well hoteling was accepted in Accenture, there were some wrinkles. Home offices were so full on Fridays and Mondays in some cities that not everyone could find a seat. Senior managers complained bitterly about losing their offices; and the team of hotel-trained staff brought in to carry out concierge-type services had to police employees’ use of project and workrooms to make sure people did not settle in and stay beyond their allotted time. Michael Bloomberg, who became mayor of New York City, took another approach to futuristic office design.20 As CEO of his successful Bloomberg L.P. financial data service, Bloomberg placed his desk in the center of a floor surrounded by other desks in an open-plan concept. He restricted elevator access so that people had to use stairs between floors to meet and see each other on the stairs; and he provided free cafeteria food. As at ChiatDay, there were no titles on doors (there were no doors!) and there was no enclosed personal space; to meet privately, people had to reserve conference rooms. To date, this non-traditional approach has not been considered a failure, and the firm continues to do well. In what ways did Bloomberg’s workspace transformation differ from Jay Chiat’s, David MacFadyen’s and Accenture’s? Unlike the others, perhaps, Bloomberg’s management philosophy was one of openness, communication and egalitarianism, and he saw environmental design as a way of transmitting corporate values. In addition it seems likely that, consciously or not, he drew on a holistic model of the organization in which space is an integral part. In integrating workspace decisions with the entire organizational system (including where and when employees eat), Bloomberg also seemed to recognize that the need for space, like the need for food, is basic to humankind. Food is necessary for survival, and at some deep level, so is space. We need shelter at least as much as we need food and drink; however, in this era of technological sophistication, global travel and virtuality, it is difficult to know just what shelter consists of. Is it the need to occupy space, to own space, to have one’s space recognized, to have one’s own space, to have somewhere to put one’s stuff? If our other needs are met by free food, high salary and technological sophistication, how is the need for territory at work expressed? Accounts of radical space change dating from corporate experiments in the 1980s and 90s indicate that some have been successful (Oticon, 18

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Semco) while others have been criticized (Digital, IBM). Visionary corporate

2

leaders are on record as recognizing the importance of changing the physical

3

work environment as a key element in organizational change. Ricardo Semler

4

of Semco in Brazil refers to ‘tearing out walls’ and allowing employees to re-

5

plan, paint and dress up their work environment with plants as part of the

6

process of creating workgroup identity, empowering workers, and increasing

7

their effectiveness.21 Lars Kolind, change-making CEO at Oticon in Denmark,

8

considered removing walls a necessity for the success of his sweeping organ-

9

izational restructuring. When Alcoa moved into its new, low-rise headquarters

10

outside Pittsburgh, everyone including senior executives moved out of

1

enclosed offices into open workstations as part of the cultural change.

2

Proponents of corporate change management stress the need for employee

3

buy-in, shared ownership, and participatory design processes in order for

4

radical workspace change to succeed, especially cases like Bloomberg where

522

a visionary CEO imposes his own ideas on his staff, who make the best of it.

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Some writers suggest that young techie employees joining fast-moving, young firms and looking for intellectual excitement rather than job security can do without traditional offices and are open to non-territorial and virtual office ideas. Yet Microsoft famously offers private offices to its professional/ technical staff. What have we learned from these workspace transformations, some more and some less successful? We have learned that changing workspace opens the sociospatial contract to question. We have learned that while decisions about buildings and moves are ostensibly driven by hard-headed economics, feelings about space and identity are unacknowledged emotional drivers of corporate decision-making. We have learned that human territoriality affects everybody’s relationship to the space they work in, but we don’t know how. We see also the lingering influence of historical ways of thinking about offices: individually-occupied, allocated on the basis of rank, and symbolizing the employee’s connection to the organization. How is today’s corporation to pick its way through the minefield of workspace change? And what is today’s manager to do about employee territoriality?

4 5 6

At work in space: the meaning of territory

7 8

In the nineteen twenties, sociologist Max Weber explicitly described what a

9

bureaucracy is and how it works. One aspect of his description concerns

40

the bureaucratic office. Indeed, he made explicit a value that has stayed with

1

us ever since and is at the root of the sociospatial contract: that the office a

2

person occupies is not just a space, it is also a place; it is a person’s place in 19

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the company. Their office is their job position as well as their place to sit and work. Now, almost a century later, modern offices in the western world, for all their architectural and technological advances and their preeminence in our culture, still respect this same fundamental perspective. Even in companies where space standards have been slimmed down and people work remotely, use different desks, and come to the office for services rather than for space (as in the hoteling example described above), people still manifest what appears to be a non-rational attachment to their space. As a culture, we have not been able to identify an acceptable alternative to the implicit agreement that the physical space allocated to a person communicates their status, job rank, importance and ultimately value to the company. As a result, people in all types of job and at all levels of the organization expect to – and in fact do – form an emotional bond with their workspace that has far-reaching ramifications for the company and for the way they work. In the psychological literature, this emotional bond that humans form with space is called territoriality. Evidence of this bond emerges in different forms depending on the type of space and the culture and values of the organization. Designers and other professionals who work in office building design and architecture are well aware of the strength of this emotional connection, which can give rise to non-rational behavior and decisions. As our stories have indicated, the effects on employees of corporate decisions about workspace tend to be more negative than positive. Employees do not necessarily share the walldestroying visions of their CEO’s. At Du Pont, company employees had ‘nearly a revolt’ when they found out their private offices were disappearing. They became obsessed with variation in the number of inches of each person’s new cubicle.22 Moving people out of offices and into shared cubicles on a reservations-only basis generated complaints from managers at Accenture and was eventually withdrawn at Chiat-Day. A teamspace initiative at Bell Sygma almost collapsed when employees mutinied over reduced height of their workstation partitions.23 Even Cisco Systems had to weather ‘frustration’, ‘complaints’, ‘criticism’ and ‘anxieties’ over their hot desks initiative.24 When faced with any one of these and similar, new workspace situations, employees tend to react the same way. First, ‘Where am I going to sit?’ then ‘What is going to happen to me, to my space, to where I go to work, and to my desk?’ It is as though a gale-force wind was about to blow all their territory away: better reach out and grab on to what you have, because it may disappear. In some companies, people’s reaction to new space is to take a ruler and measure the dimensions of their new offices to see if they have shrunk (they usually have). In others, employees organize petitions to present to senior staff. In one company, a whole department moved out and leased space for themselves elsewhere. Sometimes, employees resign and 20

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122

look for other jobs, although not usually en masse. However, many threaten

2

to do just that as the move date approaches. In almost all cases, the first reac-

3

tion is fear – fear of loss, fear of having to give something up – fear of not

4

having ‘a place to call one’s own’. People think, ‘They are taking my space

5

away from me – they are moving me out of my office, I will not have enough

6

space for my files and papers – what, no visitor chair?’ Depending on the

7

culture of the organization and the relationship between workers and their

8

superiors, people fear that a space change will cause them to lose status, sit

9

in the open, have their work overseen and overheard by others. Having a

10

standardized and replaceable workstation communicates for some the

1

message from the leadership that they too, are standardized and replaceable.

2

Confrontations about space change can lead to tears and fights. If all else fails,

3

dissatisfied workers resort to sabotage, either of the new space planning

4

process, or of the new workspace they move into.

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This emotional turmoil is activated more frequently these days, as companies embrace change, reduce their overhead costs, expand and contract at lightning speed, alter work processes due to new technology, fight for competitive advantage and hire younger and more mobile employees. Yet managers have as yet little sense of how it works and how to respond. As technology becomes more sophisticated and people have an increasing number of tools for work at their disposal, it is inevitable that human territoriality is affected. We need to understand more about the nature of this emotional relationship, and how office workers need, use and occupy territory at work. At Chiat-Day, executives wanted to be forward-thinking about space, but failed to respect employees’ territory. The conflict that was generated, and the resistance of employees to change, resulted in an outcome very different from that envisioned by the CEO when he first began talking to architects. How many less publicized examples are there of companies whose big ideas for new workspace have been systematically resisted and never taken root? We have seen that there are many ways in which the emotional

3

attachment people have to space is at odds with the cost-oriented and rational

4

ways in which workspace decisions are usually made. This misalignment

5

causes the losing/gaining ground dilemma. By taking space out of our control

6

and letting building professionals make decisions about the space we

7

occupy, we are opening up one of our innermost vulnerabilities. Most people

8

dream of building their own homes some time in their lives, perhaps owning

9

a ‘dream home’. This dream is an expression of our deep desire to take control

40

over our space. When work was something not everyone engaged in, or

1

something that people did from nine to five because their ‘real lives’ were

2

elsewhere, or when people were more likely to work in places other than 21

Kingdom, castle, office

offices (e.g. fields, mines, other people’s houses), there was no parallel between the dream home to live in and the dream space to work in. But now that work has taken on more meaning in people’s lives, taking up more time and more emotional investment, to the point where work is the reality for many and ‘elsewhere’ is not their real lives, the space in which work is carried out is as important as the dream home. What this workspace ought to be, how to define it, and how to understand space in the context of this new definition of work, are questions that have been addressed by numerous companies, more or less well. Three tell their stories in the next chapter. The answers vary depending on the stage of the company’s growth, its cultural norms and values, and the way it sees its relationship with its accommodation.

Notes 1 See Semenak, S. (2001) ‘Welcome To the Cube Farm’, The Montreal Gazette, Monday February 5, p. C1; Adams, S. (1997) The Dilbert Principle, London: Boxtree; Atcheson, D. B. (1997) ‘Learning to Live, Love and Work in a Cubicle’, Cosmopolitan, January, 82–85; and Stone, P. L. and Luchetti, R. (1985) ‘Your office is where you are’, Harvard Business Review, March–April, 102–117. 2 Several arguments that suggest it does not are presented by Duffy, F. (2000) ‘New Ways of Working: A Vision of the Future’ in D. Clements-Croome (ed.) Creating the Productive Workplace, London: E & FN Spon. 3 Kilpatrick, A. O. (1999) ‘A New Social Contract for the New Millennium’, Public Administration An Interactive Journal 4(2), 165–183. 4 Fischer, G.-N., Tarquinio, C. and Vischer, J. C. (2004) ‘Effects of the Self Schema on Perception of Space At Work’, Journal of Environmental Psychology 24(1), 131–140. 5 In some cases, senior executives mysteriously lose their position or simply leave after completion of a major, space-transforming, building project. 6 For example, Froggett, C. (2001) Work Naked, San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. 7 Barnard, C. (1964) The Functions Of the Executive, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 8 Ibid. p. 36. 9 Cited in Duffy, F. (1997) The New Office, London: Conran Octopus. 10 Guillen, M. F. (1997) ‘Scientific Management’s Lost Aesthetic: Architecture, Organization and the Taylorized Beauty of the Mechanical’, Administrative Science Quarterly 42, 682–715. 11 Ibid. 12 Duffy, F. (1997) op. cit. 13 Ibid. 14 See, for example, Zuboff, S. (1988) In The Age of the Smart Machine, New York: Basic Books. 15 Goldfinger, C. (2000) Travail et hors-travail, Paris: Editions Odile Jacob. 16 Handy, C. (1990) The Age Of Unreason, Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. 17 Berger, W. (1999) ‘Lost In Space’, Wired Magazine, February, www.wired.com/wired. 18 Designed by Gaetano Pesce. 19 Allen, T. J. (1977) Managing the Flow of Technology, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 20 Kolbert, E. (2002) ‘The Mogul Mayor’, The New Yorker, April 22 and 29, pp. 138–149. 21 Semler, R. (1993) Maverick, The Success Story Behind the World’s Most Unusual Workplace, New York: Warner Books. 22

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122 2 3 4

22 Milford, M. (1997) ‘Du Pont Shuts the Door on Private Offices’, New York Times Real Estate Section, 23 February, p. 38. 23 Vischer, J. C. (1995) ‘Strategic Workplace Planning’ Sloan Management Review 37(1) 33–42. 24 Petzinger, T. (1997) ‘Cisco’s Staff Conquers Separation Anxieties After Losing Desks’, The Wall Street Journal, Marketplace Section, 21 February, 1997, p. B1.

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Chapter 2

The organization– accommodation relationship What is it about change?

Companies usually – and rightly – consider space for their offices to be outside the ‘core mission’ of the organization, and therefore not a management responsibility. A recent case study in Harvard Business Review described how responsibility for a controversial new workspace was lodged with the facilities manager and her architect.1 The CEO took an interest in the project as a driver of cultural change in the organization, and the chief financial officer (CFO) was concerned about costs. However, the crucial decisions about how to make space more open and more egalitarian, how to fit more people in, and how to transform a traditional corporate culture so that the new workspace concept would work, were basically left to the design team. This is not untypical of a corporation’s approach to changing workspace. What does it imply? Perhaps general ignorance, or belief that space is not relevant, perhaps conviction that the facility manager and the architect could be sacrificed more easily than the CFO if disruptive levels of conflict are generated by the project, perhaps the lack of a holistic and integrated view of how an organization operates in space. It is puzzling how companies fail to take into account that workspace, while it may not be part of the business mission, is experienced by everyone in the company on a daily basis and plays a critical role in how employees work. This chapter analyzes the relationship between a company and its workspace in a holistic way that provides a context for the sociospatial contract. 24

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122

In North American cities, individuals and real estate developers

2

who build office buildings do not usually manage them or even occupy them.

3

Firms that lease space in them usually depend on brokers to negotiate for

4

them, and then on project managers to oversee design, construction and

5

move-in. Even companies who build their own buildings usually make deci-

6

sions with an eye to asset management objectives such as leasing out space,

7

eventual divestment and the tax advantages of capital improvements. There

8

is no single player in any of these scenarios whose responsibility it is to ensure

9

that the company’s interests are being served by the space it is to occupy.

10

What are these interests and how can they be recognized? How can corporate

1

decision-making be more responsive to them?

2

As the examples in the previous chapter illustrated, every company,

3

whether it is aware of it or not, is in a long-term relationship with its accom-

4

modation that evolves and changes over time. We call this the organization–

522 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 302

accommodation (O–A) relationship in contrast to the incrementalist approach typical of most space decision-making, in which one-time events, such as new construction, or a lease for new space, a design project, a move, or a furniture purchase, are each controlled and managed by a different player or stakeholder who necessarily takes a short-term perspective. The O–A approach considers that organizations are in a continual state of evolution and change, either adapting, or adapting to, the space they occupy. The relationship is dynamic and interactive, and when it works well, provides strong benefits and support to the company. At the very least, one would want the relationship to be neutral – no harm on either side. It is important to avoid adverse situations, where workspace is dysfunctional and slows down employees’ work. The way to derive value from the O–A relationship is to make it explicit and purposeful. Workspace decisions made in the context of an explicit O–A relationship take a longer-term perspective and respect the

1

cultural values of the organization. The O–A relationship can be positive or

2

negative.2 It emerges from the history of workspace occupied by the

3

company, and how this has evolved over time. It affects how workspace deci-

4

sions are typically made, who is involved in making them, and how long it

5

takes to make them. It embodies the attitude companies have towards their

6

space: is space valued, criticized, tolerated, disliked or simply ignored? It

7

includes the resources allocated to workspace, such as facilities management

8

services, asset management, and updating furniture and equipment; and

9

finally it determines how workspace change is made. Four types of O–A

40

relationship that illustrate typical corporate attitudes are shown in Table 2.1.

1

The diagram illustrates that becoming aware of space as a

2

dynamic changing part of the organizational system provides an opportunity 25

The organization–accommodation relationship

Table 2.1 Types of O–A relationship on the positive-to-negative continuum 1

Value-added O–A = tool for work

2

Positive O–A = supports for work

3

Neutral O–A = passive backdrop

4

Negative O–A = hindrance/nuisance

to improve it. Where workspace hinders work – perhaps people are too crowded, or they have to move too often, or there are environmental discomforts – each decision to move and change space provides an opportunity to develop from poor to neutral or even to a positive O–A relationship (in the direction of the arrows) where workspace supports people’s tasks. This opportunity is the imperative of managed and purposeful workspace change, described later on in this book. The optimal O–A relationship – space as a tool for work – adds value to the organization by actively supporting the performance of work. Details of how this can happen are examined in Chapter 4. The terms of the sociospatial contract are an integral component of the O–A relationship; they change if and as this relationship changes. As in any relationship, there are different stages – finding space, planning and design, moving in, adaptation and change – during which the organization thinks and feels differently about the space it occupies and makes changes accordingly. The O–A relationship varies in importance as well as in substance over the life of the organization, depending on contextual circumstances such as time, economic climate, technology improvements and changing work habits. Manufacturing firms, for example, see space in terms of their manufacturing processes and placing equipment. Law firms need their space to communicate both an impressive image and reassuring messages to their clients. Professionals such as doctors and dentists do not have space very high on their list of priorities, whereas advertising firms, some high-tech companies and even insurance companies are very aware of the quality of their workspace. Whereas the real estate industry sees space as a commodity and sells space in a building as a product, organizations are better served by considering the space they occupy as a service they purchase over time, as accommodation, the quality of which has an effect on organizational performance. How this quality is defined depends on the company’s financial, social and business interests and its stage of evolution and change. In a positive O–A relationship, the accommodation communicates what the organization 26

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122

wants it to communicate not only to visitors and clients, but also to the staff.

2

It also means that the people working for the company have the tools they

3

need to get their work done as their tasks evolve and their workgroups change.

4

Growing awareness of the importance of making good decisions,

5

not just in terms of the immediate social and financial context but also in terms

6

of the long-term relationship that a company has with its space, has led to

7

calls by design professionals to ‘bring space planning in line with the business

8

mission of the organization’.3 This means looking at workspace not just in

9

terms of how many desks can be shoehorned on to a floor, but as an organ-

10

izational resource that, if well-planned, supports business processes and

1

employees’ activities. The best people to analyze and act on a company’s O–A

2

relationship are not real estate professionals, designers, or other outsiders,

3

but those who deal with the daily reality of getting work done inside the organ-

4

ization. Transforming workspace is a powerful tool for cultural change and

522 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 302

employee empowerment, and is most successful when the space employees occupy is taken seriously as a management responsibility. Managers make decisions about team structure and operations, about collaboration and ways of working, about tools and technology, and about how employees’ contributions are recognized and valued, as well as about improving productivity. Whether they are aware of it or not, managers are the ones who honor and enact the sociospatial contract. Knowing that the environment they work in affects performance, morale, recruitment and retention, managers cannot afford to pass decisions about space on to people outside the core business and indeed outside the organization. Just as selection, training and use of technology affect worker performance, so does space, furniture, building location and floor layouts. In this sense, designing workspace for its employees is part of the core business of the organization. In this chapter, we look closely at three companies, each of which is at a different stage in the O–A relationship. In each case, the need to make

1

changes – on the face of it, to the workspace, and more profoundly, to organ-

2

izational culture – caused resistance and resentment, raised questions about

3

the work processes and corporate image, drew attention to rational and non-

4

rational meanings of space and culminated in redefining the sociospatial

5

contract with employees. Each of the three stories draws attention to the

6

deep-rooted differences between the way that companies think about space

7

– space as a commodity, projecting an image, a backdrop to the real business

8

of work – and the way employees feel about workspace – as a home base, a

9

status marker and, hopefully, a tool for work. And whereas facilities managers

40

and design consultants are available to solve problems, fix lights, draw floor

1

plans and provide technical help, who manages the sociopsychological

2

aspects of workspace? 27

The organization–accommodation relationship

Transforming workspace Each of the following cases illustrates an approach to managing workspace change that aims at simultaneously changing the social order, providing more cost-effective workspace and providing an environment to function as a better tool to support work. In the first case, the newspaper management imposed workspace change on newsroom staff after a restructuring of the workgroups into multidisciplinary teams. In the second, the team in the oil and gas exploration company opted to change its own space, to save on overhead as well as improve teamwork; this change was chosen rather than imposed. And third, in the manufacturing company workspace change was negotiated: management led the decision to restructure groups and renovate their space, but efforts were made at each stage to inform and involve staff who themselves took responsibility for the space occupied by their teams. There is no single right way to manage workspace change. Each approach has strengths and weaknesses and requires an involved and engaged management as well as open communication with staff. Some guiding principles to ensure improvement in the O–A relationship through change management emerge from the three case histories. Ideally, the O–A relationship perspective combines both rational and non-rational worldviews into a vision of space as an organizational resource that defines and expresses corporate values, thus solving the dilemma outlined in Chapter 1.4 Applying this dynamic approach means making decisions about accommodation in terms of a support to work: space that helps employees perform their tasks, with the right lighting, the right equipment, the right spaces and finally as a social focus, ensuring that people see each other and exchange information on a regular basis. Space that supports work adds value to the organization and helps it do what it exists to do. In addition, applying the dynamic framework of the relationship means incorporating a human perspective on people’s attachment to place into whatever process is used.5 As companies must plan and anticipate change, they must at the same time prepare to renegotiate the sociospatial contract. The stories told here illustrate how stakeholders’ concerns emerge when the sociospatial contract is threatened by workspace change. When senior management made the decision to redesign the workspace for newsroom staff at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, not only the reporters, but also the copy editors and the photographers joined the fray. At Amoco, one team led the way to an open plan teamwork environment, and none of the other teams wanted to follow suit. And at Hypertherm, organized resistance took the form of a signed petition, complaints to management and refusal to move. When workspace is about to change, people’s gut level attachment to territory comes to the fore. People will fight to defend what they’ve got, warts and all, before they can be persuaded to define new territorial boundaries in a new 28

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122

spatial order. And why? Because a new spatial order may mean a new social

2

order, and that means maneuvering and elbowing to try and ensure the exist-

3

ing social order persists in new space. In short, people’s anxiety levels go up.

4 5

Minneapolis Star Tribune

6

The Editor-in-Chief at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Tim McGuire, made the

7

commitment to a new work environment after initiating a major restructuring

8

of the newspaper’s operations. The traditional groups of reporters, graphic

9

artists, and copy editors had been reformed into multidisciplinary teams, each

10

responsible for different parts of the newspaper. It was clear to McGuire and

1

to Managing Editor Pam Fine that letting newsroom staff stay on in their old

2

workspace, where each traditional group sat together, would not advance the

3

new teamwork concept. However, it was also evident that in the old scheme

4

each individual had a clear definition of their territorial boundaries that they

522

would not easily give up.

6

Changing the concept of workspace from space designed for indi-

7

vidual work to space designed for the team means redefining territory as

8

group-held rather than as individually defined. A new work environment for

9

the newsroom provided an enriched work environment with more choice,

20

emphasized the increased importance of teamwork, effort and status in the

1

organization, and in so doing, made the team the unit of production rather than

2

the individual worker. The Star Tribune opted for a process in which the change

3

to new workspace was imposed from the top. However, the fact that it was

4

a top-down change did not mean that less effort was involved in managing it.

5

A few years previously, the Star Tribune expended considerable

6

effort in designing a new form and presentation for the newspaper in order to

7

improve sales and develop its on-line edition. The linear ‘hand-off’ process

8

whereby individual reporters and editors passed their stories on to photog-

9

raphers, graphic artists and copy editors, was replaced by multifunctional

302

teams who would collaborate from the beginning to the end of a story. This

1

more dynamic process was designed to produce the new mix of news,

2

features, graphics and advertising that characterized the new concept. The

3

redesign of the paper required some organizational restructuring, and was

4

followed two years later by the renovation of the workspace. The success of

5

the restructuring was contingent on being able to operate in a work environ-

6

ment that supported new rather than old ways of doing things. At the time

7

the changes were initiated, daily newspaper circulation was at 330,000; the

8

goal of the redesign was to increase this to closer to 400,000.

9

Prior to the change, the newsroom was organized into individual

40

departments (for example, Features, City, National, International) with an

1

editor responsible for each. Reporters, photographers, graphic designers and

2

copy editors were clustered in their own departments and were assigned 29

The organization–accommodation relationship

to stories on an as-needed basis. Each department occupied its own area of the newsroom on two large floors of an older building in downtown Minneapolis, described as ‘gloomy, dark, dingy, cluttered and inconvenient’. The new teams, comprising a cross-functional mix of reporters, photographers, designers and copy editors, were formed around topic areas such as public safety, education, and faith and values instead of simply coming together for individual stories. Once the senior editors had planned the restructuring, they asked facilities staff to rethink the space. They had no clear ideas in mind, other than that team members should be seated contiguously, which meant breaking up the traditional departmental clusters. It also meant eliminating the mix of private offices and conference rooms, and replacing them with open workstations and a wide range of shared and collaborative space. After the redesign, only one private office was left on the floor: Pam Fine’s. As one team leader pointed out when looking back, there was no way that employees could anticipate, or say that they wanted, the environment that they got; the workspace design was a direct response to the goals of a new and unfamiliar organization. A major player in the newspaper’s workspace transformation was the Ergonomics Committee. The Committee had been formed to address problems of carpal tunnel syndrome among editors and reporters, who spent much of their time at keyboards on old, dysfunctional furniture. While the newsroom restructuring was taking place, this committee purchased and installed new, ergonomic workstations to replace the old furniture. Newsroom staff began to call the long lines of partitioned cubicles marching across the huge floor ‘Beigeville’. It was immediately clear to McGuire that this conventional space planning approach left everyone basically in the same space; it did not address the need for new workspace to support the new teams creatively. At the urging of the newspaper’s architecture critic, he hired consultants specialized in designing and managing workspace change.6 As the design consultants started to develop workspace concepts that did not conform to the Ergonomics Committee’s drawings, members of the committee began to organize resistance. They were supported by the reporters, who were not at all sure they wanted to sit with photographers and copy editors. Resentment and anger began to be expressed – territory was threatened! Using a participatory design process in which all the groups were involved, the consultants eventually came up with a new workspace concept based on the concept of an urban neighborhood. Teams sat together in neighborhood groups located close to the teams they interacted with most. The neighborhoods were defined by ‘streets’, with a ‘boulevard’ for main circulation, a ‘park’ for informal meetings, and a ‘coffee-shop’ nearby. A large open meeting space became known as the forum, where regular news section planning meetings took place twice a day. 30

122 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 522 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 302 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40 1 2

2.1 The ‘urban neighborhood’ of the Minneapolis Star Tribune newsroom

The organization–accommodation relationship

Money became an issue when it became apparent that creating an entire ‘urban’ environment for the newsroom would require a million dollars more in relocation, infrastructure and furniture costs than had been budgeted for the acquisition of new workstations. More conflict occurred around how to ensure that investing so much money in workspace would show up in a better bottom line – for example, more advertising purchased, more newspapers sold. McGuire and Fine decided to go ahead with the change when they realized the cost of not investing in an effective new work environment for the new teams would be higher. They felt the massive investment already made in newspaper redesign and time spent on restructuring would be at risk if teamwork did not succeed: expecting new teams to function in old space was clearly unrealistic. The process nearly derailed when newsroom reporters rejected the neighborhood design concept, still uncomfortable at leaving ‘all-reporter’ territory to go and sit with members of other groups. Seeing the complete picture of the workstation clusters in a simulated mock-up of the new layout, with its small individual workspaces and interactive team environments, gave the reporters their first real sense of how the restructuring into crossfunctional teams would alter their jobs. No longer story initiators and project leaders, their status would be equal to the graphic designers, the photographers and the copy editors, who themselves would be able to initiate, carry through and complete stories with reporters in a supporting role! Moreover, it came as a surprise to them to see that the ‘urban’ environment, with its boulevards, parks and café, had eaten away at individual desk-space: many of them were to sit in truncated workstations with barely room for more than a computer and filing space for a week of news stories. And, like all territorial beings, this shrunken individual footprint counted more to them than the generous provision of collaborative and shared open space that they gained. The old work environment may have been ‘dark and dingy’ but it represented traditional status and job divisions – and it was home. A full-blown mutiny by the reporters was only restrained by McGuire’s intervention. Having thus far maintained a distance between himself and the front lines, he was finally forced to act. He offered the reporters opportunities to express their concerns and encouraged negotiation with the consultant design team. He declared that only 80 per cent of the new scheme would be implemented – and that the newsroom staff, including reporters, would get to identify what went into that 80 per cent and what was dropped. Two years after the redesign of the Star Tribune newsroom and its workspace, circulation increased to a daily 390,000. Team leaders commented that news stories were better; they did not necessarily get written faster, but there was more variety, the research was more complete and there was a 32

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122

better integration of text and visuals. The new workspace has continued to

2

evolve and newsroom staff have adapted not only to the new space, but also

3

to new work styles and the organizational values expressed in the new space.

4

McGuire left his office on another floor, and moved into an open workstation

5

in the center of the newsroom. The process involved conflict and it was not

6

smooth, but changing attitudes towards places people are attached to, their

7

territory, is unlikely to be without conflict. The key was in acknowledging the

8

conflict and spending the time and resources necessary to address it.7

9

Decision-makers recognized the importance of territory as well as the need

10

to support work processes; they did not view the environmental change as

1

simply redesigning space. Their workspace change moved the Star Tribune

2

from a negative O–A relationship, where employees were suffering ergonomic

3

damage, to a positive and even value-added one. In this situation, the socio-

4

spatial contract had to be renegotiated after changes had been decided upon,

522

so it was important to implement a process which addressed the human need

6

for place and not simply corporate needs for increased efficiency. Such a

7

process enabled corporate values – in this case, the values of the restructured

8

organization – to be expressed, and at the same time demonstrated respect

9

for the non-rational side of workspace design, issues of familiarity, tradition,

20

status, symbolism and territory.

1

In the next example, teams at Amoco Oil and Gas were already in

2

place when workspace change – driven by a need to cut costs, rather than by

3

a need for organizational restructuring – was contemplated. However, the fact

4

that large, enclosed private offices along the windows would be replaced by

5

smaller workstations in clustered layouts gave rise to anxiety about territory,

6

and resistance to change was the result.

7 8

Amoco Oil and Gas

9

At Amoco headquarters in Denver, professional engineers, geologists and

302

geophysicists had the territory they felt they deserved: large private offices

1

lined double-loaded corridors (with offices opening off both sides) in an

2

elegant, owner-occupied high-rise office building located downtown. Everyone

3

had windows, space for file cabinets, and doors they could close. Formally

4

elegant, reservable conference rooms were located at the end of each

5

hallway. To begin with, it looked like the major workspace change that was

6

contemplated might not succeed. Faced with shrinking revenues and keen

7

competition from other oil and gas exploration companies, Amoco went

8

through at least two major restructurings in the 1990s, accompanied by signifi-

9

cant downsizings. With a traditional corporate culture, characterized by ‘rigid

40

structure’, ‘time-honored ways of doing things’ and ‘predictable results’,

1

Amoco had been shaken by the oil and gas slump of the late 1980s, forcing

2

management to explore new ways of working.8 The impetus for workspace 33

The organization–accommodation relationship

transformation came when teams were defined as business units and a charge for office space was added to their cost figures. At least one team decided a cultural revolution was necessary. To help reduce the teams’ overheads, Amoco’s Building Services Department initiated space-use studies to increase efficiency. They recommended replacing all private windowed offices with an open-plan team workspace comprising large, partitioned cubicles clustered around meeting-space and team worktables. Each team area would also have access to small and large meeting rooms, and coffee lounges were located on every floor. Standardized workstation furniture would replace customized furnishings that had been assigned on the basis of job rank (hierarchy indicated if you got one or two posters on your walls). Not surprisingly, there were not many takers. In the early 1990s, business restructuring had reorganized departments into teams, and squeezed them into fewer floors of their office tower in downtown Denver. Although senior management opted not to impose a top-down space change, they did make each team an autonomous business unit that had to demonstrate profitability. One team in particular, that had been set a particularly high performance goal, was keen to provide rapid and tangible proof of its profitability. This meant dropping from a gross space allocation of 450 square feet per person to something approaching space-use norms in other companies, around 250 square feet per person. This team volunteered to pilot test the teamspace concept proposed by Building Services. The Arkoma Basin Regional Team was a multidisciplinary group of technical professionals – geologists, geophysicists, engineers, land negotiators and computer specialists. Led by the dynamic, energetic and well-liked Martha Tilden, this team was charged with collecting and analyzing data from geological and geophysical surveys in order to recommend priority locations for exploratory drilling. Its productivity was measured by two criteria: the speed with which it came up with recommendations based on the data it received (‘cycle time’); and the effectiveness of its recommendations in terms of how accurately they predicted the location and depth of oil and gas reserves that the company subsequently drilled for. Tilden enthusiastically supported the decision to adopt teamspace, but not all the members of her group were quick to follow. Some members of the Arkoma Team were ready to accept the new workspace concept because they felt that time was wasted looking for people in their offices, roaming down corridors and finding doors closed or offices empty. Others felt that the existing office furniture did not accommodate computer equipment, was un-ergonomic, and used space inefficiently. Some pointed out that the data they used were stored in hard copy and inefficiently replicated in file cabinets and drawers throughout the office area. But several team members 34

The organization–accommodation relationship

122

could not imagine working in cubicles; they felt their private offices were a

2

needed accessory and not an impediment to team communication. Once the

3

prospect of teamspace was raised, one team member left on extended leave

4

and never returned. Others were concerned about the negative image

5

conveyed by working in cubicles when professionals on other teams worked

6

in large, private offices. Team members spent long, difficult hours informing

7

themselves about furniture choices and possible layouts, relying heavily on

8

Tilden’s leadership and her championing of the new work environment. 9

9

Ultimately, the group’s decision to pilot the teamspace concept was based

10

more on its urgent need to reduce space costs than on a desire for restruc-

1

turing or for productivity improvement.

2

One and two years after moving into a teamspace environment,

3

employee surveys were carried out, costs were evaluated and the impact on

4

productivity analyzed. The team found that cycle time for regional studies –

522

including field data collection, computerization, analysis and interpretation

6

– diminished from an average of 2.5 years to 6 months: an 80 per cent

7

reduction in time needed to proceed from data acquisition to investment

8

recommendations! The team moved their scrolls of printed out data into the

9

shared work area, thereby eliminating time-consuming data-hunting trips

20

around the floor. They started to perform analysis and interpretation tasks in

1

parallel rather than in sequence, reducing time-consuming hand-offs as well

2

as errors in communication. Moreover, deciding on drilling recommendations

3

went from an average of 30 to 2 days – a 93 per cent increase in efficiency!

4

Waiting time for information to be exchanged in formally-scheduled meetings

5

with set agendas was eliminated, as informal 10 to 15 minute work sessions

6

spontaneously occurred when needed.

7

By that time, the Arkoma Team felt positive enough to recommend

8

adoption of the teamspace concept to other business units. Cumulative

9

financial data over the year following the workspace change showed that

302

the investments in drilling recommended by this team were the most

1

profitable of all the teams. The improvements were, according to team

2

members, directly related to the openness of the workspace and the resulting

3

improvement in communication. They were able to announce a 43 per cent

4

reduction in their overhead costs, partly attributable to the efficient new

5

workspace, and partly to a reduction in both in-house and off-site storage

6

costs resulting from removal of more than 80 per cent data duplication found

7

in team members’ files.

8

These figures were too good to be ignored. But as other units

9

began to consider teamspace, it became apparent that the process of con-

40

version from one way of thinking to another would not be smooth. In the

1

case of the Arkoma Team, the leader managed a fully participatory process of

2

team decision-making in which all team members were motivated to improve 35

2.2 Teamspace at Amoco Oil and Gas in Denver

The organization–accommodation relationship

122

the group’s productivity. In other Amoco teams, leaders simply imposed new

2

cubicles and staff tended to become angry and resentful. Employees on one

3

team sent out their own questionnaire to all employees, to get ‘proof’ that

4

the teamspace concept did not work. As teams converted, employees often

5

demonstrated denial as well as resistance to change. They demanded more

6

space, they insisted on walls to display their maps, printouts and other docu-

7

ments; some flatly refused to relocate. Some extended the dimensions of

8

their individual cubicles with file cabinets and extra partitions. Comments

9

from the surveys included, ‘It is not clear to me by what criteria this experi-

10

ment is being called a success’; and ‘There is an embarrassing lack of phone

1

privacy’, ‘Maze-like association with rats in cages’ and ‘Distractions have

2

increased employee stress and desire for quiet’.

3

Some of these concerns are part of the change process. There is

4

understandably a necessary adjustment from physical enclosure and individual

522

privacy to a more open environment with a higher noise level, more spon-

6

taneous interruptions and more mobility. Other concerns reflect a preoccupa-

7

tion with loss of territory. The Denver office’s facility manager attributed the

8

resistant and resentful behavior of Amoco employees to a sense of mourning

9

and loss as people grieve the disappearance of the culture and environment

20

they knew.10 Their behavior suggests that imposing territorial change is more

1

likely to generate resistance than inviting staff to participate in the change

2

process, as McGuire did in Minneapolis when he offered staff the chance to

3

decide which 80 per cent of the new workspace would be retained.

4

Why should this be true? First, involving employees acknowledges

5

their emotional connection to territory, and establishing a process allows them

6

to manage their feelings within an acceptable framework. The framework of

7

the participatory process enables people to disengage from the old and

8

re-engage with the new. Simply removing private offices creates a ‘terri-

9

toriality crisis’, as seen in both Star Tribune and Amoco workers. For teams

302

not allowed to participate in decision-making, the need to hold on to territory

1

as a symbol of their disappearing culture over-rode bottom-line considerations

2

of increased team productivity and lower overhead costs. What happened at

3

Amoco is being enacted with minor differences in companies worldwide. The

4

ingredients of the dilemma were outlined in the previous chapter: the need

5

for cost-cutting leads to radical space change, which is imposed from above

6

in such a way that employees feel violated and even threatened. In some

7

organizational cultures this unease may not find direct expression, whereas

8

in others, protests, complaints and organized resistance to change occur.

9

Facilitating employee buy-in to the goals of the process – in this case, cutting

40

costs to increase unit productivity and avoid more layoffs – requires more than

1

employee consultation. It requires renegotiating the sociospatial contract. At

2

Amoco, the cultural and workspace transformation failed in those groups of 37

The organization–accommodation relationship

workers with no say in the process. For them, space change is experienced as irrevocable loss with no compensatory territorial gain at either the rational or the non-rational level. In the third workspace change case study, a medium-sized manufacturing company planning new workspace simultaneously implemented a changeover to a new organizational structure. Here a deliberate effort was made to use workspace redesign as a mechanism to change corporate culture and values, as a driver of change. In terms of the O–A relationship, this means implementing a value-added approach to accommodation. The process was not imposed post facto, as it was at the Star Tribune, or self-imposed to reduce costs, as at Amoco. At Hypertherm, senior management led the change and negotiated with employees at key stages in the process. From the beginning, employees were invited to participate in planning new workspace, and the process was designed to provide opportunities for them to do so. Hypertherm Inc. As distinct from Amoco and the Star Tribune, where notions of changing space followed at some remove an organizational restructuring, Hypertherm elected to use workspace change as a driver to help restructure the organization into cross-functional teams. Here an innovative space planning process was explicitly defined with a clear strategy for employee involvement. The newly-formed teams were engaged in planning their own space, using the opportunity to plan their own areas as a mechanism for jelling the teams and encouraging them to define their identity. This approach meant that the sociospatial contract was not as threatened as in the previous two examples: Hypertherm’s management was listening and a mechanism for renegotiating the terms of the contract was in place. However, there was still conflict, resistance and fear of loss, requiring that the participatory process be carefully structured and managed. Employing about 400 people and with revenues of $50 million a year at the time, Hypertherm is an international leader in the design and manufacturing of plasma metal-cutting equipment that is used in construction all over the world. In 1994, Hypertherm decided to embark on a major facilities expansion. Following the usual procedure, an architect was hired who counted staff, interviewed department heads, and calculated the estimated square footage of the proposed expansion. However, as the senior management team listened to the architect’s concept for the new building indicating across-the-board expansion of all departments, CEO Dick Couch realized that an opportunity was being missed for rethinking the company’s organizational structure. He was keen to put a more team-based structure in place, breaking down organizational silos. Not yet being in a position to define the new 38

The organization–accommodation relationship

122

organization, much less its eventual workspace, the management team

2

replaced the architect with workplace design consultants to design and

3

facilitate the decision-making process.11

4

First, the management team worked on building consensus around

5

the goals and objectives for the organization. Work sessions followed, which

6

defined and set priorities on the features and qualities desired in the new space

7

and how it would be used. The management team agreed on a teamspace

8

concept for cross-functional teams, each responsible for different product lines.

9

Design objectives included minimizing the distance between the plant and

10

office areas and encouraging employees to mix and facilitate cooperative work

1

opportunities. The new building would be a pleasant, comfortable and high

2

quality work environment. The teams would work in an open-plan layout that

3

would optimize opportunities for contact and communication.

4

As the management team were defining the new organizational

522

structure and assigning personnel to the new teams, they made decisions

6

about how the interior work environment would function. They were com-

7

mitted to an open concept in which the size of individual workstations was

8

reduced, and where spacious and inviting communal areas encouraged

9

collaboration. To offer privacy for individual concentration and small meetings,

20

‘just in time’ workrooms were provided for each team. The huge quantity

1

of files, manuals, documents and drawings accumulated by individuals over

2

many years were to be removed from individual file cabinets, sorted, and

3

stored centrally. These three issues – small, open workstations with four-foot

4

high partitions, shared group work areas and reduced file storage – repre-

5

sented obvious ways of implementing the concept of the new, restructured

6

organization. Bravely, the management team decided that the executive office

7

area would be no different. A crucial step in their process was executive

8

modeling of the new, open workspace; the CEO and all his vice-presidents

9

occupied the same size cubicles as everyone else.

302

The second stage of Hypertherm’s new workspace process was

1

designed to show leadership and to communicate the new corporate values

2

and objectives to employees to ensure their understanding and support. The

3

participatory and democratic culture of the company meant that employees

4

were expected to take ownership of both the organizational restructuring and

5

the new teamspace concept to ensure a positive impact on productivity.

6

Imposing change from the top down would not work. Each new team selected

7

its own Space Planning Coordinator (SPC), who took responsibility for com-

8

municating the teams’ needs to the designers as well as for sharing design

9

decisions with team members. Through their SPCs, employees were encour-

40

aged to participate in the design of their team’s work area. The individuals

1

selected as SPCs were competent and articulate, albeit inexperienced in the

2

cross-functional team structure. They were neither support staff who had 39

The organization–accommodation relationship

been handed one more (unwanted) responsibility, nor team leaders primed to engage in territorial battles. In spite of open-minded management, as well as frustration with the cramped and uncomfortable nature of their existing workspace, employees did not immediately welcome the proposed changes. Their existing spaces were dysfunctional, but the new concept threatened territory both at the physical level, by the openness of the new workspace, and at the cultural level, by the blurring of traditional boundaries implied by the crossfunctional teams. People expressed anxiety to their managers, resisted suggestions made by the design team, and found inventive ways to avoid or ignore the design principles developed and inculcated by the management team. Long drawn-out space planning negotiations were eventually curtailed by a two-day intensive design session, in which SPCs sat individually with the design consultants and ‘signed off’ on locations and configurations for their particular teams – an emotional event, causing anger, frustration and tears as well as relief and excitement. Adding to the pressure of the moment, individual members of the management team were not always united in how they communicated their decisions to employees. Some clearly endorsed the teamspace initiative; others were uncomfortable with the change and adopted a role of sympathetic support for their employees’ plight, thus implicitly endorsing resistance. The process would have stalled, but did not because, like team leader Tilden and Editor-in-Chief McGuire, CEO Couch intervened energetically. He clarified his vision to his managers, explained his reasoning to employees, and exhorted support at team leader meetings, at all-company meetings, in company newsletters and at meetings of the teams’ SPCs. Aware that change applied at all organizational levels and not just to space, he supported the design consultants as facilitators of change, and helped lead their change management process. Once the building was under construction, members of the management team began to show signs of panic at the prospect of sitting together in open workstations, as well as losing their big desks and file cabinets. So did their administrative staff, who were to sit next to them in workstations that fully resembled their bosses’ in all respects. Even the builder, disbelieving the evidence of his eyes, questioned the plans he had been given and asked the CEO to reinstate private offices for the management team! However, the consultants/facilitators were following the process closely and intervened in time to remind everyone of the reasons behind their decisions and their commitment to change. At move-in, teams hit the ground running, using their space to work together in new ways, replacing time-consuming, scheduled meetings with quick efficient negotiations across partitions, and talking to people who formerly they rarely saw. As they learned to move easily between their new 40

122 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 522 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 302 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40 1 2

2.3 Cross-functional team workspace at Hypertherm Inc.

The organization–accommodation relationship

cubicles and their teams’ workspace, the management team’s role changed to a more active and participatory hands-on approach. Hypertherm’s clients have visited the new space, recruiting has become easier, and, one year later, the time to market of new products had dropped from two years to nine months. Employees reported better communication, adapted rapidly to the new work environment, and made a smooth transition to cross-functional teamwork. Hypertherm was recently awarded recognition as the best place to work in New Hampshire. The change process did not end with move-in, however. Old-style territorial urges drove people to ask for extra file cabinets, to put desks for new employees in the team meeting-space, and to make off with conference room chairs. Hypertherm has taken steps to ensure that the key elements of the new work environment are retained over time, as pressures from old ways of doing things and from uninformed new employees – remnants of the old territorial attitude – combine to eat away at the airy open office concept. However, the effort invested in team-building and space planning is paying off as teams take responsibility for informing new hires, keeping desks clean, and protecting their spatial layouts and boundaries. In contrast with Amoco and Star Tribune, Hypertherm defined a process at the outset that was designed to manage organizational as well as workspace change. However, this careful attention to a participatory process did not mean that there was no resistance or conflict; but the terms of the sociospatial contract were not violated because mechanisms were in place to address employees’ concerns, give them a say in the process, and manage conflict. They had to give up their old territories, but they gained new territories in the form of a newly-defined role in the organization, input into design decision-making, and a physically defined and configured area for their teams. When territory is taken away, something needs to be given back. This story shows that although conflict is unavoidable when transforming workspace, it is not necessarily destructive, and in fact unleashes positive energy as people learn to pull together to make decisions about what they want and need. This energy is an asset to the organization and needs to be applied constructively, making workspace transformation a powerful tool for organizational change. Control over the space change process at Hypertherm remained in the hands of the company’s managers. Not that they did not use specialists: architects, interior designers, contractors and project managers, and even – perhaps especially – the facilitators who designed a process and guided them through it. But because the decisions were made by the very people responsible for the success of the company’s core business, they were able to go further and make more radical changes than might otherwise have been the case. After moving in, they were able to sustain the changed environment even when there were pressures to go back to the old ways. 42

The organization–accommodation relationship

122

Lessons learned

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 522 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3

There are some common themes in these three stories, which are in fact common to all workspace change initiatives everywhere, and from which some best practices can be identified. First, some kind of involvement of end users is mandatory. In fact, the more drastic the proposed change, the more people need to get involved. This simple rule is often ignored because involving employees is time-consuming and is almost a guarantee that conflict will bubble up to the surface. However, the amount and type of participation in the process is not rigid and can be adapted to the context. The important point is that involvement must include some employee control over what kind of space is planned and how it will affect them. In the case of the Arkoma team, the leader managed a fully participatory process of team decisionmaking in which all team members were motivated to improve the group’s productivity. However, not all Amoco team leaders who opted for teamspace to reduce their occupancy costs engaged their teams in the planning process. Teams whose managers simply imposed cubicles had a larger complement of angry and resentful members. One important lesson is therefore to engage in a process that empowers occupants of the proposed new space to have a say in decisions, a process that includes shared objectives on what new workspace is designed to achieve. The second theme is senior management leadership. This is

4

generally ‘called for’ but not always there. In each of the situations described

5

here, someone in a leadership position came out on the side of change, and

6

became its champion. When senior managers keep their large corner offices

7

while giving instructions to shrink cubicles for the troops, people are more

8

likely to resist. They feel their sociospatial contract is not being respected. But

9

a CEO or team leader who takes time to explain why workspace change is

302

right for the company and lets people have a say its design is honoring the

1

terms of the contract. Like Tilden, McGuire and Couch, an involved leader is

2

also positioning himself to manage conflict and direct its energy towards

3

positive and constructive outcomes. Leaders of the change process do best

4

when they are aware that change applies at all organizational levels and not

5

just to space, and when they act from a holistic perspective of space as an

6

integral component of the organizational system. The third common theme is

7

the role of consultants to facilitate the process. Both the Star Tribune and

8

Hypertherm used outside consultants; Amoco used its own facilities manage-

9

ment team as consultants to the business units, and the Arkoma team had

40

some help from an outside designer. In all three cases, someone was specific-

1

ally designated to watch over and even to design the process, to manage

2

conflicts, provide information continuously and, as much as possible, actively 43

The organization–accommodation relationship

facilitate decision-making. This is in contrast to conventional design projects, where professionals’ traditional roles limit them to providing the services they are paid for, with the result that there is often no experienced participant willing to take responsibility for process. Organizational change cannot, however, be led by outsiders. Consultants must remain adjuncts to the process; change will not happen because of their presence. But experienced facilitators who bring knowledge and experience from outside the organization can help company staff and executives fully understand and successfully manage the process they have embarked on. The value of facilitation lies in occupying a neutral position and making sure everyone has their say, consensus is reached, and decisions made early on in the process are respected when resistance to change increases pressure on decision-makers. Consultants also bring knowledge based on experience in other organizations. Regardless of their formal training, the more skilled they are as facilitators and the more support they have from management, the more experienced consultants can contribute to successful transformation. Each of the three stories draws attention to the lack of correspondence between the quality of the space people occupy at work and their degree of attachment to it. At Amoco, employees were giving up relatively attractive and spacious offices for cubicles, and their reluctance to do so is understandable. Hypertherm employees, however, were just as attached to small, overheated, cramped workspaces, furnished with an unsightly jumble of old furniture elements which included metal desks and padded partitions on metal ‘feet’, all in various shades of dark brown. The original furniture in the Star Tribune newsroom was also cramped and old. Thus obvious improvements in workspace comfort and appearance do not necessarily ease territorial transition, especially when an image of the new space exists only in the designer’s mind. Finally, the three examples demonstrate the concept of an ongoing relationship between organizations and their space – the O–A relationship – rather than space as a static element that is simply background to business activities. Whereas real estate industry professionals – brokers, designers, builders – think in terms of projects that begin and end, the occupying organization stays involved. Inhabiting workspace is an ongoing experience. For the organization, each project has precipitating circumstances beforehand, and it has effects and impacts afterwards: each one of these transforms the relationship between the users and their space, with long-term consequences. There is a process of adapting habits and attitudes, people leave and new people arrive, some moves are necessary, expansion is required in some areas and shrinkage in others. Minor irritations surface with elements that do not 44

The organization–accommodation relationship

122

work, changes and refinements have to be made. People and their space are

2

in an active and interactive relationship. Adaptations and compromises are

3

necessary for the O–A relationship to succeed. Let us look closely at some of

4

the practical aspects of workspace change, drawn from these and other exam-

5

ples, and how users’ psychology is affected.

6 7 8 9

The management challenge: from space to place

10 1

In the late 1990s, a business school study predicted that the amount of office

2

space per worker would increase nationwide by four square feet per year,

3

although it is ‘unlikely that this additional space will be individually assigned’.12

4

The global trend is towards reducing the importance of the individual office

522 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 302

and workstation while providing workspace that is more team-oriented, more functional, and less concerned with communicating the status of the individual worker. In most companies, team leaders and unit managers are responsible for managing the sociopsychological aspects of new workspace; managers are the ones who carry the burden of allocating and defining territory. Managers face a dilemma in situations of workspace transformation. On the one hand, they must respond to corporate pressures for rational decision-making, reducing costs, centralizing locations and other rational criteria. We might characterize this as managing workspace. On the other hand, managers must also be aware of the meaning people attribute to the space they occupy, and the emotional power of space symbolism. We characterize this as managing workplace. What turns space into place are the territorial limits defined by office walls, the user’s choice of opening or closing the door, the ownership implied by a nameplate, and the status that comes from being next to the window or close to the boss’s office. A physical element –

1

say, a door – is a simple extra item, to be removed when workspace decisions

2

are being made and pressure is on to reduce square footage. Losing this same

3

door is quite different from the workplace perspective: it can mean loss of

4

privacy, loss of control, loss of identity. Workplace has territorial connotations.

5

Unless workspace decisions consider the workplace perspective, design deci-

6

sions will have unintended and unanticipated consequences. Some of these

7

were present in the three case histories of change.

8

A number of design features characteristic of current office design

9

trends can be examined in this dual light. The list below indicates how rational

40

workspace decisions, usually taken by managers and planners in the interests

1

of efficiency, can be construed quite differently by users, who as a result feel

2

uncomfortable in their workplace. Each principle guides workspace decisions 45

The organization–accommodation relationship

Table 2.2 Comparing workspace with workplace design decisions Workspace efficiency principle

Effect on workplace territory

1 Flexible furniture layouts

means

Being ‘homeless’

2 Shared file storage

means

Losing one’s ‘history’

3 Shared offices

means

No right to privacy

4 Low partitions

means

Being watched

5 Informal meeting places

means

Not serious work

6 Mobility

means

Sense of impermanence; replaceability

7 Employee participation

means

A chance to grab territory

in scenarios of change. The table shows that principles that seem to be inarguably rational and efficient decisions about occupancy can simultaneously have a negative impact on users from the perspective of building and defending territory. 1

The importance of a flexible, changeable, reconfigurable workspace layout. Workspace:

The modern business environment requires com-

panies to be constantly in motion. Churn (workspace reconfiguration) rates typically run between 30 per cent and 100 per cent per year in North American companies. Work-groups and teams form and reform on a project basis, with skilled employees possibly changing locations several times a year. Workplace:

Managing churn through standardization and non-

territorial office solutions may work for the organization, but people are likely to feel their ‘home’ is transitory and insignificant as a result. There are less opportunities for personalization. Being used to thinking of their cubicles and offices as a home base, you start to feel ‘home-less’. 2

Shifting to shared document and file storage, with minimal paper storage at the individual desk. Workspace:

The era of the paperless office has not arrived, in

spite of the computerization of much office work. In fact, the amount of paper in most offices has actually increased. Companies with an eye to efficiency and cost-reduction are trying to control the amount of paper stored by individual workers by sharing file storage, storing files on optical disk, or using archival storage in low-cost real estate locations. 46

The organization–accommodation relationship

122

Workplace:

2

accumulation of books, files, documents and manuals. But most

3

people are attached to the paper they have accumulated; at some

4

level, it is a record of their history with the company. Disposing of

5

your collection of documents in order to fit into an ever-shrinking

6

workspace can make you feel disoriented and uprooted. Moreover,

7

the record of your personal contribution to the company is no

8

longer intact, and may be lost.

9

3

10

This means people must reduce their individual

Providing communal space, and sharing private offices and individual workstations.

1

Workspace:

2

More mobility and greater reliance on technology

means people are often away from their desks for long periods of

3

time. To increase efficiency, some office design concepts provide

4

collaborative spaces, especially meeting rooms, project rooms,

522

war rooms and even private offices for use on a shared basis. In

6

companies practicing hot desking or teleworking, employees share

7

their workstations.

8

Workplace:

9 20

people are used to working alone, at least for part of the time.

1

Not having a place to identify as your own, however modest,

2

weakens your sense of belonging to the company and your sense

3

that you have something important to contribute.

4 5

Sharing space means it is not your own territory. You

cannot decorate it, or leave your things out on surfaces. Most

4

Lower partitions increase visibility.

6

Workspace:

7

fewer and/or lower partitions between workstations. Sometimes

Companies have numerous reasons for installing

8

lower partitions allow more natural light into the space. Sometimes

9

they are used to reduce the ‘forest’ feeling and create a more inter-

302

esting visual environment. Other companies favor the idea of better

1

communication and more information exchange between people.

2

Managers like the increased visibility of their teams, and lower

3

partitions also help air circulate better in a large open space.

4

Workplace:

5

in the open can be threatening. First, it signals no real difference in

6

status between you and everyone else. Second, it feels as though

7

your individual identity is being sacrificed on the altar of cost-saving

8

uniformity. And third, you feel you are being watched and that your

9

performance is being checked up on: you have less autonomy. Part

40

of one’s territorial need is managing the flow of information to and

1

from you, and controlling how it is transmitted. Increased visibility

2

means less control over information.

People are alarmed by the lack of privacy; being out

47

The organization–accommodation relationship

5

Increasing choice and diversity of places to meet. Workspace:

In a faster, more project-oriented business environ-

ment, information moves quickly through the organization, and companies soon realize it is in their interest to do everything possible to facilitate information exchange. One thing they can do is provide spatial opportunities for people to meet, see each other, and communicate informally. So by going beyond the traditional conference room, and providing open kitchen/coffee areas, window nooks with sofas and easy chairs, alcoves off corridors, town squares, and many other types of ‘Let’s sit down for a minute and talk’ space, designers hope employees will collaborate more at work. Workplace:

For people who yearn for the scheduled formality

of conference rooms, this is neither innovative nor dynamic; it is meaningless. To these employees, informal, casually furnished, food-related places to meet are not legitimate work environments and they do not belong in an office. No self-respecting employee would want to be seen using this kind of space, as the bosses may judge that this means no work is being done, that you are ‘goofing off’. 6

Work mobility and remote officing. Workspace:

Several companies now experiment with alternatives

to conventional officing. Accountants and management consultants are encouraged to work in their clients’ offices; employees who travel work at ‘hot spots’ or business centers in airport lounges, hotels and train stations. A wide variety of work-at-home programs exist. Many shopping centers, hotels and office buildings offer rentable business services that include Internet connection and temporary office space. Some combination of these alternatives enables a company to reduce its accommodation costs; some companies have no office space at all. Workplace:

Even people who only need to ‘go to the office’

once a week or once a month do not like having to occupy whatever is available. Office hoteling means not knowing where you are going to sit when you get there, hoping your co-workers and visitors can find you, putting all your files away when you leave and feeling that, like the space itself, you are replaceable. What is home territory when work is performed everywhere? Do you still have a place in the company, or when you are out of sight are you also out of mind? 48

The organization–accommodation relationship

122

7

Inviting employee participation in the design process.

2

Workspace:

3

new workspace concepts is costly both in terms of downtime while

4

people learn to adapt, and in terms of increased turnover caused

5

by employees leaving because they refuse to do so. By providing

6

opportunities to participate in design decision-making through

7

exposing employees to drawings, models, furniture mock-ups and

8

the like, managers hope to ensure buy-in and gain a faster return

9

on their investment from increased worker productivity in the

10

new space.

1 2 3 4 522 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 302 1 2

Workplace:

Some companies reason that worker resistance to

The employee participation process needs to be

designed to fit the resources and opportunities available. On some occasions, workers do not participate willingly because they feel they are being conned. Asking for opinions is an empty gesture when management has already made up its mind. In some cases, being asked to participate is a chance to set up battle lines and grab more territory – for yourself or for your team. In these and other ways, apparently rational workspace decisions have unsuspected, non-rational workplace consequences. In each of the three cases described in this chapter, a process was implemented that illustrates not only how using these two different languages can compete for attention, but also how a process can be designed to be effective at both levels. Whether or not people feel they work in a place they have made their own is a key factor in how long they stay and how well they perform, both individually and as part of a team. Companies that have implemented workspace change are aware that these are not simply conflicts about resistance to change and fear of open offices; they are evidence of complicated discrepancies between what corporate decision-makers think they are doing to improve workspace, and ways in which most office workers – especially those with traditional experiences and expectations – react to threats on their territoriality.

3 4

The power of territory at work

5 6

Office-space decision-making is a high stakes game. It is not a matter of

7

tangential importance to the core business of the organization. It is costly,

8

it is emotional and it takes special management skills to make good space

9

decisions. Studies estimate that worker effectiveness can be improved

40

anywhere from five to fifty per cent with good quality workspace – and this

1

does not mean comfortable or pretty, it means being able to use the physical

2

environment as a tool to get work done. 49

The organization–accommodation relationship

Few senior managers look at space as a resource to the organization or as a driver of organizational change. But whereas leasing office space, buying and selling buildings and getting into the design and construction business do not need to be part of a company’s core business, the accommodation it chooses for itself does. Workspace is one of a company’s tools, like its information technology: it will help it do more or less well, it can empower or disempower employees, it can add to competitive advantage and play an active part in making a business successful. It is also a powerful mechanism in the relationship between employees and the organization, symbolizing commitment on both sides and ensuring that each worker has territory. In order for managers to understand the power of this tool and to use it well, they need to know more about how buildings work and to understand how environmental features found inside office buildings affect people’s behavior. Managers need to develop an awareness of the deep psychological attachment people have for their space. Workspace is not and cannot only be a tool, it also links into a primitive human need to occupy territory. Managing the human need for territory means understanding how people perceive, think about and use the physical features of their space as well as what territory at work means to the individual worker. Throughout corporate America and the world, shrinking individual workspace and the removal of walls is causing a territoriality crisis. Are employees learning to use the new spaces they are being given, or are they trying to make them work like old-fashioned offices? Are they tolerating shrinking cubicles and offices in the name of cost-savings, or is their productivity affected? Are they adapting work processes to their non-territorial hoteling and hot desk environments only while waiting for the pendulum to swing the other way and give them back the nameplates on their doors? The next chapter explores the concept of territoriality to gain a deeper understanding of the territorial dynamic at work.

Notes 1 Vischer, J. C. (1999) ’Will This Open Space Work?’, Reprint no: 99312, Harvard Business Review, May–June. 2 See chapter 1 in Vischer, J. C. (1996) Workspace Strategies, Environment As A Tool For Work, New York: Chapman and Hall.The chapter states that ‘the unexamined relationship is not worth having’.Ways of ‘examining’ the relationship constructively include 1. analyzing and then mapping how workspace decisions are made and by whom; 2. systematically collecting feedback from building users; and 3. using a tool like the Balanced Scorecard (see Kaplan, R. S. and Norton, D. P. [1996] Translating Strategy Into Action, Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press) or the Building Performance Mapping Tool (Ouye, J. ‘Measuring Workplace Performance Using the Performance Map’. Paper presented at World Workplace 2003 50

The organization–accommodation relationship

122 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2

conference, Yokohama, Japan, 2003) to assess how responsive a company’s accommodation is to its business goals and strategy. 3 For example, an undated publication of the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) states ‘A strategic approach to office design integrates design goals with the company’s strategic business objectives.’ Productive Solutions: The Impact of Interior Design on the Bottom Line, Washington, DC: The American Society of Interior Designers. 4 Fischer, G.-N. (1983) Le travail et son espace, Paris: Dunod. 5 For more exploration of the psychology of attachment to place, see Altman, I. and Low, S. E. (eds) (1992) Place Attachment, New York: Plenum Press. 6 John Zeisel, with Eisenman Anderson Design. 7 See Chapter 4 in Zeisel, J. 2005 Inquiry By Design: Environment, Behavior, Neuroscience in Architecture, Interiors, Landscape and Planning, 2nd edn, New York: W. W. Norton. 8 Foland, S. and Rowlens, S. (1995)’Team Space and Empowerment: A Formula For Success’. Paper presented at World Workplace ‘95, IFMA Annual Conference, Miami; September. 9 Supported by a designer from Haworth Furniture systems.

3

10 Foland, S. and Rowlens, S. (1995). op. cit.

4

11 Buildings-In-Use, Boston, with Jacqueline Vischer, Robert Charest, Marc Lessard and

522 6 7

Huguette Vachon. Architect: Tom Woods, Breadloaf Construction. 12 Linneman, P. (1998) ‘Will We Need More Office Space?’ Wharton Business School Working Paper #282, February.

8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 302 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40 1 2 51

Chapter 3

Territoriality examined Being at home at work

‘Whereas animal territoriality is rooted in physiological needs connected with survival, human territoriality may also embrace higher needs for, say, status, recognition by others, and achievement or self-image.’1 The Star Tribune, Amoco and Hypertherm case histories illustrated various ways in which employees made their needs felt. Examples of new workspace design being imposed with little or no user consultation, as illustrated by the Chiat-Day scenario, are more typical, leading to costly and hard-to-fix building mistakes as well as uncomfortable and resistant users. In this chapter, the concept of territoriality is put under the microscope. Long recognized as an organizing principle of animal behavior, the need to occupy, own, mark and defend one’s ‘place’ has a biological heritage as a natural instinct. Territoriality is also defined in human and social terms as a force affecting social behavior and relationships. The urge to occupy and defend territory is recognized as a salient feature of people’s behavior in organizations, extending to social roles and even ideas.2 Status, recognition by others, and achievement or self-image are what territoriality at work is all about. Territoriality is defined as:

52

•

The control of resources via the demarcation and defense of space

•

Social processes such as dominance patterns

•

Cognitive and affective ties that support the possessor’s identity.3

Territoriality examined

122

Along with performance and control, it is one of the three critical

2

components of the environmental psychology of workspace. Without under-

3

standing territoriality, we cannot recognize and work with the implicit assump-

4

tions of the sociospatial contract, of which territorial definition is both a cause

5

and an effect.

6 7 8

How people feel about territory at work

9 10

A business making decisions about accommodating its organization is not the

1

same as a family deciding to buy a home. Companies do not pick out their

2

office accommodation like people pick out a home. Much research has gone

3 4 522 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

into analyzing the motives, expectations, behaviors and choices of the homebuying public, whereas little or none exists in the area of commercial space buying or leasing. Businesses tend to be told what is available in a given location for them to choose from. On the other hand, the attachment workers have to their workspace – not usually the office building but more often the office, workstation, or furniture they occupy – is a function of their need to feel at home while they are at work. To a business’s employees, the workspace they occupy is their home and place in the organization. What does feeling ‘at home’ mean? Does it mean reconstructing one’s home at the office? Or simply making a home-like space? Is home at work more like home turf or territory?

4

Variations in duration of occupancy and psychological centrality mean there are at least three different types of territory.5 Primary territories are spaces such as houses or bedrooms, which are occupied for long periods and central to the lives of their owners. The definition of secondary territories

9

depends on primary territories. Secondary territories are accessible to a wider

302

range of users, but regular occupants (individual or collective) exert some

1

control over accessibility and activities in the territory. While users set the

2

rules, they tend to spend less time there, and these territories are not as

3

central to their lives. An example is the dayroom or lounge in nursing homes

4

or other, similar institutions.6 At the tertiary level are public territories, such as

5

theatres, restaurants, parks and aircraft, for example, which are occupied on

6

a temporary basis and are open to all on a first-come first-served basis. Rules,

7

expectations and customs shared by the collective users determine behaviors

8

and activities. Behavior at the ‘center’ of one’s territory differs from behavior

9

at the periphery. In the center, ‘the possession of territory lends enhanced

40

energy to the proprietor’; whereas at the edge, boundary definitions have

1

to be negotiated with occupants of other territories: ‘Most of a company’s

2

politics are concerned with border disputations.’7 53

Territoriality examined

The office lies somewhere between a primary and a secondary territory in the sense that the desk, workstation or office is primary territory at work, and coffee areas, meeting rooms and corridors are secondary territories. The primary territory elicits more marking behavior and personalization than secondary territory, with more use of physical markers (objects) than of bodily or verbal marking behavior. In response to invasion of one’s primary territory, defending behavior involves restoring and re-establishing barriers and markers rather than leaving the territory and relocating elsewhere: ‘Primary territories allow for the greatest degree of control and the greatest potential for individualistic identity displays.’8 Factors affecting territoriality at work include status rankings, control over access, personalization and expression of identity. The psychological process of ‘place attachment’, which causes people to transform, for example, a house into their home, also happens at work. Employees appropriate objects and spaces and make them meaningful: ‘Sensory experiences, memories, cognitive integration, affective concern and activities all contribute to the bonds between people and place.’9 In the following sections, we explore four general dimensions of territoriality: •

Time–space (im)permanence: or why does territoriality happen?

•

Role, rank, and status congruency: or who is territorial and under what circumstances?

•

Territorial appropriation: or what causes territoriality?

•

Markers and environmental control: or what is territorial behavior and how do we recognize it?10 This exploration sets the stage for examining ways in which

territorial behavior, or making oneself at home at work, plays out in terms of environmental conditions inside buildings and directly affects the performance of work.

Time–space (im)permanence or why does territoriality happen? What situational contexts cause territorial behavior at work? Human territoriality is expressed over a more varied geographical range than animals, whose territories tend to be geographically defined. For humans, geographical restrictions that define territory are as psychological as they are physical. A territorial limit may occur at a point along a corridor that has no physical expression but is quite psychologically clear to users. People are territorially possessive about other people, objects and ideas, and not just space. This 54

Territoriality examined

122

is evident in situations where managers refuse to offer telecommuting or

2

work-at-home options to their staff, preferring to have them physically in view

3

while they are at work. The staff knows that sitting at a desk in a downtown

4

office building does not ensure work quality, but the territorial need that some

5

managers have to see and hear the workers they are responsible for (and have

6

control over) predominates. Applying the same set of values, many workers

7

feel generally obliged to be physically at their desks in order to demonstrate

8

that they are working.

9

Human territoriality extends beyond ‘the geographically proximal

10

person or group’ to include loyalty and affective ties.11 An employee’s loyalty

1

to and identification with her employer is also a function of territoriality at

2

work: the company that employs me is ‘my company’. Traditionally, office

3

workers are rooted in a fixed space–time framework: they come to work at

4

the same place every day, they sit in the same places, and they arrive

522

and leave at more or less the same time. Even workers who are constantly

6

on the move, work away from their desks, or work outside the building, still

7

define territory according to space–time parameters. In claiming that human

8

territoriality extends beyond immediate geographical areas, we assume that

9

territoriality at work is more flexible than fixed patterns of office worker

20

behavior would lead us to believe. Office territoriality makes itself apparent

1

in unusual and unsuspected ways. Employees who travel, work outside the

2

building and make other flexible, alternative work arrangements still feel

3

loyalty to the company and commitment to the job, although we know little

4

about how or why these links are forged and what spatial or environmental

5

change might unwittingly sever them. Some writers suggest that not being

6

tied to a desk or building actually weakens employee loyalty. On the other

7

hand, as technology becomes more sophisticated, territory at work must

8

surely be defined in ways other than space occupancy.

9

Workgroups with a team identity and members who interact in a

302

defined spatial context can be expected to be territorial. Such groups form

1

and reform – there is no time limit on territoriality. However, a minimum time

2

is needed for group identity to emerge. Crowds listening to politicians or

3

public speakers, for example, have no territorial identity, but if the speaker

4

calls them to action, or a heckler persists in interrupting, a transient group

5

identity forms in response to the demands of the situation. Similarly, individ-

6

uals become temporarily territorial when flying economy class, for example,

7

when elbow battles develop over shared armrests! The permanence or imper-

8

manence of time–space parameters affects and even defines territoriality’s

9

situational contexts.

40

The influence of time–space permanence in territory formation and

1

duration provokes questions about scale: there is a big difference between

2

sharing armrests during a flight and sharing the corridor outside your office 55

Territoriality examined

that you use several times a day. Jane Jacobs, writing about cities, insisted that once outside the house the only real territory is the street because people who occupy its physical space have face-to-face contact; larger than the street, the social group becomes political and abstract.12 Neighborhood studies demonstrate that territoriality occurs where social groups have a common and recognized physical or locational basis. This means that in a company where individuals working for the same department are located in separate offices across a number of sites, the department will have weaker bonds than one whose employees are co-located and see each other regularly. Group definition alone does not constitute a basis for territoriality; physical parameters that correspond to the group to which the individual belongs are a necessary condition for territory formation. Psychological parameters of space and subjective assessments of distance are critical situational factors in human territoriality, making it difficult to infer human territories only from the size, shape and placement of physical elements in the environment. For example, physical distance does not necessarily correspond to functional distance: the feeling that some ways of ‘getting there’ seem shorter because they are more interesting and rewarding, even if they might take longer. Circulation (corridors, stairs/elevators and walkways) represents a barrier or a path depending on motivation, mobility and the means of transportation available. The nature of this perception is also affected by time: in the office, a path is a barrier when my supervisor is at her desk, because she can see movement in this area. But when she is not at her desk – perhaps she has gone home – it is an inviting pathway to a desirable objective such as a window, my buddies’ desks or my supervisor’s (better) coffee machine. Research on neighborhood perception and definition in cities concludes that the process by which occupants internalize the physical features of their space leads to the creation of cognitive schemata in which whole areas rather than discrete physical elements are recognized and memorized. People develop a sense of belonging and ownership through their recognition and internalization of a whole rather than simply of its parts. Studies of how people perceive their neighborhoods in cities identified four factors that affect how people internalize ways of traversing space: the means of traversing the route, the linearity of the route, its perceived complexity and the desirability of the goal object.13 Often intuitively understood by designers, the concept of functional distance underlies contemporary office planning ideas about placing desirable destinations (coffee, shared files, team worktables) in locations that bring people together or cause them to interact en route. Some office floor plans have attempted to make ‘getting there’ a focus of the workspace by creating circulation paths that wander through, in and around different features of the office. The argument underlying this approach to office planning is that 56

122 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 522 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 302 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40 1 2

3.1 Winding pathways in the office

Territoriality examined

functional distance is more important to people than physical distance, and can in fact be an enriching and rewarding experience that increases workers’ contact with each other, giving them access to useful information about what is going on in other areas of the office. Nevertheless, space planners usually remain loyal to floor layouts that minimize circulation and keep physical distances short, even when contact and interaction are explicit organizational goals. Minimizing circulation is a more efficient use of space, even though this may lead to lined-up workstations and less social contact. As we saw at the end of the last chapter, this clearly demonstrates the difference between workspace and workplace. While workspace decisions emphasize efficiency, in the workplace moving around the floor is a positive experience, providing workers with useful contacts and information. Managers must determine the best way to balance workspace and workplace priorities for their own teams and business units. Some types of work have little to gain from increasing contact between co-workers; in fact it is distracting. Other work settings thrive on the more relaxed and informal feel of winding and indirect pathways, where informal seating, meeting-nooks and other stopping-places contribute to using movement around the office for informal exchanges.14 To summarize, the situational contexts of territorial behavior are not defined exclusively in spatial terms because of the relative impermanence of space–time parameters. Why territoriality happens also depends on people’s feelings about where they work. If managers want space-use decisions to have their intended effects, they need to understand more about how territoriality works both inside the organization and for employees working outside the conventional space–time framework. Time is malleable – it can shrink and expand, depending on the situation – where territory is concerned. In addition, the length, attributes and perceived complexity of distances affect how users internalize definitions of physical space at work. Applying the distinction between physical and functional distance to office space planning is one concrete way in which managers can address the situational contexts of territoriality.

Role, rank and status congruency: who is territorial? The individual is not the only territorial unit: the group, the couple, the team, the family, the department are all territorial. All humans have a variety of social roles and memberships in a variety of reference groups at work and elsewhere. Each group in which the individual has a role is territorial in some way or another, in addition to the individual territoriality of members. Territoriality 58

Territoriality examined

122

is not defined in terms of a simple cause–effect formula, such as providing

2

physical enclosure. It is a multilayered concept, inferred from the interplay

3

between a finite set of physical features and the changing variety of groups

4

and activities that they accommodate.

5

At the office, one person may be a member of a team which is

6

itself part of a larger group or department. The same person may socialize with

7

people from another workgroup. He is also a supervisor or manager of some

8

co-workers and he is managed, along with others at his level, by a superior.

9

He may be planning his retirement, along with others of his age, or he may

10

be recently married and applying for paternity leave, also along with others of

1

his age. Perhaps he is on an accelerated career path to a senior management

2

position. If he lives in a remote suburb, he carpools every day with others who

3

live nearby. In all of these groups, the individual has a role relative to the others

4

in the group, and every social role has more or less social status, or rank.15

522

Just as his role may be different in every group in which he participates, so

6

his status will also vary. A CEO has top status in her own company, but she

7

is just another parent at her daughter’s parent-teacher meetings; at her child’s

8

school she has less status than the principal and less authority than the

9

teachers. If a person stops working or leaves the company she works for,

20

the groups she belongs to will change and she will no longer have the same

1

role or status in them.

2

Status differences in each of these referent groups are, if not

3

defined by, at least expressed through territory. Each social role gives rise to

4

different motives, expectations, norms and associated social needs, such as

5

dominance and status, compatibility and communication. Animal studies

6

of territoriality have concluded that in order for territory to be defined, the

7

unit defining it must be an organism, that is to say not just a random agglom-

8

eration of occupants.16 One of the questions to which we have no answer

9

as yet is to what degree virtual groups, such as those who communicate by

302

email or groupware, create a sense of group identity in members, and at

1

what stage – and how – does that group lay claim to its territory? Recent

2

studies by computer science and media researchers indicate that space is

3

not being made irrelevant by computer-supported cooperative work, but is

4

likely to be redefined in new ways, including virtually, specifically to express

5

group identity.17

6

An individual’s role and status in a group varies according to when

7

and where group interaction takes place. In hierarchical organizations such as

8

hospitals, spaces are clearly attributed to certain groups of users, and norms

9

of behavior are developed accordingly. Spaces not attributed to user groups

40

create confusion or ambiguity, constraining behavior. A lack of social organ-

1

ization, where social group definition and group membership are ambiguous,

2

means unclear norms or confusing rules about space use.18 In other words, 59

Territoriality examined

where people are not sure of their roles, their status is not defined or they are in a situation of change, the physical territories they occupy are also ambiguous.19 For example, coffee or eating areas at work are provided for use by all staff, but in reality are typically used by support staff, who bring their lunch to work and often have fixed break times. As a result, senior staff and professionals may feel uncomfortable in the coffee area because the habitual users feel constrained if their bosses are present. By the same token, any senior staff member using the coffee lounge for lunch knows that their companions will likely be administrative assistants and support staff. This may be acceptable in some companies and unacceptable in others, although such rules are rarely explicit. In my university faculty, professors are quietly but unmistakably reminded that the secretaries prefer that they not use the kitchen/coffee room for other than quick coffee refills or microwaving their lunch. Professors’ intrusion into support staff territory (they eat their lunch there every day) is tolerated within limits, but we are definitely visitors on someone else’s turf! The primordial link between territoriality and social status is one of the reasons workspace change generates threats of territorial loss: changing space means changing status. The ambiguity inherent in situations of change – not knowing the pecking order, not knowing the behavioral norms of the space one works in – is an uncomfortable experience. This is one of the reasons people cling to existing patterns of occupancy, even when these are dysfunctional. Territoriality is an expression of relative dominance and social stratification and protecting individuals by ensuring their place in the social order. As an occupant of her own territory – her desk, cubicle or office – the individual is free to reign supreme; she is also in a position to control and regulate her relationship to the larger group or community to which she belongs. Office space also displays the relative standing of individuals in the organization’s hierarchy of authority and influence. In almost all organizations, one incontrovertible sign of an employee’s advancement is that she is moved to a bigger office – one with more seating for visitors, more enclosure, a window view and/or a larger desk. At one time, companies maintained elaborate rules on what employees could and could not have in their offices at different levels of authority. Although seemingly outdated today, the principles behind these symbols – from plastic ashtray to chrome ashtray, from chairs with no arms to chair with arms, from plastic penholder to chrome penholder, from one movie poster to two old Masters reproductions – are still faithfully adhered to in all but the most young and non-traditional corporations, even if the ways in which it is applied have changed.20 People are not always aware of the power of these symbols. Yet they have emotional reactions when the symbols are not respected, or when 60

Territoriality examined

122 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 522 6 7 8

3.2 Doors, windows, plants, new furniture and color can all be status markers

evidence of their own status or authority is threatened through their loss or replacement. The middle manager at the World Bank who had the entire floor reconfigured – in defiance of his own staff’s wishes – to create space for a waiting area for visitors outside his office has already been mentioned. There was little need for a visitor waiting area for his small number of visitors and

9

the time they had to wait, but the waiting area outside his office enhanced his

20

status. In many companies, efforts to increase efficiency have led to one-

1

space-fits-all cubicles, sometimes accompanied by extensive customization of

2

executives’ offices. When there is such a discrepancy, space standardization

3

does little to equalize employee status. No matter how egalitarian their own

4

environment (same-size cubicles, same desks and chairs, same distance from

5

windows and same office equipment) employees continue to consider space

6

as symbolizing status if they see it used this way elsewhere in the organiza-

7

tion. So as long as the chief executive has a 400 square foot corner office,

8

armchairs, a coffee table, oriental carpets and a dedicated conference room,

9

the company is still using space to symbolize status – and many companies

302

do just this while ‘rationalizing’ square footage to reduce costs!

1

Some writers refer to physical elements that denote relative influ-

2

ence and authority in an organization as ‘status markers’. Status markers

3

serve, variously, as tools for communication, incentives for performance, and

4

props for use in carrying out certain status-associated tasks. A book dis-

5

paraging traditional management hierarchies lists ‘corner offices, washroom

6

keys, reserved parking spaces, and private elevators’ as environmental props

7

to communicate status.21 In the absence of traditional indicators, employees

8

seek out their own status markers, for example, how close their workspace

9

is to the manager’s office, how far they are from the copier, the height of their

40

cubicle partitions and distance from windows. When workers at Cisco

1

Systems were moved into cubicles, they went around with measuring tapes

2

to make sure that everyone’s cubicle was the same size.22 61

Territoriality examined

Nevertheless, in companies where senior executives are considering moving into the same workstations as everyone else, workers often protest more aggressively than the executives themselves. First, they like to be reminded of the distinctions: ‘a place for everyone and everyone in his place’. And second, if the symbols of advancement disappear, how will the status gained by their own hoped-for promotions be communicated? Sociologists note that according to the theory of ‘status congruency’ people strive for consistency in their status relationships.23 In other words, people expect workspace allocation to be congruent with formal rankings in the hierarchy of organizational power, as reflected in the different levels of people they interact with and the importance of their decisions. Their space should be superior in some way to the space of people in lower level positions, and their bosses’ spaces should be better than their own. As long as senior management observes the law of status congruency, the entire organization will too, whether this is explicit corporate policy or privately harbored individual feelings discussed around the water fountain or coffee pot. Although little is known about the relationship between sense of status and job satisfaction, the law of status congruency suggests that people prefer traditional status markers in organizations, so that they ‘know where they stand’. They need their workspace to fit their own perception of their status. Workspace change that causes the disappearance of existing and accepted status markers means that employees will express dissatisfaction unless and until other status markers have been substituted that are congruent with their self-perceptions. In sum, territoriality at work is a function of the individual as well as the group, of the individual’s role and status in the groups to which he belongs, and of the degree of hierarchy in the culture of the organization. To reduce ambiguity and confirm rank, people use status markers to indicate their territory, as a result of which a wide range of objects and spaces in the office carry symbolic meanings. As long as corporate values implicitly or explicitly endorse the symbolic meaning of space at work, it will be difficult to substitute a more functional meaning of space, that is to say, as a tool for work.

Territorial appropriation, or what causes territorial behaviour? Animal studies on territoriality indicate that intrusion by others (usually of the same species) causes territorial behavior. Office workers behave territorially when they feel their privacy is invaded, whether this is auditory, visual or physical. Most designers learn that occupants experience privacy at several levels – the space closest to the body is ‘personal space’ and the most private; other 62

Territoriality examined

122

levels of privacy are associated with increasing distance from the body.24

2

Jay Chiat demanded a clear distinction between personal and private space,

3

because providing personal space was not a corporate responsibility, whereas

4

providing private space for concentration and solitary work was. Personal

5

space is, however, a basic human need that people are motivated to act on

6

behaviorally and in other ways. While the corporation may not provide personal

7

space, it can use a design process and solutions that ensure that employees’

8

personal space needs are met.

9

Intrusions also occur at the scale of semi-private space, that is,

10

intimate, shared space for the small group such as the project team, and even

1

in semi-public spaces accessible to neighbors and co-workers from different

2

groups. Public spaces include elevators, the cafeteria, the entrance hall or

3

atrium: territorial intrusions here are behaviorally quite different, depending

4

on consensus about rules governing behavior and expectations of behavior

522

in those places. The question of territorial scale or the gradient from public to

6

private is simplified by the phenomenologists, who define territory, and indeed

7

all physical space, in terms of the placement of and view from where the self

8

is positioned. In other words, my territory is defined in terms of where I am,

9

what I am doing, why I am here, what I feel, what I can see, hear, and smell

20

and what I am going to do next.25

1

Territorial intrusion provokes defensive behavior, but most people

2

in social situations do not defend territory by using animal-like aggressive

3

behaviors. Media accounts of road rage and airplane rage suggest that, where

4

no social bonds exist, people do in fact revert to animal-like aggression. In a

5

social situation such as the office, people have substituted non-aggressive

6

elaborate defensive behaviors, called ‘scaled defense repertoires’. One scaled

7

defense repertoire against territorial intrusion is people’s insistence on the

8

confidentiality of their work. Workers who feel violated by open-plan office

9

layouts invoke confidentiality, among other things, to generate support for

302

more enclosure and separation – better territorial definition. Another elaborate

1

defense behavior is the demand for privacy. While designers are trained to

2

consider privacy as a human need, sociologists define privacy as an organizing

3

principle of behavior rather than a self-sufficient state or an end in itself. One

4

study of territoriality at work that defined privacy as control over interruptions

5

and intrusions demonstrated that peoples’ need for such control varies over

6

the course of the workday.26 The notion of control (to be discussed in the next

7

section) underpins the notion of privacy, which, in turn, is one territorial

8

defense against intrusion.

9

Basic to the notion of privacy is the regulation of social interaction.

40

The human need for privacy is the need to control one’s interaction with and

1

one’s accessibility to others.27 One unpleasant effect of sitting with your back

2

to the door is that you cannot always know who might be looking in and what 63

Territoriality examined

they might read on your computer screen or see you doing. In a similar vein, one of the acoustic problems of cubicles is that you can hear what others say on the telephone and they can hear you. Control over the information about oneself that is transmitted to others is at the core of the notion of privacy, and the configuration of the physical environment can help manage how and when such information is communicated. A satisfying level of privacy is achieved if there is neither too much nor too little contact with others. Too much social contact causes stress through a sense of overcrowding; too little causes stress through unwanted isolation.

3.3 Too much privacy translates into isolation

64

Territoriality examined

122

Because office occupants complain about lack of privacy in open-

2

plan workspace layouts, some managers and designers feel that enclosing

3

individual workers will improve their comfort. This simplistic solution to a

4

complex problem of territorial definition and defense against intrusion is

5

usually unworkable as it depends on costly and space-consuming construc-

6

tion of barriers.28 In fact, when questioned directly about the need for privacy,

7

people at work attach more importance to elements needed to perform their

8

tasks than to privacy regulation. What most office workers object to is visual

9

and acoustic distraction, for example, co-workers peeking over partitions – a

10

behavior by others over which they have no control.29 By the same token,

1

controlling one’s accessibility means taking responsibility; thus in identifying

2

a space as both occupied and private, workers are also indicating they are

3

responsible for the space, as they are for the work being done within it.

4

Although territoriality does not require physical enclosure as a

522

necessary condition, it does imply physically defined limits. People use terri-

6

torial markers to set boundaries and protect themselves from intrusions.

7

Ambiguous or poorly defined space-use rules generate frustration and lead to

8

more pronounced marking behavior, especially where rules for setting bound-

9

aries are unclear at the organizational level. People need clear demarcations

20

of private, semi-private, semi-public and public territory in order to adapt their

1

behavior accordingly.30 More physical enclosure has also been suggested to

2

compensate for excessive noise in work environments, as office workers

3

consider noise a territorial intrusion. However, noise studies indicate that phys-

4

ical enclosure is less of a factor in acoustic privacy than standards of construc-

5

tion and materials used in office interiors. The more we seek to pin down

6

privacy in environmental terms, the more elusive it becomes, and the more

7

of a factor it is in workspace territoriality.

8

Five groups of antecedent factors identify human territoriality.

9

These are a social dimension (the people in or sharing access to the territory),

302

a physical dimension (the objects in the territory), a diffuse physical dimension

1

(the boundaries and limits of the territory), a meaningfulness dimension (how

2

people feel about their territory), and a perceptual dimension (is the territory

3

perceived physically, vicariously or psychologically?).31 The process of space

4

appropriation, linked with people’s sense of belonging to the organization,

5

is a key influence on and activator of these different factors. Taking ownership

6

of workspace is therefore both a description of user behavior and an objective

7

of the organization. As a description of behavior, territorial appropriation has

8

both a psychological and a physical meaning: it is a function of the user’s cogni-

9

tive control over space, and it is communicated by physical occupancy of the

40

space and by behavior that both defines boundaries and confirms control over

1

privacy. As an objective of the organization, appropriation signifies belonging:

2

employee loyalty to the company, and sense of community with co-workers. 65

Territoriality examined

Appropriation, as a process of non-verbal communication, uses space or spatial features to communicate what remains unsaid. The user’s behavior in a place he ‘owns’ indicates both his work-style and his connection with co-workers. Even in work environments that employees occupy on a temporary basis, they indicate their ownership of the space by re-placing objects or moving furniture. Individually and collectively, people define territory to express their identity. Space appropriation is typically expressed in terms both of marking territory, and of ‘nesting’.32 Space can be marked with personal objects (see the discussion of personalization, below) as well as by neutral objects placed in meaningful ways. Some employees appropriate space for themselves through actions rather than objects, simply by occupying or using a space on a regular basis. Nesting incorporates all types of appropriation behavior, and signifies a designated home base for the individual or group. Such spaces typically contain personal items, often randomly displayed, and informal social interactions occur there. In secondary territories, appropriation might take the form of employee-focussed events such as birthday celebrations and office parties. Whereas some years ago such activities were considered inappropriate in the work environment, companies like Fidelity, in its Center For Advanced Technology, are designing informal social spaces into office layouts for their high-tech teams to encourage informal social events. Appropriation is associated with increased creativity and the rapid exchange of information. Territorial appropriation can be implicit, coming to the fore in situations where employees feel some pressure to be dis-appropriated, for example, through uncontrolled interruptions, high noise levels and visual disorder, or moving. Appropriation varies according to whether the workspace is open or closed, as well as with density of occupancy. It is affected by whether social contact is forced through excessive proximity, or whether it can be chosen by occupants who control their accessibility. Thus territorial appropriation is linked to sense of privacy and control over accessibility; it is linked to personalization and marking of boundaries; and it is linked to participation and empowerment. In conclusion, to protect workspace territory, managers need to take steps to ensure that workers feel they have control over intrusions and distractions that affect the performance of work and their productivity. Depending on how the need for privacy is defined, simple physical enclosure is a less influential factor than intangibles such as degree and type of social contact and the sense of belonging. Managers must also decide whether or not their objective is to have employees appropriate the space they work in. Companies that are aware of the high costs of replacing trained staff are motivated to provide a certain quality of life to their employees: wherever they do their work, staff need to feel they belong and so does the company. 66

Territoriality examined

122

With technology that permits people to work from a variety of locations,

2

territorial appropriation is no longer limited to physical space and traditional

3

definitions of place. Companies need to provide employees with other ways

4

of taking ownership. In this sense, appropriation is a desirable management

5

objective.

6 7 8 9

Markers and environmental control: what is territoriality?

10 1

Animals ‘mark’ their place to warn off intruders. People use objects and

2

arrangements of objects in space, as well as ‘self-markers’ and verbal

3

communicative and reactive mechanisms. Most of us recognize territorial

4

behavior when we see it, and most of us watch out for signs of it in unfamiliar

522

situations to help us behave correctly and respect boundaries. How do we

6

recognize territorial behavior based on humans’ self-concepts, feelings and

7

complex motivational-cognitive functioning? People are motivated to mark and

8

defend spaces that they occupy, and the outcome of these complex feelings

9

and behaviors is a feeling of ownership. The psychology of ownership (‘This

20

place belongs to me’) is complemented by the psychology of belonging

1

(‘I belong to this place’). My ‘place’ communicates information about me to

2

other people in four ways.33 The first two – social status and appropriation –

3

have already been discussed. The second two, to be examined here, are

4

personalization and environmental control.

5

One way people mark territory is by displaying personal objects in

6

order to communicate occupancy. In public spaces such as libraries, which are

7

occupied temporarily, users mark their place and defend their space from

8

newcomers by placing their coats, bags and other objects of a personal nature

9

in public view.34 In open-plan workspace, where partitioned workstations are

302

occupied on a more permanent basis, opportunities for extensive marking or

1

personalizing of workspace are limited, so people resort to relatively small-

2

scale displays. The scale of display is less important than the universal human

3

urge to do it. In fact, in some standardized communal environments such as

4

college dormitories, decorating your room is a social requirement and students

5

condemn a lack of personal display – only a social outcast would not decorate

6

their dorm room. Reducing opportunities for personalization – say, in the work

7

environment – decreases both satisfaction and emotional attachment to

8

territory, and this, in turn, reduces the individual’s attachment (loyalty) to the

9

larger community (company).35

40

Personalization of workspace with markers and objects is ubiqui-

1

tous. People claim territory through ‘the deliberate adornment, decoration,

2

modification or rearrangement of an environment’.36 Personalizing the space 67

Territoriality examined

one occupies confirms the link between identity and place. In factories, equipment operators sometimes paint their machines different colors. In offices, people display objects that have personal meaning, such as photographs, flowers, posters, toys or gadgets and personal mementos. Some companies have policies that limit individual personalization by indicating some objects as acceptable and others not. In others, the work environment itself limits personalization – no walls for hanging posters or pictures, crowded worksurfaces, and no shelves for objects. Some companies encourage a ‘clean desk’ policy: people have to clear their desktops every evening. This helps reduce the feeling of clutter in the space, and also reduces the incentive to personalize. Some offices designed for visual supervision discourage hanging plants and large decorative items because these impede views. Some just prefer the professional look of a uniform, uncluttered workspace, feeling that this communicates the designer’s esthetic. Certain of these policies reflect the lingering effects of the Taylorian approach to work design – uniformity and standardization. Workers often sabotage such restrictive policies, quietly ‘hatching’ additional objects, such as extra chairs, another partition, a small table, a plant or two. The fact that people do this is one of the reasons why the most carefully planned office interior usually deteriorates over time, with esthetic uniformity giving way to anarchic individuality. In the modern business environment, people are often not long enough at any one desk to indulge in a great deal of personalization. If the average churn rate in North America is around 45 per cent, this means that each person moves on average once every two years. Many office workers move more frequently. However, some slight tendency to personalize one’s own space is present even in today’s fast-changing business environment. In seven office buildings occupied by a major insurance company, over thirty per cent of respondents had more than ten personal objects in their workstations.37 Only 3 per cent of the respondents had no personal objects at all. The number of personal objects increased with number of years in the company, but was not related to type of work, or to number of hours working inside individual workstations. Men and women were equally likely to personalize their workstations, but women displayed more objects. The choice of personal objects was quite conservative, with most people opting for photographs, plants, coffee cups, posters, prizes or trophies, toys and small furniture items. In addition, people also kept assorted items such as novels, gym or sports equipment, radios or CD players, candles, heaters and fans. The study results found a link between people’s level of comfort at work and the number of personal objects they displayed, so employee comfort seems to be connected to personalization. But whether people personalize to feel more comfortable, or feeling comfortable causes them to personalize, we do not yet know. 68

3.4 Workspace personalization

122 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 522 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 302 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40 1 2

Territoriality examined

The presence of personal objects and decorations in ‘cubes’ is more than simple self-expression; it is also a mechanism for regulating interpersonal distance. People making contact for business reasons can feel uncomfortable in a highly personalized environment and keep their distance or arrange meetings elsewhere. A high degree of personalization is a means of appropriating territory and discouraging intrusion, as well as subtly challenging the status quo. Many of the cartoons about ‘cubicleland’ make their jokes around the similarity and standardization of space and the implication that employees are equally standardized and interchangeable (see Figure 1.1 for examples). Territorial needs are more effectively managed without policies that prevent or forbid personal displays, which negatively affect employees’ sense of belonging. The fact that over time almost any workspace becomes personalized, often creating an untidy but nonetheless more human effect, suggests that the human spirit feels in some way inspired to overcome the tiresome sameness of its surroundings by any means possible. The possibility of personalizing space is also a factor in users’ sense of control – one of the three fundamental categories of unexamined assumptions on which the sociospatial contract is based – because control is a mechanism of territorial defense. For example, open workstations feel enclosed if they are surrounded by high file cabinets, bookshelves and plants. In some offices, ‘Do Not Disturb’ signs hang on cubicle corners or doors. An office supplies company sells three little colored shapes that, when placed on top of the cubicle partition, indicate whether outsiders may approach or not. A green pyramid for ‘Available’, a yellow sphere for ‘Working, but you can talk to me’, and a red cube for ‘Concentrating, please do not disturb’.38 Territoriality means occupants can establish boundaries, psychological and otherwise, between the self and others.39 An inability to control territorial boundaries has adverse effects on behavior at work. For example, people who feel over-stimulated, or overwhelmed with work, and have a need to retreat to rest or concentrate use their territory for this purpose. Those who seek social contact or work collaboration invite people into their territory or step out of it to communicate with others. Insufficient or inadequate territorial boundaries therefore reduce the ability to manage one’s degree of contact and interaction with others – an exhausting and counterproductive experience leading to absenteeism and eventually burnout. The complexity of the relationship between individual control and managing the demands of work is more fully explored in Chapter 5. Some work environments provide symbols of territorial control. Doors on offices are obviously a powerful symbol of control. Employees in open workstations recognize this and often aspire to having their own door if they see that others have them. In cases like the Amoco workspace transformation described in Chapter 2, workers unhappy with their partitioned 70

Territoriality examined

122

workstations were provided with symbolic ‘doors’ in the form of moveable

2

lightweight screens that could be placed in front of cubicle openings.40 Some

3

workstation furniture even includes ‘doors’, that is, portable elements that

4

close off the interior of the workstation. Nameplates are a poor second to

5

having a door. Proximity to a window or another determining physical feature

6

can help define boundaries, which may explain why a perimeter location is

7

so important to people, over and above their desire for daylight. The way

8

offices are furnished also strengthens or weakens control. Some workstations

9

are manufactured with individual control switches for heating, lighting, venti-

10

lation and even background sound to mask noise. Companies using such tech-

1

nology believe that increasing environmental control – workspace with more

2

‘degrees of freedom’ for the user – makes office workers more effective

3

and more satisfied.41

4

And what of control in non-territorial work environments? In

522

hoteling offices, employees usually have access to a reservations system;

6

in hot desking situations, they choose where they will sit on a first-come, first-

7

served basis. Some companies’ experience indicates that this kind of random

8

allocation of space frustrates employees, leading to extreme behaviors such

9

as space hogging (spreading personal items around to claim a room or work-

20

space), coming in early to get the same spot, or simply not coming to work

1

at all and working at home. People lose time trying to find co-workers sitting

2

at different desks each day. However, a group of engineers were very com-

3

fortable with non-territorial individual workspace, in large part because their

4

group territory was confirmed and intact.42 Using boundaries and symbols

5

of group control to define a team’s territory allows non-territorial policies to

6

remain operative inside the fixed group territory. In this way, group members

7

still control territory by regulating behavior that goes on in it, inviting people

8

in or asking them to leave, decorating it, and placing symbols of occupancy in

9

strategic places to be seen and respected by non-group members.

302

The examples in Chapter 2 demonstrated that empowerment

1

through participation in workspace decision-making is an important mechan-

2

ism of territorial control. Design professionals open to experimenting with user

3

participation in design can become discouraged by limited budgets or auto-

4

cratic decision-making in the client organization. Depending on the culture

5

and values of the organization, some employers insist on keeping employees

6

out of the decision-making process, either making decisions by themselves

7

or assigning the work to a committee. However, participation in workspace

8

decision-making provides a greater sense of control for users than simply

9

personalizing what they are given. Chapter 6 develops a constructive rationale

40

and process for empowering users to have a say in workspace design and

1

operation. Offering employees a choice between a penholder and a metal

2

paper support for their new cubicle is a poor substitute for environmental 71

Territoriality examined

empowerment. Although the link with workspace satisfaction is not proven, there is a clear connection between being able to make environmental choices and feelings of control over territory. Companies willing to experiment with giving occupants some say in workspace design have found that people expand their territory to take responsibility for communal and even public space, develop more attachment and are more psychologically comfortable at work.43 To sum up, behavioral forms of territoriality at work focus on defending against intrusions and distractions. Behavioral repertoires include marking boundaries, both physically and mentally, decorating and personalizing and having some degree of control – not only over contact with other people, but also over the type of workspace one occupies. This control can be mechanical, in the sense of switching environmental elements on or off (light, heat, sound-masking) or having a door or operable window, or it can be procedural, in the sense of participating in design decision-making. Managers who want to ensure that employees remain comfortable, healthy and productive at work need to guarantee that their employees have some degree of territorial control.

Managing territoriality In order to increase our understanding of the mechanisms that affect negotiating the terms of the sociospatial contract in organizations, we have analyzed human territoriality at work. Much information is available on the causes of territoriality, and on why, where and when people act territorially, all of which is easily applied to a better understanding of what exactly territoriality is in the office, who is territorial, and under what conditions. Over the time this book was being written, more than three hundred people randomly selected from a variety of work backgrounds filled in the Territoriality Questionnaire in Figure 3.5. Forty-two per cent of respondents are ‘at a primitive stage of evolution’ but have made some progress. Almost as many, thirty-one per cent, are making headway towards becoming team members. Seventeen per cent are liberated enough to share their space; and only ten per cent (thankfully) are territory hogs. Are these results representative of the current state of our culture’s work environments? Did people tell the truth about their little tricks and habits for hogging space? You can take the test and see for yourself. We are all territorial animals. As work becomes more important in people’s lives, the workplace is an increasingly important territory. Typically, standardized ways of designing and planning offices do not encourage exploration of how best to respond to human territorial needs. They simply equate the need for privacy with physical enclosure, the need for status with more 72

Territoriality examined

122

space, the need for personalization with a few posters and photographs and

2

the need to have roots with file storage space. The imperatives of modern

3

office planning favor an approach that minimizes the use people can make of

4

their space for their own purposes. Ideally, workspace design should focus

5

on the requirements of the task and on the effective performance of work.

6

How should decision-makers address issues of status, identity, privacy and

7

defense against intrusion when making practical decisions about square

8

footage, moves and the price of new furniture? Managers need to know which

9

features of the physical as well as the social environment facilitate territorial

10

formation as a positive force in the organization. Although territoriality is posi-

1

tively linked to a sense of identity and place in the organization, when territory

2

is defended it can have negative repercussions in situations of change.

3

Territoriality occurs naturally in the workplace, so managers have an interest

4

in understanding it, observing it, and intervening appropriately and construc-

522

tively to resolve situations in which territorial needs are violated.

6

Territoriality is deeply linked to the notion of home. Planners and

7

social theorists writing in the last century were almost unanimous in

8

connecting the notion of home with a sense of belonging to the community.

9

As early as 1948, a sociologist described neighborhood as a ‘territorial group,

20

the members of which meet on common ground within their own area for

1

primary social contacts’.44 Many social theorists of the period assumed that if

2

people were put in the same place and shared the same amenities, they would

3

develop ‘locality consciousness’: they would form a community. The territor-

4

ial contiguity argument asserts that geographical proximity is a powerful force

5

for community development and social solidarity. In business today, the

6

preferred term is ‘co-location’, and it is often invoked to counter traditional

7

organizational (and geographical) silos. The counter-argument that sparked the

8

debate questions whether physical environment alone can have such deter-

9

mining effects on behavior: sharing a place may not be a sufficient condi-

302

tion for the development of a sense of community, or team. The question

1

emerging from the debate is the following: is territoriality a social need that

2

develops in an individual as a result of membership in a social group and of

3

having a role in that social group? Or is territoriality a basic need for ‘place’

4

that is expressed through social roles and behavior? As some companies

5

have discovered, co-locating individuals and teams at work is not sufficient

6

to ensure that they ‘jell’. The circumstances in which co-located workers

7

become territorial are a function of social, cultural and management factors,

8

as well as of their physical environment. Moreover, territoriality is not uniquely

9

a prerogative of the individual worker but is also a strong force in teamwork

40

and group membership. It is this aspect of territoriality that may be most

1

useful to organizations, as work becomes more cooperative and project-

2

based. A strong and appropriate sense of group territory can compensate for 73

TERRITORIALITY QUESTIONNAIRE

1. Do you have your name on your door or cubicle?

______

2. How many personal photographs do you have inside your workspace?

______

Have you decorated your room or cubicle with: 3. One or more pictorial calendars

______

4. One or more posters

______

5. One or more works of art (painting, sculpture)

______

6. One or more humorous or wise sayings

______

7. Other ________________________________

______

8. How many people can you see from your desk, when you’re sitting down?

______

9. Have you acquired furniture other than standard issue for your room or cubicle, for example, purloined conference room chairs, colored carpet or rug, incandescent desk lamp, coffee-table from home, antique, etc.? 10. Have you ever tried to push out the partitions around your desk (be honest)?

______ ______

11. If you have fixed walls, have you placed furniture or carried out other actions to lay claim to the space in front of your door?

______

12. In your company, do people get more space in their offices or cubicles as they advance higher up in the company?

______

13. Do you belong to a ‘team’ where the ‘team leader’ has his/her own private office? ______ 14. Have you unofficially taken over more filing space than you legitimately have a right to? Or added some more file cabinets to your workspace?

______

15. Is your name indelibly marked on your stapler, scissors, eraser, chair and desk lamp?

______

16. Are you satisfied with the height of your cubicle partitions?

______

17. If you have a private office, are you satisfied with its acoustic privacy?

______

18. When you have to sit down with someone in the office, do you try to get them into your office or cubicle or do you agree to go work in theirs?

______

19. Do you clean the dust, coffee-cup rings and used staples off your desk top, or do you expect the cleaners to do it?

74

______

122

SCORING

2 3 4 1. 2. 3–7.

5 6 7 8

8.

9 10

9.

1 10.

2 3

11. 12.

4 522 6

13. 14.

7 8 9

15.

20 1

16.

2 17. 18.

3 4 5 6

19.

7 8

Score 1 for yes, 0 for no Score 1 for each photograph Score 1 for each category (i.e. 1 for pictorial calendars, even if you have 4) and 0 if you have none in this category Score 2 for 0 people, 1 for 1–4 people, and 0 for more than 4 people. Score 1 for each item, i.e. 2 if you have two conference room chairs, 2 if the antique is quite large, etc. Score 2 if you have done it, 1 if you’ve thought about it, and 0 if you’re innocent Score as for Q.10 Score 2 if they do and 0 if they do not, 1 if somewhere in-between Score as for Q.12 Score 1 for each additional filing drawer, including those in your recently-added filing cabinet; score 0 if you have not done this Score 1 for each item in your workspace that is marked with your name Score 2 if you are absolutely not satisfied, 1 if you are vaguely dissatisfied, and 0 if you are satisfied (you’re probably lying) Score as for Q.16 Score 0 if you work in a meeting room or group workspace, 1 if you go to another’s cube and 2 if you insist on staying in your own Score 2 if you clean up your desk, 1 if you have been known to clean up your desk, and 0 if you expect the cleaners to do it (you’re probably not lying!)

9 302 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40 1 2

3.5 How territorial are you at work?

TOTALS: 37–49 You are a territory hog and an individualist – you belong in Noah’s Ark. You will not go far on a team but you may go far up in the corporation 25–36 You are still at a primitive stage of evolution, but you have made some progress. Your ego has made some concessions to the imperatives of teamspace 13–24 You can be proud of yourself that you are making headway towards overcoming your primitive urges towards individuality and becoming a true team member 0–12 Congratulations – you have overcome the primitive urgings of Territorial Man and you are ‘liberated’ enough to share your space.

75

Territoriality examined

shrinking individual territories, thereby rationalizing efficiency-oriented workspace planning decisions while at the same time respecting the workplace needs of team identity. So while employees need a place in the organization that is recognized, valued and over which they have some control, these criteria are only partly a function of physical characteristics. One’s place at work is a home base rather than home. The office is where we access the tools and people we need to get our work done; we go home after work, to do (one hopes) non-work things. Increasingly the boundaries between work and home are crumbling: people work at home as well as in other places, people work outside the 9 to 5 limits, on weekends and at night. But this does not mean that home should be a place to work, or that the office should resemble a home. It does mean that the places where we work are our territories and we will develop this relationship to them in all but the most adverse circumstances. And it does mean that workspace, like work, can no longer be defined by the limits on the place and time in which one earns a living. If territoriality is one unexamined assumption underpinning the sociospatial contract, the others are job performance and control. The places where work is performed deserve attention, both as territory that links people to the organization and requires them to perform for it, and as a tool for work, affecting how they perform and therefore productivity. In this chapter, we have examined territoriality from all sides. In the next chapter, we look at productivity, at workspace as a tool to enhance task performance. A functional and comfortable environment can go a long way towards positive territoriality and optimizing performance at work. In order for people to be effective in their workplace, they need more than territory, privacy, status and control. They need light, a comfortable acoustic environment, appropriate indoor temperatures, clean air and good ventilation and ergonomic furniture suited to their tasks. Territory is necessary for people to feel at home at work. Environmental conditions are necessary to help people get work done.

Notes 1 Gold, J. R. (1982) ‘Territoriality and human spatial behavior’, Progress in Human Geography 6, 44–67. 2 Low, A. (1976) Zen and Creative Management, Boston, MA: C. E. Tuttle Company. 3 Brown, B. (1987) ‘Territoriality’ in D. Stokols and I. Altman, (eds) Handbook of Environmental Psychology, Chapter 13, New York: John Wiley and Sons. 4 Vischer, J. C. (1974) ‘Territoriality and its Relevance to Neighbourhood Design’, Journal of Architectural Research, January, 39–44. 5 Altman, I. (1975) The Environment and Social Behavior: Privacy, Personal Space, Territory and Crowding, Monterey, CA: Brooks-Cole. 76

Territoriality examined

122 2 3 4

6 Studies have shown that residents develop emotional attachments to their ‘own’ chairs and the placement of their chairs, to the surprise of staff who comment on the ‘fuss and bother there was in some cases, even over waste paper baskets’. Lipman, A. (1968) ‘Behavior in the sitting-rooms of four residential homes for old people’, British Journal of Gerontology 5(2), 265.

5

7 Low, A. (1976) op. cit., pp. 126–128.

6

8 Brown, B. (1987) op. cit., p. 513.

7 8 9

9 Ibid, p. 522. 10 Altman, I. (1968) ‘Territorial Behavior In Humans: an Analysis of the Concept’. Paper presented at Conference on explorations of spatial/behavioral relationships as related to older people, Ann Arbor, MI: Institute of Gerontology, University of Michigan.

10

11 Ibid.

1

12 Jacobs, J. (1968) The Death and Life of Great American Cities, New York: Random House.

2

13 Lee, T. (1964) ‘Urban Neighbourhood as a Sociospatial Schema’, Human Relations 21(3),

3 4

241–267. 14 In a recent study of office workers in Japan, Kato et al. classify workers in one office into the three categories of ‘sitter’, ‘walker’ and ‘runner’ according to their patterns of movement

522

and the relationship between these and their tasks at work.See Kato, A., Le Roux, P. C. and

6

Tsunekawa, K. (2004) ‘Building Evaluation in Japan’in W. F. E. Preiser and J. C. Vischer (eds)

7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5

Assessing Building Performance, Chapter 14, Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann. 15 Homans, G. C. and Merton, R. K. (1961) Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms, New York: Harcourt, Brace and World. 16 Ardrey, R. (1968) The Territorial Imperative: a personal inquiry into the animal origins of property and nations, New York: Athanaeum. 17 Eagle, N. and Pentland, A. (2003) ‘Social Network Computing’. Paper submitted to Fifth International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp), Seattle, WA., October. 18 Lyman, S. M. and Scott, M. B. (1967) ‘Territoriality, a Neglected Sociological Dimension’, Social Problems 15(2), 236–249. 19 Rosengren, W. R. and Devault, S. (1963) ‘The Sociology of Time and Space in an Obstetrical Hospital’, in E. Friedson, ed. The Hospital In Modern Society, Glencoe,Il: The Free Press.

6

20 See, for example, Steele, F. (1973) Physical Settings and Organizational Development,

7

Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley; and, for a discussion of the Sears-Roebuck corporate

8 9 302

headquarters, see Vickers, M. (1999) ‘No More Ivory Towers’, Today’s Facility Manager, September, 1. 21 Kao, J.(1996) Jamming: The Art and Discipline of Business Creativity, New York: HarperBusiness.Also, getting the key to the executive washroom became a byword for

1

climbing the corporate ladder as a result of the 1957 movie Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?

2

22 Petzinger, T. (1997) ‘Cisco’s Staff Conquers Separation Anxieties After Losing Desks’,

3 4 5 6

The Wall Street Journal, Marketplace Section, 21 February, 1997, p. B1. 23 Adams, S. (1953) ‘Status congruency as a variable in small group performance’, Social Forces 32(1), 16–22. 24 The basis for theories of personal space and the social functions of distance between interacting people is found in the work of E. T. Hall, namely, The Silent Language, New York:

7

Doubleday (1959) and The Hidden Dimension, New York: Anchor Books (1966) – both now

8

considered classics in the field.

9 40 1 2

25 Moles, A. A. and Rohmer, E. (1998) La psychosociologie de l’espace, V.Schwach ed. Paris: Éditions L’Harmattan. 26 Davis, G. and Altman, I. (1976) ‘Territories at the Workplace: Theory and Design Guidelines’, Man-Environment Systems 6(1), 46–53. 27 Altman, I. (1975) op. cit. 77

Territoriality examined

28 This argument is cogently presented in Sundstrom, E. et al. (1982) ‘Physical Enclosure, Type of Job, and Privacy In the Office’, Environment and Behavior 14(5), 543–559; Hedge, A. (1987) ‘Privacy Behavior in Open-Plan Office Design’, in J.Wineman (ed.) The Behavioral Basis of Office Design, New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold; Brill, M., Margulis, S. and Konar, E. (1985) Using Office Design to Increase Productivity (2 vols.), Buffalo, New York: BOSTI & Westinghouse Furniture Systems Inc.; and Brill, M. and Weideman, S. (2001) Disproving Widespread Myths About Workplace Design, Jasper, IN: Kimball International. 29 See Kupritz, V. W. (1998) ‘Privacy In the Workplace: the Impact of Building Design’, Journal of Environmental Psychology 18, 341–356; and Windsor, A. (2004) ‘User Satisfaction Surveys in Israel’, in W. F. E. Preiser and J. C. Vischer (eds) Assessing Building Performance, Chapter 13; Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann; and Wollman, N., Kelly, B. and Bordens, K. (1994) ‘Environmental and intrapersonal predictors of reactions to potential territorial intrusions in the workplace’, Environment and Behavior 26(2), 179–194. 30 Cooper, M. C. and Francis, C. (1998) People Places: design guidelines for urban open space, 2nd edn. New York: John Wiley and Sons. 31 Stea, D. (1970) ‘Home Range and Use of Space’, in L. Pastalan and D. H. Carson (eds) Spatial Relationships in Older People, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan. 32 Fischer, G.-N. (1983) Le travail et son espace, Paris: Dunod. 33 Sundstrom, E. and Sundstrom, M. G. (1986) Work Places: the psychology of the physical environment in offices and factories, New York: Cambridge University Press. 34 Sommer, R. (1969) Personal Space: the Behavioral Basis of Design, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. 35 See Wells, M. M. (2000) ‘Office Clutter or Meaningful Personal Displays: the Role of Office Personalization in Employee and Organizational Well-Being’, Journal of Environmental Psychology 20, 239–255. 36 Sommer, R. (1974) Tight Spaces: Hard Architecture and How to Humanize It, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. 37 Vischer, J. C. (2002) ‘Users’ Sense of Territory, Ownership and Psychological Comfort in a Standardized Office Environment, A Preliminary Look’, in Hecht, P. (ed.) Proceedings, EDRA33 Community: Evolution or Revolution May 22–26, Philadelphia, PA. p. 145. 38 ‘Protoblocs’ designed by Ai Architects and sold by Protocol Office Products. 39 Altman, I. (1975) op. cit. 40 Windsor, A. (2004) op. cit. 41 Wyon, D. (2000) ‘Individual Control at Each Workplace: the Means and the Potential Benefits’ in D. Clements-Croome (ed.) Creating the Productive Workplace, Chapter 12; London: E & FN Spon. 42 Sundstrom, E. and Sundstrom, M. G. op. cit., p. 227. 43 See, for example, Becker, F. (1990) The Total Workplace: Facilities Management and the Elastic Organization, New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold; and Vischer, J. C. and Kotarba, R. (1999) ‘Productivity in an Evolving Workplace’. Paper presented at FM99 Conference, MIT, Cambridge, MA. 44 Glass, R. (ed.) (1948). The Social Background of a Plan: a Study of Middlesbrough, International Library of Sociology and Social Reconstruction, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

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Chapter 4

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2

Comfort and productivity Space as a tool for work

3 4 522 6 7 8 9 20

The need for territory and behaviors associated with privacy, status and control

1

are basic to people’s psychological comfort at work. But is territoriality related

2

to productivity, and if so in what ways? How important is psychological

3

comfort? If territorial problems generate insecurity and anxiety, do these in

4

turn undermine job performance? Can the costs of inferior job performance

5

be assessed? How does the work environment influence psychological

6

comfort and job performance? In finding answers to these questions, work-

7

space decisions can be based on a better understanding of the complex

8

relationship between occupant and workspace.

9

The three key concepts underpinning the sociospatial contract are

302

territory, job performance and environmental control, each of which influences

1

and is influenced by the organization–accommodation (O–A) relationship.

2

In this chapter, job performance is examined more closely. How do office

3

environmental conditions affect the performance of work? In acknowledging

4

the influence of territoriality, we recognize that occupants’ behavior is more

5

than a simple reaction to measurable physical environmental conditions:

6

people see, hear and feel their environment differently depending on psycho-

7

logical processes (what’s going on inside their heads, like their expectations

8

and memories) and social influences (connection with co-workers, longevity

9

in the job, familiarity) as well as on physical stimuli. Through close and system-

40

atic observation and questioning, it is possible to disaggregate users’ environ-

1

mental impressions for closer analysis and to attribute users’ behavior,

2

variously, to psychological, social and physical causes. The objective is 79

Comfort and productivity

to measure the influence of psychological comfort on productivity and to determine how territoriality interacts with features of the physical environment (colors, noise, furniture, air quality) to influence users’ performance. To do this, we must first distinguish between psychological comfort and more physically determined comfort, such as warm enough or cool enough, sound levels and the right lighting. To make accommodation decisions that add value, facilitate task performance – or at the very least, do not slow people down – it is necessary to understand how to measure environmental comfort. The chapter begins with a close examination of the two key terms: comfort and productivity. First, we look at ways of analysing and defining worker productivity in order to relate job performance to the design of the work environment. Then by breaking the concept of environmental comfort down into ways in which people’s behavior is affected by their physical environment at work, we can draw concrete conclusions about the complex relationship between comfort and performance: conclusions on which workspace decisions can be based. This chapter summarizes the ways in which different environmental conditions affect user comfort and behavior so that decision-makers understand the effects of workspace decisions on employees.

Comfort and productivity Productivity is a broadly-defined general term applied at various levels of economic analysis. It ranges from population-wide measures of labor force performance, such as gross domestic product (GDP), to profit and loss statements and shareholder profits of individual corporations, down to the scale of the individual worker or machine, such as producing more widgets or reducing the time for widget production. Workspace design has a demonstrable effect on the performance of teams, workgroups and individual workers, and thereby on an organization’s productivity. In order to measure organizational, team and individual productivity in terms of the effects of workspace on users, using the term ‘performance’ provides us with the key. Whether at the organizational, team or individual level, it is never easy to define measures of performance. An early study linked environmental design to worker productivity in a systematic way by surveying a large number of white-collar workers before and after they moved into a new building.1 Among the many conclusions of this research, the authors offered an economic formula for calculating ‘increased return on investment’ in workers as a function of giving them workspace conducive to their tasks. A followup study by the same authors analyzed the results of 13 more office worker surveys carried out since the first study. They concluded that the 80

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122

trend toward more open work environments had a measurably adverse effect

2

on office workers’ performance, such that an investment in individual private

3

enclosed offices could be shown to pay off in terms of increasing workers’

4

productivity.2 In the late 1980s, a symposium on the contribution of environ-

5

mental design to office worker productivity indicated the considerable

6

complexity of the question and the wide range of ways of responding to it.3

7

Numerous publications since have drawn attention to the large number of

8

measurable ways in which office-space planning can improve the organiza-

9

tion’s bottom line and have long-term positive effects on productivity.4

10

Enclosing individual workspace is only one variable among many affecting the

1

performance of work. Indoor air quality and ventilation have been shown to

2

have effects, as well as various types and levels of lighting. Style and layout

3

of office furniture, workstation density, personalizing workspace and various

4

types and levels of office noise have all been shown to affect productivity.5

522

However, the productivity being measured in these studies is mostly in the

6

form of occupants’ self-reported estimate of their own productivity.

7

Knowing the range and complexity of influences on the perform-

8

ance of work, users’ self-reports tend to be more of an indicator than a

9

measure of environmental effects. How can productivity be defined more

20

precisely, to make sense in environmental terms? Two basic categories

1

of productivity/performance affected by workspace are Individual Task

2

Performance (ITP), and Collaborative and Team Work (CTW).6 Environmental

3

conditions such as lighting, which can affect the speed and accuracy with

4

which individuals perform certain tasks, affect ITP. The effectiveness of a

5

team, however, depends on factors such as speed of access to shared

6

information, ease and simplicity of team member contact, transparent deci-

7

sion-making, ongoing communication, exchanging the right information at

8

the right time with the right people and making good quality decisions. Thus

9

CTW depends more on office layout and workstation configuration, strategic

302

placement of team resources, such as files and technology, choice of

1

easily accessible places to perform collaborative work and supportive

2

work processes.7

3

Both ITP and CTW can be assessed according to positive and

4

negative criteria. Positive measures of performance include faster, more

5

accurate output, faster and more effective employee recruitment and reten-

6

tion, better quality service to clients, faster and better quality decisions.

7

Negative measures include employee absenteeism and illness, staff turn-

8

over, product returns or service complaints and error and customer complaint

9

rates. However, accurately measuring these outputs is complex and time-

40

consuming, and in many studies self-reports or workers’ own estimates of

1

their productivity provide the only independent variable. The question remains,

2

can the effects of the environment on productivity be measured in a way 81

Comfort and productivity

that proves once and for all that good workspace design helps people work better? Framing the question in this way presumes a linear and deterministic connection between the built environment and how people behave. The argument implies that workspace, if designed correctly, will ‘cause’ people to meet certain behavioral expectations, for example, to work faster and better. Most business owners, managers and design professionals recognize that any attempt to make direct links between broad-ranging productivity goals and the details of lighting design, partition height, window proximity and amount of parking are at best, partial and incomplete, and at worst, fraudulent. On the other hand, by asking this question, decision-makers are reaching for some kind of rational basis for making cost-effective decisions about workspace. For example, a new headquarters is being designed for a large financial services corporation. As in any multistorey building, the height between floors is a standard 13 feet, allowing for about three feet above the ceiling for ducts and wiring and ten feet between ceiling and floor. No-one questioned this formula for the new building (it allowed them to put in the raised floors they wanted to invest in) until someone raised the possibility of indirect lighting. Although fixtures that reflect light up on to the ceiling are kinder to people’s eyes when they are working on computers, they require a higher ceiling and therefore add to the cost of construction by increasing the building’s overall height. The client has to make this decision long before any serious thought is given to the design of the office interiors. What kind of O–A relationship is envisioned? How can the client determine if the added value of indirect lighting for employees is ‘worth’ the increased project cost? The value of indirect lighting needs to be compared to the value of other types of lighting. Even if research shows that people systematically find indirect lighting with task lamps the most comfortable alternative for computer screen-based work, this information does not offer a bottom-line pay-off from putting in indirect lighting – such as the pay-off of a raised floor by reducing cable and wiring costs – a pay-off that shows up tangibly in better work, lower costs, reduced turnover, or some other metric. Most decisions about building features are based on a simplified form of value engineering, where first-time cost is assessed against the time needed for a return on investment. For example, energy-saving heat pumps cost more than conventional heating/cooling technology, and a calculable payback in lowered energy costs ‘pays for’ the added up-front investment after three years. The benefits of costly expenditures on computer system upgrades are often in negative terms: not to upgrade means an older technology, slower work processes and less capacity, all of which eventually translate into losing out to competitors. In these situations and others like them, the final decision is based on a business case. It is more difficult to apply business case analysis to the relationship between workspace and productivity, 82

Comfort and productivity

122

owing to the complex effects of environmental factors on how well a person

2

performs at work. The remainder of this chapter examines this complexity

3

closely, and identifies some of the key pieces of information we can apply to

4

estimating the value or worth of environmental decisions in terms of how they

5

affect users. It explains the physical, psychological and functional dimensions

6

of how comfort affects productivity at three levels:

7 8

1

9

Environment: Which environmental factors contribute to the performance of work?

10

2

Value: How much value should be attached to this information?

1

3

Knowledge: How can this knowledge be used to invest in work-

2

space improvement?

3 4 522

Environmental comfort at work

6 7

Comfort is a concept applied increasingly to users’ experiences in buildings.

8

It is not simply a way of denoting snoozing in an armchair with your feet up

9

on the table and a book lying unread in your lap! Historically, it is a conceptual

20

approach to the different ways in which humans in various climates and

1

cultures have controlled, adapted and managed their environment in order to

2

ensure well-being. It has a contemporary meaning for engineers designing

3

building systems to meet comfort standards that have been specified as a

4

result of extensive research on human perceptions and tolerance limits. The

5

obverse of comfort is stress: situations of discomfort over time generate

6

physical and/or mental strain, and sustained stress (strain) is a major cause

7

of illness.8

8

Environmental comfort incorporates the psychological comfort of

9

territoriality: psychological comfort depends on owning, controlling and having

302

responsibility for territory. Being deprived of territory is stressful, leading to

1

frustration, low morale and sometimes aggression in the form of resistance

2

to change. Although environmental factors also affect psychological comfort,

3

current knowledge is limited by a research focus on user satisfaction,

4

assuming that people who are satisfied will perform better work than people

5

who are not. However, this is not a powerful metric when managers are faced

6

with cost-related decisions about workspace and, moreover, industrial

7

psychology research indicates that it is not true.9

8

Environmental comfort also incorporates physical comfort. Physical

9

comfort is typically provided through codes, standards and norms for build-

40

ing safety and health: enough light, enough air, not too hot or too cold and

1

safe noise levels that do not cause deafness. Physical comfort also includes

2

building convenience meaning transportation access, parking, safe and 83

Comfort and productivity

Physical comfort

+

Functional comfort

+

Psychological comfort

=

effective elevator service, an adequate number of clean and functioning toilets and effective maintenance and repair services.10 Without physical comfort, a building is uninhabitable: that is to say, if occupants’ health or safety and basic convenience is in question, then other aspects of environmental comfort are of little consequence. Finally, environmental comfort includes functional comfort, linking the physical qualities of the environment with the requirements of users’ tasks. A functionally comfortable workspace is a tool for work: not just lighting, but the right lighting for the task, not just ventilation, but clean conditioned air that is free of contaminants, not just heating, but thermal comfort. Functional comfort involves complex elements of human experience. There are fewer standards and practices to ensure functional comfort than there are for physical comfort, but it is clear that the more the environment supports people’s tasks, the more effectively they work. The diagram in Figure 4.1 illustrates how these three levels of environmental comfort work together, and how workspace characteristics and worker performance influence each other. Information presented later in this chapter demonstrates that decisions favoring one category of comfort – say, physical comfort – at the expense of another (functional or psychological comfort) are unlikely to enhance worker morale and performance or to add value to the organization.

Making evidence-based environmental decisions This tripartite framework can be applied to decisions about workspace in the following way. Investments in improving physical comfort are fully worth making, as an unsafe or unsanitary building will not be occupied for very long and even the threat of health problems can dramatically lower a building’s value in the marketplace. The cost of not investing in users’ physical comfort in a building is twofold: people cannot or will not perform their work there, at least, not well and, the less habitable the building, the lower its value in the marketplace. But what about functional comfort? Once health and security are taken care of, how much should be invested in workspace quality? Is there an advantage to creating user-oriented work environments that support the 84

Positive effect on morale and performance

4.1 How environmental comfort works

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122

performance of work, or are all office designs basically the same? Because

2

functional comfort addresses worker performance and effectiveness in the

3

workplace, it is more tangible than psychological comfort and lends itself

4

to measurement.11 Measuring functional comfort enables each situation to

5

be evaluated and each decision to invest (pay more) or not to invest to be

6

based on quantifiable data rather than on arbitrary, non-rational or situational

7

influences.

8

The habitability pyramid illustrated in Figure 4.2 illustrates how

9

investment decisions regarding workspace quality correspond to different

10

levels of environmental comfort, and thus to differential effects on task

1

performance. As stated above, a basic level of habitability indicates minimum

2

standards that all office buildings should meet: cleanliness, safety, accessibil-

3

ity and convenience. This is called the ‘habitability threshold’; below this

4

threshold there is discomfort, creating uninhabitability. Above the threshold,

522

different decisions about workspace comfort have different value. Physical

6

comfort decisions are based on the imperatives of building codes and

7

safety standards, with some discretionary decision-making in their interpre-

8

tation. Functional comfort decisions are based on measuring users’ perform-

9

ance in terms of key environmental conditions and using this feedback to

20

decide which are most important and likely to have the greatest effect on

1 2 3

4.2 The habitability pyramid

task performance. The value of psychological comfort decisions is a function of the process used to make decisions and the degree of environmental control over decision-making (empowerment) accorded to users. Interestingly,

4 5

Occupant satisfaction and well-being

6 7

Investment decisions

8 9

Psychological comfort

Functional comfort

Habitability threshold

Physical comfort

‘Value’ added through process

‘Value’ calculated through measurement

‘Value’ based on necessity

Discomfort

85

Comfort and productivity

user control is a functional comfort issue when it affects the performance of tasks and a psychological comfort issue in the context of user participation in decision-making. This will be discussed in detail in later chapters. The habitability pyramid illustrates how the three definitions of human comfort at work are not mutually exclusive or even truly separate, but merge together as a continuum, from the basic needs of physical comfort, through the task-related needs of functional comfort, to the emotional needs of psychological comfort. Decisions companies make about building design, furnishings and operations, in situations for example where they decide to reduce office size and increase density, are based on assumptions about physical, functional and psychological comfort and the relative value of these environmental features. These assumptions are rarely articulated and almost never discussed. The habitability pyramid provides a useful framework for analyzing the relative value of investing in environmental comfort. For example, better quality building systems that allow user control may improve functional and psychological comfort, but translating that comfort increase into a calculation of its value to the organization is rarely approached systematically. It is in this gray area of defining value, that falls somewhere between basic, measurable physical comfort standards and the pay-off from improved environmental quality, that the measurement system described next can help.

Measuring environmental comfort Functional comfort is the area of environmental comfort that links features of workspace with the ease with which individuals can perform their tasks, such as reading documents, working on computer screens, meeting co-workers, finding information, talking on the telephone and using equipment. This component of comfort is most obviously linked with job performance. However, measuring functional comfort means assessing aspects of physical and psychological comfort as well – physical comfort where there are issues of health and safety, and psychological comfort where environmental conditions have psychological effects. For example, people may be physically comfortable in an easy chair, but they are functionally comfortable in a desk chair on five wheels, with an ergonomic back and armrests. They will be psychologically comfortable if they have a say in choosing the chair, and if they can easily adjust the chair. Functional comfort is improved by chair adjustment as well. Similarly, workers may be physically comfortable with a whole range of lighting solutions, depending on where they are and what they are doing. They are functionally comfortable when they have overhead fixtures that do not reflect in their computer screens and a task light to enable them to read 86

Comfort and productivity

122

documents. Their psychological comfort may be increased if they asked for

2

and received a switch or a dimmer with which to turn lights on and off and

3

control light levels.

4

As demonstrated by the habitability pyramid, the greater the invest-

5

ment in the quality of the interior environment for workers, the more upwards

6

pressure is exerted – that is, towards a better O–A relationship (see Table 2.1)

7

as well as towards improved environmental comfort. To judge the value of an

8

investment in workspace, decision-makers need to locate each environmental

9

feature – such as indirect lighting – on the scale, and to consider under what

10

conditions it might slide up the scale from the physical comfort category to

1

become a condition of functional comfort, or even part of the psychological

2

peak of the pyramid. Understanding more about how people experience their

3

environment helps managers to avoid spending money on the wrong things.

4

Applying data generated from measuring user perceptions of key aspects

522

of the work environment to workspace decision-making enables the value

6

of each feature to be assessed. Beginning with detailed surveys of office

7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 302 1

building occupants in the 1980s, feedback has accumulated on how people perceive and judge seven ambient environmental conditions such as lighting and ventilation and how these experiences affect their work. Researchers and facilities managers in a number of countries, in addition to the US and Canada, have used this approach to getting building feedback from users, some of whom have been able to translate the results into follow-up action and solving problems.12 According to this system, the basic dimensions of environmental comfort – that is, how building users actually experience and evaluate environmental effects on job performance – are air quality, thermal comfort, spatial and workstation comfort, privacy, lighting and daylighting comfort and acoustic comfort (office noise and building noise). These dimensions have emerged from detailed analyses of how users perceive and judge the conditions within which they work. Workstation or furniture comfort emerges as a subcategory

2

of spatial comfort and represents a distinct cluster of user judgements.

3

Another spatial comfort subcategory is collaborative workspace. Two sub-

4

categories of lighting comfort are daylighting and visual comfort. In some

5

buildings, office noise and building noise control are distinct, and in some

6

they collapse into acoustic comfort.13 Table 4.1 indicates how building users

7

experience and evaluate the functional comfort dimensions.

8

To collect performance-linked feedback from users, building occu-

9

pants are questioned on the items in the second column, which they rate on

40

a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is uncomfortable and 5 is comfortable. From these

1

data, scores on the major categories and subcategories are calculated. In the

2

next chapter, we explain how to use these simple calculations to estimate 87

Comfort and productivity

Table 4.1 Functional comfort dimensions Comfort category

Environmental items rated by occupants

Air quality

Air freshness Air movement Ventilation comfort Feeling warm

Thermal comfort

Feeling cold Temperature shifts Drafts Feeling warm

Spatial comfort

Amount of space Furniture comfort Work and personal storage Worksurface dimensions Places to meet visitors Places to work together

Subcategories: Workstation/furniture comfort Collaborative workspace

Privacy

Hearing others and being overheard Seeing others and being seen Telephone privacy

Lighting quality

Lights too bright Glare Proximity to windows Light from windows Not enough light

Subcategories: Daylighting Visual comfort Office noise control

Noise distractions General background noise Voices and equipment noise

Building noise control

Air systems noise Noise from outside the building Buzzing lights

positive and negative effects on productivity and how to apply findings to environmental improvement. In order to do this, we first need to distinguish among the physical, psychological and functional aspects of each. The names attributed to each comfort category or dimension fit patterns and clusters of user perceptions rather than objectively measurable criteria. The patterns of user response represented by each dimension do not always correspond to the technical or physical definition of these terms employed by engineers and designers. For example, indoor air quality conventionally includes measuring carbon dioxide levels, chemical pollutants, respirable particulates and molds, as well as quantities of fresh air admitted to and delivered by the air handling systems; whereas people judge indoor air quality according to whether temperatures are too warm, the air seems to be fresh or stale, the presence of odors and whether or not they perceive it to be circulating or stagnant. In fact, people’s perceptions can run counter to the 88

Comfort and productivity

122

logic of industry professionals, as they are a function of working in an environ-

2

ment in which all environmental conditions are experienced simultaneously.

3

Most technical definitions and standards are derived from studies that have

4

focussed on one environmental condition at a time: thermal comfort, or indoor

5

air quality, or lighting.

6 7

Air quality

8

If people are generally uncomfortable in their office building, they tend to

9

blame indoor air quality.

10

In the 1970s and early 1980s, indoor air quality was the number

1

one problem in modern office buildings (and in other building types as well).

2

‘Tight’ buildings built during the energy crisis to minimize air leakage and to

3

control amounts of fresh air admitted into the building were found to be

4

the worst culprits. In older buildings, where more modern technology often

522

replaced operable windows or small air handling systems without enough

6

space or convenient locations for ductwork, other problems arose. Then

7

during the 1980s office buildings filled up with computers, printers and other

8

heat- and pollutant-generating equipment, and mechanical systems designed

9

for a previous era could not handle the extra load.

20

The publicity given to court cases, mass symptoms of illness,

1

building walkouts and other indicators of ‘Sick Building Syndrome’ meant that,

2

in many cities, workers in office buildings became suspicious of their indoor

3

air. Feelings of discomfort and even illness, such as headaches, fatigue,

4

nausea and respiratory problems, were often attributed to polluted indoor air

5

or lack of fresh air. People believe that floor-wide ‘epidemics’ of colds, coughs

6

and flu are due to the fact that indoor air is recycled and carries germs from

7

sick to healthy people inside the building. Air quality is therefore primarily

8

a physical comfort issue, as a threat to health and safety makes a building

9

close to uninhabitable; and it influences psychological comfort where people

302

believe the air is making them sick.

1

Indoor air quality standards exist that specify minimal acceptable

2

levels of biological and chemical contaminants and minimum amounts of fresh

3

air circulating in an occupied building. Building occupants usually judge air

4

quality according to whether they feel the air is circulating and changing, or

5

stagnant. If it is moving around too fast, they report a thermal comfort problem

6

with drafts. They also judge air freshness, and they react strongly to the pres-

7

ence of odors. A persistently bad smell causes workers to walk off a floor and

8

even leave the building. When users find temperatures too warm, they are

9

likely to consider this a symptom of indoor air pollution or of air handling

40

systems that have been switched off rather than a thermal comfort issue.

1

The relationship of air quality standards to users’ psychological

2

comfort is not clear; however, air quality is often an area of complaint in office 89

Comfort and productivity

buildings. Instrument measurements of amounts of air in the building, air freshness, the presence of chemical and other contaminants such as molds, as well as measures of mechanical system performance, often fail to concur with users’ assessments of the quality of their indoor air.14 Building engineers and facility managers who use instruments to follow up on complaints about odors, dryness, or insufficient ventilation often find that their instruments show that no indoor air quality standards have been violated: no high levels of carbon dioxide, or formaldehyde, or other compounds, the appropriate intake of fresh air into the system, appropriate humidity levels and the correct amount of air being delivered on the floor. This discrepancy between what users feel and what can be measured is sometimes traceable to historic events that previously caused users to worry about air quality and that linger on in people’s memories, coloring their perceptions of the building. People who considered their indoor air polluted because of odors they no longer smell, or who remember warm and stuffy air in the past, continue to be resentful and suspicious. This psychological discomfort strains the relationship between facility managers and office workers. Sometimes workers seem to believe that their employers are not looking out for their best interests: think of the number of times people attach small strips of paper or string to the ventilation diffusers above their desks, as though they don’t believe that the ventilation is working at all! And what are the effects of air quality on the performance of work? Functionally, air quality is not the most important dimension. Analysis of occupants’ responses indicate that air quality is not directly related to performing work, or even to employee morale, but it does affect whether or not people feel healthy. In some buildings, increasing the amount of fresh air has resulted in lower rates of employee absence due to illness, such that the costeffectiveness of investing in better air quality can be calculated.15 In climates that permit natural ventilation, operable windows and combinations of natural and mechanically-delivered air have a more positive effect on users’ comfort than mechanically-ventilated, sealed buildings. Underfloor ventilation also contributes more to functional comfort than conventional ceiling systems, in part because people can adjust the air flow themselves.16 To sum up air quality, this dimension is an important component of physical comfort, as well as a definable aspect of psychological comfort. Its effect on the performance of work seems more attributable to these aspects than to a direct influence on task performance, although air quality discomfort also causes unproductive behaviors, such as moving around from desk to desk, leaving early, time spent in discussions about the problem and sloweddown task performance (fatigue in the afternoons). In the next chapter, implementing a measurement system to quantify the effects of air quality on task 90

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122

performance provides a basis for calculating the value of investing in good

2

indoor air quality at work.

3 4

Thermal comfort

5

No-one agrees on a comfortable temperature: calls to fix thermal comfort

6

problems are the most common complaint in office buildings.

7

People vary widely in how they experience thermal comfort. They

8

tend to judge how cold they feel rather than how warm, because, to occu-

9

pants, warm air is more of an indicator of poor indoor air quality. But when

10

users are often cold, or the temperature changes during the day and they get

1

cold and warm at different times, thermal comfort ratings are negative.17

2

Physical comfort standards are well developed in the area of thermal comfort,

3

specifying ambient temperature at different heights, air speed, humidity levels

4

and clothing and activity levels. Meeting these standards ensures that most

522

people will be physically comfortable most of the time.18 However, changes

6

in temperature and temperature unpredictability make people functionally

7

uncomfortable – should they wear a blouse at work in winter? Should they

8

keep long sleeves on in summer? Building systems that cause noticeable

9

temperature changes during the day, or which create noticeable variations in

20

temperature in different areas of the building, are likely to cause thermal

1

discomfort. Women are more sensitive to temperature than men – usually

2

attributed to the fact that they wear lighter clothing. People in more sedentary

3

jobs, such as data entry, word processing, telephone operators and reception-

4

ists, are more sensitive to thermal comfort than people whose jobs require

5

them to move around or outside the building.

6

From a psychological perspective, employees’ complaints about

7

temperature problems in buildings are not always traceable to physically

8

measurable thermal conditions.19 This is commonly the largest category

9

of service complaints received by building managers, possibly because, if

302

workers are uncomfortable, the temperature is often the easiest thing to

1

complain about.20 One phone call, and someone will come to fix the thermo-

2

stats. Whereas if people are making noise in the next cubicle, if there are light

3

reflections on the computer screen, or if the arms of your chair do not fit under

4

the desk, calling someone to fix it is unrealistic. The reassurance of a respons-

5

ible management, and the evidence that someone has acted to allay one’s

6

concerns, has an important impact on psychological comfort.21

7

An aspect of thermal comfort that affects functional comfort is

8

humidity. Most building systems are more concerned with removing humidity

9

from the indoor air than with increasing it, because the outdoor air brings in

40

humidity and the presence of people in buildings assures that a certain level

1

of humidity is maintained. However in certain climates where the outside

2

air is very dry, indoor humidity can drop to half of what is recommended by 91

Comfort and productivity

conventional comfort standards. From the occupants’ point of view, this means static electricity shocks when they touch door handles and stair rails, it means dry and chapped lips, it can mean having to remove contact lenses, as well as respiratory discomfort, sore throats and coughing. These kinds of problems may not cause employees to absent themselves for illness, but they distract attention from work and can slow down task performance. As with air quality, people rate thermal comfort more positively in naturally-ventilated than in mechanically-ventilated buildings, in part because there is less of a differential in humidity and temperature levels between inside and outside and this makes fewer physiological demands on the body.22 Another reason is the environmental control provided by being able to open and close windows at will. Summing up thermal comfort, user comfort depends largely on physical comfort standards and feelings of health and well-being are affected. Although poor thermal comfort may not make a building uninhabitable, it can increase absenteeism due to illness. Psychologically, thermal comfort is affected by the responsiveness of facilities managers and getting results from service calls. From a functional perspective, having the ability to exert some control over thermal comfort by adjusting clothing and level of activity and, in some buildings, over windows and thermostats, offers users a degree of environmental control that has a positive effect on performance at work. Users’ assessment of thermal comfort is closely related to their perceptions and judgement of air quality, as well as their experience of other ambient conditions, such as lighting. The warmer the indoor temperature, the brighter people rate their lighting; as people get cooler, lower light levels are perceived as equally bright. To be judged comfortable, therefore, cooler temperatures in offices may require lower light levels. These two factors together – cooler temperatures and lower light levels – have important effects on worker health and task performance. As the work carried out in office buildings becomes more complex, the types and range of office technology more demanding and as people’s needs evolve, investing in user control over temperature conditions and thereby over their thermal comfort may have increasing value in terms of enhancing task performance. Spatial comfort As offices shrink in size, office furniture dimensions become more important to workers. Building users evaluate their spatial comfort in terms of the workrelated and personal storage they have, the ergonomic comfort of their furniture and the amount of space they have in their office or workstation. Key aspects of office furniture, such as worksurface dimensions, file storage, 92

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122

wall or partition height and choice of accessories also affect spatial comfort.

2

Assessments of collaborative workspace are based on spatial orientation and

3

wayfinding, access to meeting rooms and places to work together. Smaller

4

offices and workstations at higher densities cause users to be more aware

5

of the amount of worksurface they have; this is now more of an influence on

6

people’s judgements of spatial comfort than overall size.

7

Workstation comfort, collaborative workspace and spatial comfort

8

have a direct impact on functional comfort and the performance of work. They

9

affect both collaborative teamwork productivity and individual task perform-

10

ance because task performance is affected by the appropriateness of furni-

1

ture design to task demands (surfaces, storage, partitions), by the availability

2

of space to put things and by accessible and sufficient places to meet and

3

work with others. In terms of physical comfort, workers’ health and well-being

4

may suffer when furniture is old, un-ergonomic for computer use and difficult

522

to use. Users who hurt their knees on sharp corners, or who sustain neck

6

and shoulder problems from the postures they adopt, report negative phys-

7

ical comfort. However, as office work has become more computerized, with

8

workers spending more time in fixed positions in front of keyboards and

9

screens, more complex and detailed ergonomic standards have been devel-

20

oped. Companies using furniture designed for computer equipment are more

1

likely to hear complaints about worksurfaces and file storage than about

2

ergonomic problems. Although most modern office furniture is physically

3

comfortable, the corporate tendency to standardize office and workstation

4

layouts (one size fits all), and to densify layouts at the cost of spaces to meet

5

and work together, mean that a certain percentage of users are functionally

6

uncomfortable for at least part of the time. In other words, they are not

7

working under optimum conditions for the performance of their tasks. Factors

8

such as proximity to co-workers, varying partition height to enable contact with

9

some colleagues and protect from contact with circulation areas and other

302

workgroups, proximity to spaces to meet and work together and convenient

1

access to shared storage and equipment all have a direct effect on how well

2

people work.

3

Workers in small workstations or offices do not automatically report

4

functional discomfort, because office size is more closely linked to status

5

(psychological comfort) than to performing work. Lack of functional comfort

6

results from a misfit between office configuration and the demands of the

7

task. For example, people who manage large quantities of paper and need to

8

spread out documents are spatially uncomfortable if they have narrow work-

9

surfaces. People who store a lot of material and who accumulate team files,

40

such as administrators, are spatially uncomfortable if their file storage capacity

1

is limited. People who are not working in teams and who perform largely

2

autonomous tasks are spatially uncomfortable if they are in dense open 93

Comfort and productivity

layouts; conversely, teams are uncomfortable and less effective if they have difficulty finding space to work together and to share tools and information. Size is important in the context of psychological comfort. People consider themselves uncomfortable in workspaces sized below what they used to have. Because of the traditional link in corporate culture between size of workspace and social status, people are more prone to find their offices too small than too big or just right, whatever its size. Why does this happen? As long as senior personnel have bigger offices, all employees will feel they should have more than they have. This tendency is less pronounced in those few organizations where everyone has approximately the same sized office – senior managers included – or where workspace is attributed to workers on the basis of what is being done there (tasks performed), and not on the basis of who they are (their rank). Where office size, like partition height and amount of storage, is more equated with status than with the functional requirements of tasks, more is not always necessary, but more is always better because of its impact on psychological comfort.23 Summing up spatial comfort, this dimension affects productivity because workspace size, configuration, storage and shared work areas directly affect the performance of individual and team tasks. The more functionally appropriate the furniture elements are to the tasks being performed, the more workspace supports task performance. Conversely, both team and individual performance can be slowed down by inappropriate furniture and floor layouts. Investing in spatial comfort has a direct return in terms of improving functional comfort, although data are needed to define appropriate interventions. For example, people who store a lot of material may be pack rats, or they may have administrative responsibility for personnel files and project data for a workgroup or team. In the first case, more individual storage does not solve the problem; and in the second case it does. For some, therefore, investing in more storage is not cost-effective, and for others – such as administrative assistants who save time by not having to move around to access files – it is. Sense of privacy Lack of privacy is more a statement of fact than an influence on productivity. Sense of privacy is closely linked to spatial comfort. As we saw in Chapter 3, privacy is associated with retreat from distractions, control over information and regulation of social interaction, as well as with enclosure and status.24 Workers assess their privacy at two levels: the functional level, related to separateness and freedom from distractions in order to concentrate; and the psychological level, related to exclusivity, status in the organization and environmental control. Whereas the first depends on functional comfort, the second is a psychological comfort issue related to territoriality. Although privacy is clearly tied to status and rank, it is symbolized by physical 94

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122

enclosure and control over one’s accessibility.25 The practice of equating

2

privacy with enclosure and using enclosed offices to confer status makes

3

the desire for more privacy an antecedent factor or cause of workspace terri-

4

toriality. Everyone in the working world recognizes the symbolism that

5

connects people’s accessibility to their status. The higher their rank, the harder

6

it is to make contact with them, whereas everyone can lean over a counter-

7

top or partition and talk to mail clerks and receptionists. Corporate office

8

workers who are moved into open-plan offices are increasingly accessible by

9

others, and the apparent diminution of their status causes them discomfort.

10

People in enclosed offices report higher levels of privacy than those

1

in open workstations. Their assessment is based on whether or not they feel

2

they can be overheard while on the telephone or talking to colleagues, as well

3

as by whether or not they can be observed. As such, more or less privacy is

4

a simple statement of fact. People say – rightly – that they do not have much

522

privacy when they are in an open environment with low or no enclosure. This

6

may be positive, as in, ‘I am a member of a team and we get our work done

7

by interacting and collaborating, so having individual privacy would not be

8

advantageous’; or it may be negative: ‘In other companies, people at my level

9

have their own offices.’ Task performance is affected when privacy assess-

20

ment relates to functional comfort, as in, ‘There are too many distractions

1

here for me to perform concentrated work.’ Functionally, too much privacy can

2

affect people’s performance as much as too little. Co-workers have relatively

3

little contact in private enclosed offices strung linearly along corridors, and this

4

isolation can interfere with their effectiveness.26

5

Certain tasks unquestionably require more focussed concentration,

6

and increased enclosure or other mechanisms for increasing control over

7

access can reduce distractions. Thus both functional and psychological com-

8

fort require control over access, but for different reasons. Functional privacy

9

means control over the distractions associated with being interrupted, in

302

other words, the ability to concentrate on the task. Figure 4.3 diagrams how

1

functional privacy can be defined according to type of task characterized

2

along two axes: balancing concentration and the need for communication

3

is one, and working alone or in collaboration is the other.

4

Most office tasks can be placed in one of the four quadrants of the

5

diagram, each with differing requirements for privacy. Some tasks move into

6

different quadrants at different stages. Functional privacy for workgroups that

7

perform concentrated work but need to collaborate (quadrant 1), such as soft-

8

ware writers and designers, means having access to spaces that allow quiet

9

and concentration at the times when they need it. These may be in the form

40

of rules about how and when co-workers can interrupt you, or in the form of

1

shared or reservable rooms that are set aside for concentrated work and used

2

on an as-needed basis. Where teams performing tasks collaboratively need to 95

Comfort and productivity

4.3 Functional privacy

Concentration

4 Enclosure

1 Group workspace

Individual

Collaborative

3 Open plan

2 Teamspace

Communication

communicate on an ongoing basis (quadrant 2), such as for project-based work, a dedicated team workspace, such as a project room or ‘war room’, may provide enough privacy as most of their work is done together. For those jobs where communicating information is more important than concentrating on producing or consuming it (quadrant 3), workspace may be configured in a variety of open-plan possibilities, enabling an appropriate degree of contact between co-workers. Employees in finance and administration departments, for example, work independently but need to communicate. And finally, jobs requiring sustained, isolated concentrated work (quadrant 4), such as editors and lawyers, do best when their primary workspace is enclosed. Thus functional privacy is a wide-ranging and adaptable concept. The norms of the organizational culture also affect privacy. Privacy means protection from being seen and heard, or from hearing and seeing others. It means the opportunity to do private things, such as telephone the doctor or eat chocolate cookies. It can also mean storing one’s own files so that they are not available to others, or preventing others from having access to one’s computer. How privacy is defined in a given culture affects how people feel about their workspace and their territoriality. Psychological discomfort occurs where there is a mismatch between a person’s expectation of privacy and their perception of the privacy they have; for example, when someone is moved out of a private office and into a cubicle. This discomfort can lead to tension and resistance. The discomfort is reduced when expected and obtained privacy match, so that workers have adequate control over the information they receive from others and that others receive about them. To summarize, physical comfort is not as important as functional and psychological comfort where sense of privacy is concerned. Although a sense of exclusivity and status is not a prerequisite for effective work performance, being able to close the door and concentrate is. Therefore some modicum of individual control over accessibility, as well as taking time to address users’ expectations of privacy, may be the key to comfortable privacy at work. Employees who feel they have no control over their accessibility 96

Comfort and productivity

122

by others – people can watch them, hear them and interrupt them at will –

2

are those whose productivity suffers if their availability does not tally with their

3

task requirements or their notions of their own importance. Uncomfortable

4

privacy occurs functionally when workers are distracted from task perform-

5

ance and psychologically when they feel their status is threatened. Investing

6

in improving privacy does not mean putting all workers into enclosed offices,

7

but rather ensuring that environmental and behavioral measures are in place

8

to enable workers to control when and how they are approached by co-

9

workers.27 This is likely to have a positive effect on psychological as well as

10

on functional comfort, and can take the form of a choice of spaces to work,

1

as well as rules for behavior.

2 3

Lighting quality

4

Office occupants tolerate a range of lighting conditions, and are least likely to

522

complain about lighting.

6

In North America, office workers tend to be comfortable with their

7

lighting unless it is dramatically bad relative to their needs. European office

8

workers are more sensitive to and critical of their lighting environment.28

9

Users’ assessment of lighting quality is more related to amount of light than

20

to its qualities. Too much light causes glare and eyestrain; too little light

1

creates vision problems as well as a depressing environment. Although office

2

workers tolerate bright, over-lit and glarey lighting environments, they are

3

quick to notice insufficient light. They dislike low-lit corridors or lounges, even

4

though people working on computer screens may disconnect overhead lights

5

to reduce reflections on screens and to create a muted environment in which

6

to work. In situations where the need for good lighting is more pronounced,

7

such as reading text or code, editing hard copy, and graphic work with varying

8

colors and textures, insufficient or inadequate light causes discomfort.

9

Physical comfort is an important aspect of lighting quality. In the

302

1980s and early 1990s, eyestrain was a serious problem for people working

1

on computer screens under high levels of overhead, fluorescent light. Today,

2

background light levels are typically lower, and are supplemented by task

3

lighting at individual desks. Workers are more aware of the link between

4

appropriate lighting and computer-based work, and standards exist to ensure

5

that light levels in offices are task-appropriate.29 These standards recommend

6

lower levels of uniform background illumination to reduce glare and contrast

7

and bright task lighting to help people see well at the worksurface, where they

8

need it. However, users’ physical comfort can also be affected by extreme

9

contrast conditions, reflections on screens and sources of bright light from,

40

say, windows. Over time, people’s eyes become fatigued and feel dry and

1

uncomfortable. Many require prescription lenses to do their work. Their health

2

and well-being is affected. 97

Comfort and productivity

Lighting quality affects functional comfort when desks are placed so that people get reflections of overhead fluorescents or of windows on their computer screens. In one recent study, workers’ under-shelf task lighting shone into their eyes when they worked on the computer. Visual comfort, a subcategory of lighting quality (see Table 4.1), becomes important when there is not enough light. For example, fixed ceiling fixtures fitted with directional lenses that ensure that light shines down and is not diffused out to each side, are effective as long as the worksurface is placed immediately under the fixture. But when desks are added or moved, the light may end up shining on the floor, leaving the workspace in relative darkness. As with thermal comfort, lighting interacts with other environmental conditions in its effects on occupants. One study suggests that lower light levels improve acoustic conditions by causing people to speak more softly.30 Daylighting, another subcategory of lighting quality, has a pronounced effect on psychological comfort. Most tasks do not require natural light, but without daylight workers suffer from low morale and, eventually, depression. Their work is therefore affected. People value proximity to windows for three reasons: natural light, views out and status. Building users usually overrate the amount of natural light in their workstations, but they are uncomfortable if they cannot see a window. Hospital research indicates that access to natural light, as well as views on to natural surroundings, have positive effects on speed of recovery of patients, as well as reducing the amount of pain medication they need.31 Some European office buildings have narrow floorplates specifically to provide as many workers as possible with window proximity.32 Window access has proven psychological benefits. Lighting quality, in summary, affects physical, functional and psychological comfort, and is therefore an important category for environmental investment. Physical comfort is defined in terms of indoor illumination standards and guidelines, but where these are incompletely applied, or where building uses change over time, there may be higher rates of fatigue and headaches, and people with formerly good eyesight may have to wear corrective lenses. Functionally, task performance is very sensitive to adequate lighting conditions, but owing to the variety of tasks performed in modern offices and the range of colors, textures and equipment, the uniformity of much office lighting results in inappropriate conditions for many workers. People are nevertheless mostly tolerant of the lighting they receive in buildings, being more uncomfortable when lighting is too low than when it is too bright. Psychologically, people are affected by size of, view from and proximity to windows. Worker morale tends to be poor in windowless environments, in spite of the fact that natural light is not required for the performance of most 98

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122

office tasks. Task performance benefits from investment in narrow floor

2

buildings and indirect lighting, with daylight controlled by drapes or blinds,

3

and switchable individual lamps.

4 5

Office noise control

6

This is the number one problem in open-plan workspace.

7

People at work do not experience all noise in the same way.

8

Physical attributes, such as frequency and loudness, interact with environ-

9

mental circumstances such as type of noise, distance from source, time

10

of day, background noise level, task being performed and level of fatigue.

1

In office buildings, people tend to classify noise according to whether it is

2

people-related or building-related. They are significantly more sensitive to

3

noises caused by the conversations and activities of the people around them

4 522 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 302

than they are to sounds coming in from outside the building, from above the ceiling, or some other remote source. Disturbance from office noise is one of the complaints most often cited by employees in open-plan offices because of lower partitions, higher densities, more equipment and more activity as people move around during the day. Not all sound is noise; noise is unwanted sound. Physical comfort comes into play where sound levels are so high that users risk deafness. Thus most noise control standards are applied in factories and environments where machinery creates high noise levels. Some standards recommend an appropriate range of sound frequency and intensity for office work. For example, a sound one wants to hear, such as a voice in conversation, can be more or less audible according to the background sound level.33 Below a certain level, the words being spoken are not distinguishable because the signal sound is not loud enough relative to the background sound. Acoustic conditions which make it difficult for someone to hear sound they need to hear, such as voices speaking in meetings or on the telephone, cause fatigue and stress.

1

In addition to the adverse effects of inappropriate acoustic con-

2

ditions for wanted sound, people are also distracted from their tasks by

3

unwanted sound, that is, noise. From a functional comfort perspective, noise

4

from people working, moving around, talking, and using equipment, is part

5

of the office environment and people would feel strange without it. But

6

unwanted sound occurs when people feel distracted from the performance

7

of their tasks. They can hear co-workers talking on the telephone, listening to

8

their radios, or playing their voice messages on the hands-free phone. Noise

9

occurs in areas where people stop to talk, such as the copier, printer, water

40

fountain or mailboxes. Furthermore, noise can drown out wanted sounds such

1

as co-workers’ voices, or the telephone ringing, or whether the coffee-wagon

2

has arrived! 99

Comfort and productivity

Noise control has an important effect on psychological comfort, in much the same way as privacy. Intrusive noise does more than distract people from the performance of work; it also confirms a lack of control over one’s accessibility. As discussed above, people consider being seen and being heard, as well as seeing and overhearing others, as invasions of their privacy. They tend to attribute better noise control to higher partitions, with enclosed private offices being the most effective against noise. However, workers sitting inside low partitions see the people and machines that make the sounds they hear, and this exerts a restraining effect on the noise that is generated. Moreover, observations of private office occupants indicate they tend to leave their doors open, thereby reducing the acoustic effectiveness of full-height walls. So better noise control is not assured by increasing the height of office partitions, and in fact, people are often more acoustically uncomfortable in workspace enclosed by high partitions or moveable walls, because they expect better noise control than these elements actually provide. As with privacy, expected acoustic comfort that does not correspond to the degree of comfort obtained results in discomfort. Investing in better noise control in offices means sound-absorbing ceiling tiles, carpeted floors and covering large flat reflecting surfaces, such as windows, with noise-absorbing material. In addition to well-padded partitions and sound-absorbent surfaces, noise can be effectively controlled through rules about behavior. For example, no hands-free telephones, or talking with people while walking around the office, keeping equipment and coffee areas away from work areas, keeping voices low, asking people not to lean on partitions, making sure people are seated when they talk on the telephone and encouraging the use of enclosed rooms for conference calls and large meetings. Efforts to create a more functionally comfortable acoustic environment have a direct effect on the quality of people’s work. To sum up, managing office noise and its subcategory, acoustic comfort, is directly related to workers’ effectiveness. Physical comfort issues arise where office noise standards are not respected and users become fatigued and strained struggling to hear in adverse acoustic conditions. Psychological comfort is affected by concerns about overhearing and being overheard that, like the sense of privacy, are based on concerns about lack of control over accessibility. Functionally, problems in offices arise for most people because their attention is distracted by noise nearby when they are trying to concentrate on a task. Studies demonstrate that people accustomed to open-plan workspaces tend to adjust their behavior over time to reduce office noise, and that the most extreme situations of discomfort occur when people move into new workspace that is more open than the one they came from. Over time, people adapt to a denser, more open workspace configuration by taking control over the noise they generate. 100

Comfort and productivity

122

Building noise control

2

Building occupants tolerate higher levels of building noise without discomfort

3

than office noise that is people-generated.

4

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of building noise control is that

5

building occupants tolerate higher levels of building noise without discomfort

6

than they do office noise. In other words, if noise is not caused by co-workers,

7

but by street traffic outside, or the ventilation system, the elevator, or the buzz

8

of their computer equipment, its physical characteristics can be similar but it

9

is less intrusive. Building noise has to be louder in order to distract people’s

10

attention. However, as this kind of noise is not easily traceable to a cause that

1

can be blamed or changed, people make efforts to accommodate to uncom-

2

fortable levels of building noise, generating stress and fatigue.34 As with the

3

other functional comfort dimensions, problems with building noise control

4

do not necessarily affect the whole building, or even the whole floor. In fact,

522

ventilation system noise can be localized in the ceiling above one person’s

6

desk, and toilets flushing and elevator machinery affect only workers seated

7

near the core of the building.

8

Physically, loud unexpected noises, as well as loud sustained noise,

9

cause stress. In buildings located near airports or train tracks, or with badly

20

sound-buffered mechanical systems, or failing fluorescent lights that buzz, or

1

where there is a specific problem such as a slamming door, workers become

2

fatigued and, over time, strained. Adverse health effects have been associ-

3

ated with the low frequency noise of inadequately insulated mechanical

4

equipment in office buildings.35 Functionally, users’ energy and attention is

5

weakened where building noise levels are distracting and fatiguing. For

6

example, in some New York City schools, grade-school children whose class-

7

rooms were adjacent to train tracks were one year behind in their reading level

8

compared to similar-aged children in comparable schools elsewhere. They

9

caught up in their reading abilities once the tracks were buffered and less

302

noise and vibration affected the classrooms.36 However, not enough sound

1

can also be stressful. People rely on building noise for background sound

2

to mask speech and general office noises. They can feel uncomfortable

3

and disoriented when there is no sound at all, because small sounds are

4

magnified and conversations easily overheard. People value background noise

5

because it provides some privacy by masking speech, both their own and

6

other people’s. For optimal task performance, the goal is to manage building

7

noise levels so that sound levels are not so elevated as to be intrusive but do

8

not become so low as to be undetectable.

9

Engineers say it is not advisable to count on ventilation noise for

40

background noise, although many offices do that rather than installing sound-

1

masking systems. Ventilation systems that cycle on and off give users

2

the impression that the air is cycling on and off! Modern, high-pressure air 101

Comfort and productivity

handling systems are quieter and therefore less effective in masking sound. Sound-masking systems work by increasing the background sound level and masking sound at the frequency of the human voice; this makes other people’s conversations less distracting. However, this technology requires considerable attention to remain calibrated to the right frequencies, and some systems are too loud for people to tolerate comfortably. To sum up, investing in appropriate building noise control is important for physical comfort because sustained loud noise over time creates fatigue and stress, although standards for managing building noise in offices are not well developed. Functionally, task performance is affected by loud or sustained noise, both in terms of distractions from work and fatigue over time. Psychologically, however, it is important that workspace not be too silent. This increases people’s discomfort, sense of isolation and disorientation. It also increases sensitivity to office noises as occupants can hear other people’s voices and actions more clearly where there is no background sound. In most modern office buildings, users assess building noise control positively, only reporting discomfort in relatively extreme situations, such as proximity to airport runways or a malfunctioning air handling system.

How to value and when to invest in environmental comfort To understand how work can be facilitated and supported by some environmental features and slowed down and made problematic by others, it is necessary to analyze systematically how people respond to workspace conditions and how they are affected by them. Clearly, there are numerous ways that workspace features enhance worker performance, and conversely, inappropriate or otherwise uncomfortable workspace slows people down at best and at worst, makes them ill. The problem is not to prove that people are affected by the space they work in, as this is incontrovertible. What is needed is an understanding of how to determine the value of these workspace effects to the effectiveness of the organization. Yes, we know people’s work is influenced by workspace, but is it affected so much that better lighting is worth spending more? How do we know what improved air quality or better acoustics is worth? And how do we make the decision to invest in it or not? The measurement system outlined in the next chapter – called the Building-In-Use Assessment system – is one way of approaching these decisions in an objective and quantifiable way. It is based on several premises which have emerged from the findings summarized in this chapter. First, a finite and identifiable number of key environmental factors influence human performance in office buildings; the basic categories of environmental comfort 102

Comfort and productivity

122

described here take care of a significant proportion of all environmental effects

2

on performance.37 Second, the relationship between environmental conditions

3

and human behavior is not one of cause–effect determinism, but is a complex

4

interaction on three levels: physical, psychological and functional. The concept

5

of environmental comfort integrates these three categories to provide a frame-

6

work for better understanding this complexity and its essential interface with

7

productivity through the performance of work. Third, office building users have

8

predictable and to some degree measurable patterns of response to typical

9

environmental conditions. While this knowledge base continues to grow, it

10

already in its present form provides a basis for evaluating all levels of work-

1

space decisions, ranging from space planning and office design, to workgroup

2

moves and changes, to space allocation standards and building operations and

3

management. The environmental comfort approach enables decision-makers

4

to assess the relative value of environmental features that affect users. Given

522

the complexity of the user–workspace relationship, the value of investing in

6

environment is not determined in the same way for the three categories of

7

physical, psychological and functional comfort. The Building-In-Use Assess-

8

ment system measures comfort–productivity and generates results designed

9

to determine the value and worth of environmental actions, and therefore to

20

justify investment in environmental quality.

1

With a better understanding of how people react to and are affected

2

by features of their work environment, and specifically, how their productivity

3

is affected, we are in a position to use the data provided through feedback

4

from building users to make better assessments of the pros and cons of work-

5

space decisions. Investing in physical comfort is usually a ‘no-brainer’, in that

6

not doing so implies health and safety problems for users and ongoing costs

7

to the organization. Moreover, in most western countries, trained health and

8

safety professionals police it and legislation protects it. However, sometimes

9

both the small, detailed – and even the larger – ramifications of physical

302

comfort for building users are ignored or unknown. In some situations, it is

1

indistinguishable from functional comfort. In others, effects on health are long-

2

term and easily overlooked. So knowing more about physical comfort, what it

3

means and how far existing standards protect it, helps decisions about the

4

relative value of environmental interventions. But what about functional com-

5

fort? Deciding to create workspace that meets functional requirements for

6

different types of tasks is a way of investing directly in worker productivity,

7

but how much is the improved productivity worth to the organization? The

8

habitability pyramid in Figure 4.2 indicates how decision-makers can calcu-

9

late the likely impact of investing in improved functional comfort. Feedback

40

from building users, such as the information provided in this chapter, helps

1

determine whether a specific environmental investment is the right one for

2

improving a particular workgroup’s performance. 103

Comfort and productivity

Finally, how can we take a more proactive approach to users’ psychological comfort? Analysis of the seven dimensions shows that psychological comfort combines the territorial issues described in Chapter 3 with the psychological effects of certain environmental conditions. For example, spatial comfort links to territoriality through the status associated with increased office size and wall height; control over privacy and office noise link with territoriality through the need to control one’s accessibility to others; daylighting is connected to the status of window proximity; and lighting quality and thermal comfort are affected by user control, a basic element in human territoriality. Therefore, environmental comfort does not only operate at a physical level and as an influence on the performance of tasks; it is also tightly bound up with workers’ notions of territory and being at home at work. Workspace decision-making, therefore, will derive even more value when psychological comfort as well as physical and functional comfort is invested in. Now that we understand what environmental comfort is and how it operates in workspace, it is time to explore decision-making processes as potential ways of investing in psychological comfort and thereby making explicit the terms of the sociospatial contract.

Notes 1 Brill, M., Margulis, S. and Konar, E. (1985) Using Office Design to Increase Productivity (2 vols), Buffalo, New York: BOSTI & Westinghouse Furniture Systems Inc. 2 Brill, M. and Weideman, S. (2001) Disproving Widespread Myths About Workplace Design, Jasper, IN: Kimball International. 3 Dolden, M. and Ward, R. (1986) The Impact of the Work Environment on Productivity: proceedings of a workshop, Washington DC: National Science Foundation and Architectrual Research Centers Consortium. 4 See, for example, Ouye, J. and Bellas, J. (1999) The Competitive Workplace, Japan: Kokuyo Institute of office Systems; and Kampschroer, K. (2004) The High Performing Workplace, lecture Executive Education program, Harvard Design School, Cambridge, MA, August. 5 See Vischer, J. C. (1989) Environmental Quality In Offices, New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold and (1996) Workspace Strategies, Environment As A Tool For Work, New York: Chapman and Hall; also Wells, M. M. and Thelen, L. (2002) ‘What does your workspace say about you? The influence of personality, status, and workspace on personalization’, Environment and Behavior 34(3), 300–321; and Stokols, D., Churchman, A., Scharf, T. and Wright, S. (1990) ‘Workers’ Experiences of Environmental Change and Transition at the Office’ in S. Fisher and C. L. Cooper, (eds) On The Move: the Psychology of Change and Transition, New York: John Wiley and Sons Ltd. 6 Vischer, J. C. (2004) ‘Designing the work environment for worker health and productivity’ in A. Dilani (ed.) Design and Health: the Therapeutic Benefits of Design, Proceedings Third International Conference on Design and Health, Montreal. 7 See Steele, F. (1986) Making and Managing High-Quality Workplaces: An Organizational Ecology, Chapter 11, New York: Teachers College Press. 104

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122 2 3 4 5

8 See Vischer, J. C., McCuaig, A., Melillo, M. and Nadeau, N. (2003) Mission impossible ou mission accomplie?: Évaluation du mobilier universel dans les édifices de Desjardins Sécurité Financière, 2 vols, Montreal: Groupe de recherche sur les environnements de travail, Université de Montréal. 9 Reported in Karasek, R. and Theorell, T. (1990) Healthy Work: Stress, Productivity and the Reconstruction of Working Life, New York: Basic Books.

6

10 See Vischer, J. C. (1996) op. cit., for a complete explanation of building convenience.

7

11 See Vischer, J. C. (1989) op. cit., for a more complete definition of functional comfort.

8 9 10

12 See, for example, case studies in Vischer, J. C. (1996) op. cit. Countries where this survey approach has been used include Australia, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France, Brazil and Japan. 13 For detailed information on how these categories evolved, see Vischer, J. C. (1989) and (1996)

1

op. cit. as well as Fischer, G.-N. and Vischer, J. C. (1998) L’évaluation des environnements

2

de travail: la méthode diagnostique, Montreal: Presse de l’Université de Montreal and

3 4 522 6 7 8 9 20

Bruxelles: DuBoek. 14 Vischer, J. C. (1993) ‘Using Feedback From Occupants to Monitor Indoor Air Quality’, Proceedings IAQ93, ASHRAE: Denver, June. 15 Milton, D. K., Glencross, P. M. and Walters, M. D. (2000) ‘Risk of Sick Leave Associated with Outdoor Air Supply Rate, Humidification and Occupant Complaints’, Indoor Air 10(4), 212–221. 16 Hedge, A., Michael, A. T. and Parmelee, S. L. (1993) ‘Reactions of office workers and facilities managers to underfloor task ventilation in offices’, Journal of Architectural and Planning Research 10(3) 203–218. 17 Recent advances in neuroscience research suggest that the patterns of user perceptions in

1

buildings correspond more directly to brain processes than some of the industry standards.

2

Prevailing thermal comfort standards are based on studies of people’s perception of ‘hot’;

3

building users make their functional comfort assessments of thermal comfort according to

4

‘how cold you are’. Studies show that people experience hot and cold temperatures differently, with hot being a function of a known and measurable protein receptor, and cold being

5

the result of a complex interplay of sensory neurons about which much less is known.

6

Eberhard, J. (2004) ‘Neuroscience and Design, the New Frontier’. Paper presented at EDRA

7 8 9 302

35, Environmental Design Research Association conference, Albuquerque, NM; June. 18 In fact, the ASHRAE Thermal Comfort standard specifies that 80 per cent will be comfortable if the standards are met, saying nothing about the other 20 per cent! ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 55–2004: Thermal Environmental Conditions for Human Occupancy, American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers, Inc. (ASHRAE).

1

19 Haghighat, F. and Donnini, G. (1999) ‘Impact of psycho-social factors on perception of the

2

indoor air environment studies in 12 office buildings’, Building and Environment 34(4),

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40

479–503. 20 Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) (1999) What Office Tenants Want: Building Features, Amenities and Services BOMA International/Urban Land Institute. 21 Leaman, A. and Bordass, B. (2000) ‘Productivity in buildings: the ‘killer’ ‘variables’, in D. Clements-Croome (ed.) Creating the Productive Workplace, Chapter 11, London: E & F N Spon. 22 Rowe, D. (2003) ‘Study of a mixed mode environment in 25 cellular offices at the University of Sydney’, International Journal of Ventilation 1(4), 53–64. 23 Users’ assessments of spatial comfort are also affected by psychological factors such as the type of work they do, how long they have worked in the same job, what their previous job

1

was, whether there are plants and greenery in the office, and even the density of the urban

2

neighborhood they grew up in! See Hatch, M. J. (1987) ‘Physical barriers, task characteristics, 105

Comfort and productivity

and interaction activity in research and development firms’, Administrative Science Quarterly 32(3), 387–399; and Oldham, G. R. (1988) ‘Effects of changes in workspace partitions and spatial density on employee reactions: A quasi-experiment’, Journal of Applied Psychology 73(2), 253–258; and Fried, Y., Slowik, L. H., Ben-David, H. A. and Tiegs, R. B. (2001) ‘Exploring the relationship between workplace density and employee attitudinal reactions: An integrative model’, Journal of Occupational Organizational Psychology 74(3), 359–372; and Brennan, A., Chugh, J. S. and Kline, T. (2002) ‘Traditional versus open office design: a longitudinal study’, Environment and Behavior 34(3), 279–299. 24 Sundstrom, E. and Sundstrom, M. G. (1986) Work Places: the psychology of the physical environment in offices and factories, p.291 New York: Cambridge University Press. 25 Schwartz, B. (1968) ‘The Social Psychology of Privacy’, Amer. Journal Sociology 73(6), 741–752. 26 Vischer, J. C. (1996) op. cit. 27 For example, Brill, M. and Weideman, S. (2001) op. cit. 28 Mallory-Hill, S., Van der Voordt, T. J. M. and Van Dortmont, A. (2004) ‘Evaluation of Innovative Workplace Design in The Netherlands’, in W. F. E. Preiser and J. C.Vischer (eds) Assessing Building Performance, Chapter 15, Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann. 29 Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IESNA) (1993). American National Standard Practice for Office Lighting (ANSI/IESNA RP-1-1993), New York: IESNA. 30 The first study found an effect, see Sanders, M., Gustanski, J. and Lawton, M. (1974) ‘Effects of ambient illumination on noise level of groups’, Journal of Applied Psychology 59(4), 527–528; the second study found no effect, see Veitch, J. and Kaye, S. M. (1988) ‘Illumination effects on conversational sound levels and job candidate evaluation’, Journal of Environmental Psychology 8(3), 223–233. 31 See Ulrich, R. S. (1984) ‘View Through a Window May Influence Recovery from Surgery’, Science 224, 420–421, and (1992) ‘How Design Impacts Wellness’, Healthcare Forum Journal 20, 20–25; also Verderber, S. (1986) ‘Dimensions of person-window transactions in the hospital environment’, Environment and Behavior 18, 450–466; also Cooper Marcus, C. and Barnes, M. (eds) (1999) Healing Gardens: Therapeutic Benefits and Design Recommendations, New York: John Wiley and Sons. 32 See, for example, Vischer, J. C. and Mees, W. (1991) ‘Organic Design in The Netherlands: Case Study of an Innovative Office Building’, in W. F. E. Preiser, J. C. Vischer and E. T. White, (eds) Design Intervention Toward A More Humane Architecture, Chapter 15, New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. 33 Chu, W. T. and Warnock, A. C. C. (2002) Measurements of Sound Propagation in Open Plan Offices, IRC Internal Report IR-836 Ottawa, Canada: NRC-CNRC, January. 34 Evans, G. and Cohen, S. (1987) ‘Environmental Stress’, in D. Stokols and I. Altman (eds) Handbook of Environmental Psychology, Chapter 15, New York: John Wiley and Sons. 35 Kampschroer, K. (2003) The High Performing Workplace, lecture Executive Education program, Harvard Design School, Cambridge, MA, August. 36 Bronzaft, A. (1981) ‘The Effect of a Noise Abatement Program on Reading Ability’, Journal of Environmental Psychology 1(3), 215–222. 37 Research indicates that anywhere from 30 to 60 percent of workspace effectiveness is attributable to these factors. Other important influences are such issues as job design, employer – employee relations, and the social environment at work.

106

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Chapter 5

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2

Environmental improvement Taking control

3 4 522 6 7 8 9 20

Consider the following scenarios. Insurance company claims processors sit at

1

workstations in which the task lights shine into their eyes while they work on

2

their computers. When they turn them off, they have trouble seeing the docu-

3

ments they are working from. Technical support staff for a manufacturing firm

4

need to refer to manuals to reply to customers’ questions, but these heavy

5

volumes are located in an adjacent room. They have made so many photo-

6

copies of this material that their small desks are overflowing with paper.

7

Otherwise, they have to hang up on their customers, go and look up the

8

needed information, and call them back later – a delay their customers do not

9

appreciate. Dealmakers in a financial services organization have been installed

302

in low-partitioned cubicles on an open floor. When a big deal is being negoti-

1

ated they are constantly on the phone, making split-second decisions. Some-

2

times they start shouting down the phone. Sometimes they have to whisper

3

because the amounts being negotiated are secret. Some of these people

4

climb under their desks to make their deals on the telephone. In a young and

5

growing software firm located in a converted warehouse, there are no parti-

6

tions and everyone is seated within view of the large, clear windows that ring

7

the space. Various windows have been covered with printout paper, posters,

8

brown paper and aluminum foil to help prevent window glare on the screens

9

people gaze at all day long.

40

In offices around in the world, scenes like these are being played

1

out. In fact, no office provides a perfect environment for all the tasks people

2

are there to do. Which of these situations affects productivity – the claim 107

Environmental improvement

processors’ burning eyes, the technical support staff’s unhappy customers, sitting under desks to make financial deals, the poor visibility of the software engineers’ computer screens? All of the above. As we saw in Chapter 4, if we can measure key comfort parameters in such situations, we will have valid and reliable data on which to base decisions regarding investment in environmental quality. From the previous chapter, we know that workers are affected by environmental factors such as lighting, furniture layout and comfort, noise level and temperature. It is clear from the examples above that an adverse or problematic workspace drains effort and energy out of the user. A supportive, positive and effective work environment allows and even encourages occupants to apply all their energy and attention to performing work. In that sense the environment energizes the user, who is more effective if she can concentrate her energy on work rather than on struggling against features of her workspace. The difference between a supportive and an unsupportive workspace is the degree to which occupants can conserve their attention and energy for their tasks, as opposed to expending it to cope with adverse environmental conditions before they can get to performing the task. The best workspaces are those that minimize the expenditure of energy by users, allowing them to apply all their energy to work activities. The best workspaces reduce the elements that people have to struggle against to get their work done, and increase the environmental elements that support task performance. This is a useful way of defining productivity in terms of workspace. Let’s see how it works.

Measuring environmental effects on performance The comfort–productivity continuum shown in Figure 5.1 illustrates this argument. It shows the two directions in which a user is affected by workspace. In a ‘good’ environment (supportive, comfortable, effective and well-planned workspace), her work is supported, she derives energy from her surroundings, she can get her tasks done efficiently and she can concentrate on her work and not on fixing things in the environment that are going wrong. In a ‘bad’

Bad environment

108

5.1 Environmental comfort model of user-space interaction: the comfort– productivity continuum

Good environment

Environmental improvement

122

environment, the worker expends time and energy overcoming barriers to get

2

work done; her energy is flowing out, towards the environment, rather than

3

flowing into her from the environment to support work. Numerous surveys

4

have shown that workers understand immediately how to answer the ques-

5

tion of whether or not they have to fight their environment to get work done.

6

People intuitively and reliably know the difference between workspace that

7

gives them support and workspace that is a barrier and slows them down.

8

It is worth noting that sustained energy-out situations generate

9

stress, and stress at work has been linked with increased incidence of heart

10

disease, elevated blood pressure, cancer, depression and a compromised

1

immune system.1 Although studies on the health impacts of stress seldom

2

include workspace as a factor, anything that increases the incidence of these

3

and other illnesses represents a loss in productivity and a cost to the organ-

4

ization and to society. User feedback systems such as Building-In-Use

522

Assessment provide useful tools for identifying sources of potential stress

6

on employees with a view to finding ways to alleviate stress at its source. The

7

data generated provide decision-makers with an opportunity to examine the

8

design of workspace from a stress-creating or stress-alleviating point of view.

9

This is more cost-effective than taking measures to treat the effects of stress

20

after it has occurred.

1

The overview of ambient environmental conditions provided in

2

Chapter 4 showed how user comfort and discomfort affects performance.

3

Sustained conditions of discomfort cause stress that leads to illness. For

4

example, polluted indoor air causes headaches, nausea and fatigue and may

5

eventually cause people to stay away from work. Inadequate lighting leads

6

to corrective lenses, headaches and fatigue, and eventually sore eyes that

7

slow work down and make certain tasks uncomfortable. Maladapted furniture

8

leads to neck, back and shoulder problems, especially where people work

9

long hours at computers, as well as keyboard-related hand and wrist injuries.

302

Sustained noise distracts attention and can cause fatigue. And loud noises

1

cause a ‘fight-or-flight’ stress reaction that increases adrenalin output causing

2

other physiological reactions that lead to long-term health problems and

3

chronic conditions such as heart disease and diabetes. By distinguishing

4

between acute and chronic environmental stressors, some have suggested

5

that stress can accumulate as a result of relatively minor environmental

6

‘hassles’ rather than having to be caused by major threats.2 The effects of

7

such hassles on building occupants are experienced day after day (‘energy

8

out’), creating a chronic strain condition that is likely to affect health over the

9

long term.

40

Depending on the type of space and the work that is being

1

performed, almost any office environment can be situated somewhere along

2

the comfort–productivity continuum, with almost none being either all good or 109

Environmental improvement

all bad, but most varying with type of user and type of tasks. But how to know where users situate their workspace? Simply asking them how satisfied they feel or whether they like what they have is neither a reliable measure of environmental comfort nor an indicator of the effects of workspace on performance. Moreover, how can we know the meaning of the feedback users give us if we do not have a basis for comparison? The Building-In-Use Assessment survey is a practical way of applying user feedback to analyzing the comfort–productivity relationship in a given building. It works in the following way. Occupants of a specifically designated work environment (building, floor, department) respond to a standardized series of questions, as indicated in Table 4.1 in Chapter 4 (see the appendix for the complete questionnaire).3 Using a simple calculation, occupants’ answers are converted to seven scores on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 means uncomfortable and 5 means comfortable, for each of the seven environmental comfort conditions described in Chapter 4. The seven scores are then compared to a reliable set of normative scores. The building-in-use (BIU) database norms shown in Figures 5.2 and 5.4 have been developed from surveys of some 60 ‘average’ office buildings in North America and Europe; some companies develop their own baseline norms, based on user feedback surveys of their office-space.4 The difference between each score and norm becomes the critical quantity. Figure 5.2 shows the results for one particular building, Building X, where environmental comfort was measured in this way. Some 30 financial analysts and investment bankers in the building were surveyed as they were about to be moved out of their leased office space into a new building that had been constructed by the parent company to house its scattered departments and subsidiaries under one roof. The first stage of the project was to collect data on environmental comfort in the old, leased space, such that the new workspace could respond to workers’ needs. In the second stage, the same workers were surveyed one year after their move and environmental comfort was compared between the new and the old buildings. The graph shows users’ responses to the first survey, and their scores on the seven dimensions are compared to the BIU norms. The scores obtained for the floors of Building X are compared to normative scores stored in the database for use as comparators. In Figure 5.2, the comfort scale of 1 to 5 is represented by the vertical bars. The Building X scores are compared to BIU norms, and the differences between them are listed as plusses (better than the norm) or minuses (worse than the norm) on the top of each pair of vertical bars. This is called the ‘building-in-use profile’ of Building X. Five out of the seven scores are in a positive direction: air quality and spatial comfort quite strongly; thermal comfort, privacy and lighting quality somewhat less unequivocally. The remaining two scores are inferior to the norm, indicating 110

Environmental improvement

122 2

5

5.2 Building-in-use profile

+ 0.5

+ 0.3

+ 0.6

+ 0.2

+ 0.2

– 0.3

– 0.6

Air quality

Thermal comfort

Spatial comfort

Privacy

Lighting quality

Office noise

Building noise

4.5

3 4

4 6 7 8

Comfort level

5

3.5

3

2.5

9 10 1

2

1.5

2 3 4 522

1

BIU norm

Building X

6 7 8

conditions of discomfort that slow work down and have an adverse effect on

9

task performance. Interpreting these results, it was found that these workers

20

were more comfortable with their air quality (+ 0.5) than with their thermal

1

comfort (+ 0.3). Although both scores are positive (above the norm), difficul-

2

ties of regulating office temperatures and cold drafts from some areas of the

3

ceiling cause thermal comfort to be slightly lower. The spatial comfort score

4

is very good (+ 0.6) because users had adequate storage and worksurfaces,

5

and were located near co-workers and team members, although they had

6

relatively few places to meet other than inside their offices. About half worked

7

in cubicles and found it difficult to concentrate, thus accounting for the lower

8

privacy score (+ 0.2), although this is still above the norm. The lighting quality

9

(+ 0.2) could have been better if task lamps had been available, but in this

302

office the only lighting came from ceiling fixtures that people could not turn

1

on or off. However, the conditions causing the most discomfort in this office

2

were related to noise (– 0.3). In spite of almost half being accommodated in

3

enclosed offices, noise levels were elevated for those sitting outside the

4

offices – support and technical staff – past whose cubicles the office occu-

5

pants and their visitors and co-workers moved all day long, going in and out

6

of their offices. Whether these people were talking to each other, or whether

7

they stopped to address the workers in cubicles, the latter were distracted

8

and interrupted continually throughout the day. This made them tired and

9

prone to mistakes, as well as uncomfortable. In addition, building noise (– 0.6)

40

problems were identified as coming from nearby mechanical rooms where

1

noisy equipment sustained an annoying rumble and made keyboards and even

2

screens vibrate on desks located close to interior walls. 111

Environmental improvement

Privacy + 0.2 Lighting quality + 0.2 Office noise control – 0.3

Thermal comfort + 0.3

Building noise control – 0.6

Taking these results and applying them to the environmental comfort model shows that occupants of Building X do not have to expend energy on dealing with spatial comfort, air quality or thermal comfort (see Figure 5.3). In fact, they are supported by these conditions to differing degrees (slightly more by spatial comfort and air quality, and slightly less by thermal comfort). Users’ sense of privacy and lighting quality are normal. This does not necessarily mean they are perfect; it means that these are not slowing down people’s tasks. Figure 5.3 confirms that the two noise-related conditions require occupants to expend energy that they otherwise could direct towards work, energy to overcome the negative effect of these uncomfortable workspace conditions. By collecting these data systematically, and attaching numeric weight to the varying impacts of the seven environmental conditions, priorities can be set for improving comfort in ways that enable people to work more effectively. For example, the largest negative indicator (in this case, building noise control) has a more adverse effect on worker performance than those that are less negative (office noise control) or neutral (privacy, lighting quality), because it is causing users to expend energy struggling against the distraction and fatigue caused by the noise and vibration. The most valuable investment in workspace improvement, then, is improving building noise control first, followed by solving office noise problems – and these were the priorities addressed in designing the new building for this client. In planning the new building, the team made decisions that ensured modern, quieter, high performance air handling systems whose equipment rooms were located far away from people’s offices. They reduced the number of enclosed offices, putting everyone in open low-partitioned workstations, where they can see each other and communicate without having to move around or call over partitions. They also made sure that every area of the building was plentifully supplied with small workrooms and meeting areas where people could work collaboratively in twos and threes without disturbing others. Moreover, lighting was improved by the addition of indirect fixtures and task lighting, and the underfloor ventilation system 112

Spatial comfort + 0.6 Air quality + 0.5

5.3 Environmental comfort of Building X occupants on the comfort– productivity continuum

Environmental improvement

122

ensured good indoor air quality. One year after moving into the new building,

2

the occupants were re-surveyed, with the following results (see Figure 5.4).

3

The results show that not all environmental conditions have become

4

more supportive of work. Air quality and thermal comfort are certainly comfort-

5

able, as are spatial comfort and, to a lesser extent, lighting quality. However,

6

privacy is clearly much less comfortable, which must be attributed to the reduc-

7

tion in number of private enclosed offices. As we saw in Chapter 4, privacy can

8

be functional or psychological. This score suggests that people fear that moving

9

out of private offices has weakened their status at work: perhaps they were

10

not adequately involved in preparing for a move to more open workspace. The

1

two acoustic conditions are less comfortable than they should be, and this

2

could be the effect of lingering memories of a bad experience. Building noise

3

control is certainly better than it was in the previous building, and perhaps in a

4

few more months it will be equal to the norm. As is often the case when people

522

move into a more open work environment, office noise control is not well

6

managed, and people are still being distracted. However, acting to change

7

physical comfort in this situation would not be as effective as empowering

8

workers to develop their own rules and procedures to help reduce noise levels

9 20 1 2

5.4 Building-in-use profile seven months after moving

in the open-plan and increase psychological comfort. At the extreme negative end of the comfort–productivity continuum, sustained energy out comfort conditions of environmental discomfort lead to stress. Environmental improvements that reduce stress-creating

3 4

5

5 6

+ 0.6

+ 0.3

+ 0.4

– 0.9

+ 0.1

– 0.5

– 0.3

Air quality

Thermal comfort

Spatial comfort

Privacy

Lighting quality

Office noise

Building noise

4.5

7 8

4

302 1 2 3 4

Comfort level

9 3.5

3

2.5

5 6

2

7 8 9 40 1 2

1.5

1

BIU norm

Building Y 113

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conditions identified using feedback from occupants have value, because they represent investment in workers’ comfort and task performance. One potentially valuable type of investment is increasing environmental control, mechanisms of which have been discussed throughout this book. In the next section, the concept of user control is explored in more detail in order to define how it can be managed to have positive effects on functional as well as on psychological comfort, and also to alleviate stress. Understanding environmental control helps decision-makers act to reduce energy-out conditions and create a more energy-in environment.

Stress alleviation through environmental control Several of the validated and reliable stress tests that occupational health researchers commonly administer include ‘lack of environmental control’ as a significant factor.5 It means unclear, insufficient or ambiguous environmental cues resulting from workspace features that users do not understand and over which they have no control. Occupational health studies define comfort as having some control over both the psychological and the physical aspects of an environmental situation. An appropriate example might be wayfinding and spatial orientation. Users expect to be able to find their way to another person’s office, a meeting room or a special use facility such as a training room, without thinking much about how to get there. When spatial cues are poor, signage not apparent, and directions not available, ‘expectations are contravened, attention has to be redirected, and one’s whole pattern of thought and behavior is disturbed’.6 Not only is time lost and attention wasted on unproductive activities (energy out finding the right place to go), but also feelings of frustration arise, even panic, at being lost (not supported by the environment), which in turn affect a person’s performance for an undetermined time period after the experience occurs. This is one of several ways in which the physical environment has a direct effect on stress levels. Researchers have long argued that a key way to increase workers’ psychological comfort is to provide them with some control over the space they occupy: the idea is not new.7 The value of giving users some control is implicit in the innovative technologies applied to environmental controls such as heat- or motion-sensitive lighting, task air, adjustable white noise and localized heating and cooling. Puzzlingly, workers do not always take full advantage of environmental controls when these are offered, although they express more satisfaction (psychological comfort) than improvement in work performance (functional comfort) in such situations. Environmental control can come in forms other than physical elements that users can adjust, such as individual light switches, doors that close and cabinets that lock, furniture that can be 114

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122

moved or adjusted and windows that can be opened and closed. It may

2

mean providing users with information about their building: how it operates,

3

for example, and how building systems control ventilation and temperature.

4

It may come in the form of questioning users about their experiences

5

and perceptions of environmental conditions, using feedback tools such as

6

Building-In-Use Assessment.8 Another form of environmental control that

7

affects comfort is participation in space planning and workspace design,

8

although type and degree of participation is highly variable and can range from

9

choosing colors or desk accessories all the way to participating in a lengthy

10

process of space planning and design review.

1

So what does control mean in the context of comfort and product-

2

ivity? Environmental control in the context of territoriality is an occupation and

3

defense behavior; it is also a primary factor in managing privacy, both func-

4

tionally and psychologically. In fact, the notion of retaining some control in an

522

environment that is basically not in our control is at the core of the human

6

need for territory at work. Just as animals without territory are deprived of

7

belonging, mating and even food in some herd species, so office workers who

8

have no control over the environment they occupy feel weak and defenceless,

9

and motivated to act territorially to redeem their situation. Managing users’

20

environmental control in an environment that is largely controlled by others is

1

a key aspect of the sociospatial contract between employer and employee.

2

Finding ways to empower employees by enabling them to control more

3

aspects of their workspace is a powerful way of turning a typical ‘losing

4

ground’ situation into one of mutually gaining ground – ground gained for

5

employees by taking control in their environment, and ground gained for

6

employers by optimizing work performance and organizational productivity.

7

In industrial psychology research considerable thought has been

8

given to analyzing the nature of work, providing support for the importance of

9

control. Studies of how jobs are defined in organizations refer to improving

302

control so that work itself might be transformed to help people work better

1 2 3 4 5

and improve productivity. One such theory – the demand–control model of worker productivity – is presented here because it can easily be adapted to the user–workspace relationship. It helps define exactly what environmental control means and to identify its effect on the comfort–productivity continuum, that is, in alleviating energy-out situations that cause stress.

6 7 8 9 40 1 2

Demand and control in the work environment Drawing on ground-breaking work on sources of stress (strain) at work, and on conditions for optimal experiences at work (‘flow’), as well as on numerous studies of work reorganization and the relationship between worker illness 115

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and work-related stress, an important theoretical model of factors influencing worker morale and productivity was developed to analyze job situations and worker productivity.9 It defines three sets of factors that affect how productive workers are in their jobs: the ‘psychological demands’ of the job, degree of ‘decision latitude’ or control over job-related decision-making, and the type and strength of social networks.10 Emphasis is on the degree of control workers have over how their tasks are performed: ‘We believe . . . that the true potential of our model lies in the centrality of the concept of control: influence by employees in the work process decision.’11 In most parts of the world today, people working in offices have little if any say in the design or operation of their workspace: typically, there is little decision latitude in planning workspace that can also be psychologically demanding. Decision latitude signifies the degree of control an employee has over decisions pertaining to how he meets the demands of his job and how he uses his skills. In jobs with high decision latitude, workers have the autonomy to make decisions routinely in order to get the job done. In those with low decision latitude, workers do not have much leeway to make decisions; they defer to rules, procedures and supervisors. Psychological demands include such factors as pressure to work harder, higher output quotas, personal conflicts at work, role overload, number and complexity of task requirements (mental effort required), lack of recognition or appreciation for effort, environmental disorganization and lack of opportunities for concentration on own thoughts and tasks.12 The characteristics of demanding job situations are not in and of themselves negative; in fact, for workers with appropriate skills and decision latitude, job demands pose interesting challenges and result in increased motivation, less stress and opportunities for growth and learning. However, when high psychological demands are accompanied by lack of skills, low social support and little control over decision-making, their impact is negative and leads to job strain. The two main dimensions of the demand–control model intersect to form four basic categories of job productivity or worker effectiveness, as shown in Table 5.1.13 Jobs characterized by low control and high demands create the greatest stress on workers and are therefore in the ‘high-strain’

Table 5.1 The four categories of job situation High job demands

Low job demands

High control/decision latitude

Active

Low strain

Low control/decision latitude

High strain

Passive After Karasek and Theorell (1990)

116

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122

category. Sustained stress on workers is experienced as strain, and in the long

2

term, leads to illness and burnout. In the short term, jobs in this category are

3

inefficiently performed: sustained strain results in inefficiency and lowered

4

productivity. Work situations characterized by high decision latitude and high

5

demands are in the ‘active’ category: people in these jobs have the satisfac-

6

tion of using their skills with enough control to exercise them in the way they

7

judge necessary to perform effectively. Positive outcomes such as leadership,

8

growing and learning are associated with active job situations. Work situations

9

in the ‘low-strain’ category have high decision latitude with few psychological

10

demands, but workers in these jobs may get bored easily. There is unlikely to

1

be learning and growth in low-strain jobs, but there is also less illness and

2

burnout. Some jobs in this category are described as relaxing. Finally, there

3

are ‘passive’ job situations with low decision latitude and low levels of

4

demand. These jobs are not relaxing, but they are unlikely to generate strain

522 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

and illness; they may result in lowered productivity because people become apathetic and their skills and abilities may gradually atrophy.14 The social context and quality of social relationships at work, which can also be characterized on a high-to-low continuum, has an effect on how jobs are classified into the four categories. Good relations with supervisors, an active social network and opportunities for participation indicate a high level of social support, whereas lack of these features means low social support. High social support compensates both for low control (little decision latitude) and high psychological demands, thereby reducing the negative impact of either one on job performance. If demands increase while control does not, lowstrain jobs can become high-strain, but if increased demands are accompanied by greater decision latitude, passive jobs can become active and positive. These same four categories can productively be applied to the psychology of the work environment. In this way, the demand–control model supplies a

302

practical definition of environmental control that can be applied to improving

1

workspace.

2

Time increases workers’ sense of control through the formation

3

of territory. One of the reasons people become attached to old and familiar

4

workspace is because they have developed a set of rules and behaviors that

5

allow them to make territorial adjustments, such as pushing out their parti-

6

tions, adding pieces of furniture, adding personal objects and pictures and

7

even getting their desk moved closer to the windows or to another, more

8

favorable location. Thus, although new workspace is usually planned for users

9

and imposed upon them, old workspace has already been appropriated

40

thereby providing some decision latitude, and therefore control. Such appro-

1

priation was easier in old-fashioned workspace, where furniture elements

2

were moveable, configurations were not limited by wiring and cabling 117

Environmental improvement

constraints and there were fewer pressures on businesses to shrink space and increase density. Contemporary approaches to office design, such as universal planning, using systems furniture, equipment-heavy workstations and shrinking office space standards, combine to limit decision latitude for users. Therefore although these may reduce occupancy costs for corporate decision-makers, they decrease users’ environmental comfort and create stress for occupants. What about psychological demands? Workspace conditions make demands on users, creating stressful situations that lead to long-term health problems. Chapter 4 described the effects of the environment not just on users’ physical comfort but also on functional and psychological comfort. Environmentally, psychological demands are represented by unsupportive workspace that causes energy-out by draining workers’ time and energy as they struggle to perform their tasks in adverse spatial conditions. This can range from the annoyance of having to travel long distances to access printers and copiers, to the frustration of losing one’s way in a building, to the health risks of eyestrain and polluted indoor air. A supportive, non-demanding workspace is characterized by energy-in from the environment that motivates users to solve problems, encourages learning and growth, and creates comfort rather than strain. Few work situations are all in one or another category. For most office workers, workspace allows some tasks to be performed more easily than others. Figure 5.5 shows the demand–control model of worker productivity adapted to the environmental design of workspace for productivity.

Participation

Active

Low strain

Passive

High- strain

Energy in

Energy out

Decision latitude (control)

No participation

Psychological demands 118

5.5 Demand–control model of workspace productivity After Karasek and Theorell (1990).

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122

Workspace that senior management has imposed with little or no employee

2

involvement is in the ‘high strain’ category. Environments that are high strain

3

to work in are characterized by standardizing space allocations using fewer

4

and less generous space standards than in the past, by not consulting workers

5

or preparing them in advance, by providing little or no possibility for individual

6

adjustments to workstation furniture and by a dearth of support spaces for

7

such activities as using specialized equipment, meeting informally and

8

receiving visitors. Psychological demands are high, owing to the uniformity

9

of the workspace and limited possibilities for change or adaptation. With

10

cost savings in mind, rather than investment in user comfort, there may also

1

be poor management of acoustic conditions, questionable indoor air quality

2

and/or poor lighting, rapid temperature shifts and ergonomically inappropriate

3

furniture. In one recent example, design professionals working for a provincial

4

government in Canada filed a union grievance because they were told to carry

522

out their tasks in new smaller, open workstations in a denser layout. These

6

professionals felt their work, which required large surfaces for rolling out plans

7

and drawings, meeting areas for collaborative work with colleagues, clients

8

and consultants and privacy for occasional, concentrated work, would suffer

9

from having to be performed on small narrow work-surfaces, with less storage

20

space for files and drawings and no additional meeting space. The combina-

1

tion of low decision latitude (no user input into design) and high psychological

2

demands (providing design services on complex building projects with

3

financial and political problems, as well as demanding deadlines) created a

4

high-strain situation that ultimately demotivated workers, caused job strain

5

and increased absenteeism and turnover, thus impacting the productivity of

6

the organization.

7

A low-strain environment occurs when workers occupy space that

8

is not supportive of their tasks (energy-out), but where they have a say in work-

9

space design, most likely through longevity and habit. Workers in low-strain

302

settings do not feel the strain associated with low decision latitude, although

1

they must expend energy on trying to function optimally in poorly designed

2

workspace. For example, a group of sixteen administrative workers in a federal

3

prison occupy space that has been unchanged during their long tenure in the

4

organization. Large, private offices line each side of a double-loaded corridor;

5

there is little natural light, nowhere for small meetings and collaborative work,

6

and poor indoor air quality. The workers meet in each other’s offices, moving

7

chairs around as needed. They leave doors open and windows uncovered to

8

maximize light from windows. They feel fully in control of their workspace

9

(high decision latitude) while realizing that it is dysfunctional for their work.

40

The location of the entry into the offices from the main prison compromises

1

security, for example, by requiring inmates to come to the far end of the office

2

hallway to pick up their weekly pay cheques. This gives them access to all the 119

Environmental improvement

offices while they are in there. Large enclosed offices separate employees, forcing them to go in and out of each other’s rooms all day long for consultations and information. Workers report headaches and fatigue caused by ventilation and temperature problems. They are not as productive as they could be, as they expend energy struggling against their workspace. But they are not unduly stressed because they control what they can and cannot do, and also because they are a mutually supportive social group. Where people have over time or through an enlightened management been invited to participate in and consult about workspace change, their environment is ‘active’. They exercise decision latitude either by taking ownership of the space by changing it themselves to suit their needs, or by having a say in the design of new workspace, including being informed in advance of changes. Their activities are supported by their workspace: the furniture suits their tasks (for example, enough file storage for their needs), ventilation and temperature are comfortable, the lighting is adapted to screen-based and other tasks, noise levels are under control and space is available for interactive and collaborative tasks, as well as for individual and concentrated tasks (i.e. adequate privacy). All jazzy contemporary workspace designs are not active in spite of their innovative appearance. Active workspace that might look quite conventional from a design perspective provides task support to workers, and is a result of their informed involvement in the design process. One example is the Hypertherm workspace described in Chapter 2, where the space planning process involved employees at all levels and people were encouraged to express their opinions and ideas at each stage. As a result, the new workspace was not only tailored to the requirements of employees’ tasks, but also generated environmental control. At move-in, workers ‘owned’ the new workspace concept. Occupying a work environment in the active category motivates workers, helps them be productive, allows energy to be applied to growth and learning new skills and allows the company to draw the full benefit from their employees’ work time. Workers who have no decision latitude regarding the design and functioning of their workspace and whose jobs are not environmentally demanding are in a ‘passive’ environment. This may be because their tasks are highly routinized and individualized, for example, mailroom employees who clock in at 8 and out at 4, take breaks at pre-established times and are considered successful if they meet their work quota. Such energy in work environments, where tasks are supported even though there was no participation in decision-making, might include call centers and insurance claims processing, where personnel spend most of their time at their desks and require little environmental support outside the physical and functional comfort of a welldesigned and ergonomic workstation. 120

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122

The arrows in Figure 5.5 indicate that user–workspace relationships

2

are dynamic. Passive environments become active with more user participa-

3

tion; people working in low-strain environments they have appropriated over

4

time find themselves in a high-strain situation when their space is unexpect-

5

edly changed. In fact, any environmental change could transform a supportive

6

energy-in workspace into a demanding energy-out one unless users partici-

7

pate at some level in decisions. Just as offering employees decision latitude

8

in their jobs helps them cope with psychological demands, so offering them

9

environmental control helps them cope with workspace change and thereby

10

with renegotiating the sociospatial contract with their employers. When it

1

moved into its new headquarters in a suburb of Chicago in the early 1980s,

2

Sears Roebuck and Co. standardized all office sizes around a basic 90 square-

3

foot workstation module, with workstations of 45 and 90 square feet, and

4

offices of 180 and 270 square feet. By the mid-1990s, departments had

522

diversified, tasks had changed, office technology was more complex and the

6

one-size-fits-all approach was hampering task performance. In order to find

7

out how to solve problems created by the growing complexity of users’

8

demands, Sears’ Facilities Management staff initiated a process that effec-

9

tively increased decision latitude. A company-wide space-use consultation

20

process was implemented with a facilitator in which every department partic-

1

ipated in focus groups and all vice-presidents were interviewed regarding

2

present space-use and future space needs.15 In so doing, the company

3

reduced psychological demands by increasing employees’ participation and

4

gave them the control to make joint decisions with facilities staff about their

5

future workspace.

6

The demand–control model identifies membership in social net-

7

works and social support as the third dimension affecting productivity in the

8

job as well as in the workspace situation. The link between social support

9

and managing stress at work is well established: ‘Social support at work refers

302

to overall levels of helpful social interaction available on the job from both co-

1

workers and supervisors.’16 A socially supportive work environment confirms

2

the value of the individual’s contribution to the collective; and the degree to

3

which workers participate in group activities is a reliable indicator of the degree

4

of social support in their environment. Positive social support is thus a neces-

5

sary condition for worker participation in activities that affect the community,

6

such as workspace design. Social support combined with environmental

7

control creates leadership for a process of participating in the design and

8

management of workspace. Increased employee participation in workspace

9

planning and management results from a socially supportive environment and

40

positively affects productivity, reducing job stress and contributing to better

1

worker health by providing a counterforce against excessive psychological

2

demands. ‘A workplace where people have control over demands tends to be 121

Environmental improvement

a learning environment, whereas the more traditional work style tends to inhibit employee learning. This . . . suggests that the participatory workplace is more adaptive in a demanding environment.’17 As workers become motivated to learn about the buildings they occupy, about the effects of workspace on their behavior and emotions, and to take some control and responsibility, they learn to define territory differently. Balancing environmental demands with control is useful throughout all stages of the O–A relationship and not only during the planning and design of new workspace and periods of workspace transformation. To do so, however, requires rethinking the traditional roles of real estate industry professionals such as brokers, property and facilities managers, designers and architects and their clients: building owners, business managers and heads of companies seeking to relocate. It also requires that the terms of the sociospatial contract in an organization be made explicit.

Increasing control through environmental empowerment Such radical change, implemented systematically, throws into question the established professional boundaries between traditional building-related activities. Taking a demand–control approach to workspace affects the way organizations think about their accommodation. Traditionally, one person or committee makes key planning and design decisions according to criteria they have been directed to apply or think are appropriate. But providing users with more control through empowering processes implies consultation and information-gathering at each stage of decision-making. Consulting users means taking into consideration issues of long-term building operation during the planning and design stages of building delivery – an innovation in the way the building industry is currently structured (see Chapter 1). Consequently, decisions about how much to spend must respond to the long-term operating criteria implied by investing in environmental comfort and not just to short-term building cost comparisons. Once a building is occupied, the responsibility for managing workspace has to adapt to a more distributed model. Traditionally, facilities managers supply a service to the organization, and specifically to employees, ensuring that building systems function appropriately and that the needed spaces are serviced and available for workers to perform their tasks. Facilities managers are unlikely to have the resources or the corporate support necessary to invest in environmental quality for users or to bring the workspace more in line with functional comfort requirements, even if they are aware of them. Facilities staff often end up striking an uncomfortable balance between 122

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122

responding to users’ complaints and being ‘facility police’, enforcing space-use

2

and occupancy rules. In an empowered work environment where users have

3

more control, facilities staff and building users work as partners committed

4

to making energy-in decisions that ensure high quality workspace. Opportun-

5

ities and mechanisms are structured into facility management operations to

6

create collaborative decision-making between facilities managers and their

7

customers regarding space design and operations.

8

Assigning more environmental control to employees so that they

9

can take advantage of such opportunities and mechanisms is an objective of

10

participation in decision-making. Control through participation balances the

1

demands of the work environment and helps workspace support task per-

2

formance. For users to participate they must become actively informed and

3

involved. Users are empowered through information, choices and decision-

4

making opportunities that are likely to cause those decision-makers usually

522

responsible for imposing workspace decisions to rethink and redefine their

6

roles. Increasing environmental empowerment is a key step in renegotiating

7

the sociospatial contract because employees, as they acquire more power in

8

an organization, demand more varied and personalized rewards as well as a

9

voice in governance.18 In traditional workspace, this demand may be

20

expressed environmentally as requests for more space, a better office loca-

1

tion and additional special furniture. As users become involved, this same urge

2

– for more rewards and a say in governance – is expressed though being

3

informed about environmental choices and helping decision-makers make the

4

best possible environmental decisions.19

5

There are as many approaches to user participation as there are

6

projects in which users can participate, but few are used on a systematic

7

basis. Commonly cited anticipated difficulties include:

8 9

•

In many new building projects, there are no users yet to involve.

302

•

Involving users and getting buy-in increases the time needed for design and construction.

1 2

•

priorities, and are resentful when their wishes are not met.

3 4

Users do not respect constraints such as time, site and budgetary

•

Users’ interests may be counter to the client’s and design team’s

5

priorities. Users want to keep their options open as long as poss-

6

ible, to accommodate last-minute changes and new ideas, whereas

7

the design and construction team wants ‘to fix everything as soon

8

as possible to reduce risk’.20

9 40

These are legitimate concerns: how best to respond to them? In

1

the first case, when there are no users, occupants of similar buildings and

2

workspaces can be consulted to provide useful information even if occupants 123

Environmental improvement

for a specific project are not yet identified. Facilities managers, space planners and other professionals sometimes have sufficient knowledge to speak for users and to act as a tenants’ representative or quality control officer. Second, involving users and getting buy-in takes more time up front, but the process has far-reaching impacts which save time and money down the road. As long as a building project is driven by cost-based definitions of time, saving time during delivery has more value (is worth more) than enhancing the work performance of the eventual occupants. But if the cost side of the equation expands to include operating and energy-out costs, including the costs of workspace changes, time may be valued differently. Every building industry professional has favorite examples of cost-based decisions in building or buying buildings that seemed rational at the time, yet resulted in massive subsequent spending to fix problems, adapt to new uses and improve building quality after occupancy. In response to the third anticipated difficulty, parameters and limits must be established on the decisions users are invited to participate in: organizational and physical constraints must be explicit to avoid users making wishes unrelated to reality and therefore likely to be ignored. While it is true that clients and users aim to keep their options open and building professionals aim to reduce risk, designing and managing a user empowerment process invites negotiation between them.21 In some situations, users choose not to get involved, even when an opportunity presents itself. They may not have time, they may not see it as part of their jobs, they may fear they do not have sufficient knowledge. Defining a strategy for environmental empowerment, managing employee participation and deciding when and how information is provided to and gathered from users are all critical elements on which the success of such an alternative process depends. They are, in fact, critical elements of the sociospatial contract. The key to successful contract negotiation is to provide workers with enough information so that they can make responsible workspace decisions, but not to over-inform them, so they are confused or rushed, or under-inform them which results in poor quality decision-making. A delicate balance is needed to create equilibrium between how much information to provide in the process and when, in order to create employee ownership of the information and of the project, and thereby optimize the quality of decisions. This balance varies depending on the scale and complexity of the building project. In Chapter 6, the stages of such a process are described.

No empowerment without conflict Empowering workers is not only about sharing information and reaching consensus on decisions. It is also about embracing conflict and finding 124

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122

solutions to problems and dissolving barriers. Because of people’s deep and

2

emotional connection to their space and all that it represents, conflict is an

3

inevitable outcome of the effort to change territory. Conflict is not necessarily

4

negative. In the context of a skilled and carefully planned process, conflict

5

may be the only way to effect change successfully. Without a process in place

6

to manage conflict, people become defensive and go to great lengths to

7

defend their territory. With the spirit of competition (‘it’s us or them’) comes

8

a driving desire to win, and people who are normally mild and easy to get

9

along with can become aggressive attackers. Creating space to work in is a

10

high-stakes game!

1

Seven territorial conflicts typically arise; they are listed in Table 5.2.

2

Embracing each conflict as it arises provides an opportunity for renegotiating

3

the sociospatial contract to the satisfaction of both parties.

4 522 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5

Fear of loss People who fear losing their territory cling to that which is familiar. They feel empowered when they realize they have something to gain, and disempowered when they are treated like passive victims with no control over the outcome. Designers and managers may have to develop ways to compensate workers for territorial loss. Workers can be offered new tools, such as a technology upgrade, or there may be new locational advantages: better shops and restaurants, a more elegant building, free parking. Underlying these inducements is the more tangible gain of being able to do one’s work more easily and comfortably. A salary increase also helps – one employee in the midst

6

of a bitter fight for higher workstation partitions was heard to remark that in

7

exchange for a pay raise he would work in a closet! Fear of the unknown

8

creates fear of territorial loss and being empowered to participate alleviates

9

some of the fear. The challenge of newness, excitement of the unfamiliar, an

302

opportunity to have one’s say and share one’s expert knowledge about one’s

1 2 3

Table 5.2 Typical territorial conflicts

4 5

1

Fear of loss

6

2

Mistrust of superiors

7

3

Identifying leaders

4

Change is too radical

5

Facilitating the process

6

Costs too much

7

Need for learning

8 9 40 1 2

125

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work may counter users’ fears. With no consultation, involvement or choice, users inevitably focus on the ground they are losing, physically in the workspace and metaphorically in terms of status in the organization. Unmanaged, the resulting behavior is likely to be defensive, aggressive and unproductive in terms of organizational goals. Mistrust of superiors Unfortunately and for no very clear reason, employees in some organizations jump to the conclusion that management will ‘shaft’ them when it comes to space. Sometimes this mistrust is embedded in the culture of the organization – there is a history of antagonism between managers and workers. Sometimes it just seems to be embedded in our culture. When rumors spread about moving to new space, almost in the same breath people think they will lose their jobs (be downsized/made redundant) or that there will be fewer people to do the same amount of work (increased workload). The only way to counter rumors is with information: secrecy generates gossip. Once people have facts, there is less gossip; and the more people are consulted, the more they trust decision-makers. Providing people with information helps to empower them. Involving users systematically allows opportunities for people to express their viewpoints and ideas. Identifying leaders Some company leaders have abandoned the executive suite; the CEO and senior managers occupy modest offices and even open workstations. By modeling workspace change, managers lead change in the organization. However, in companies where only people below a certain level are changing workspace, there is a tendency for employees to cling to the status quo. Whether senior managers change their workspace or not, the way to overcome conflict is for the CEO and other senior managers to be visibly committed to the change and, in fact, to champion it.22 If the CEO appears to be aloof from the process, does not take an interest, or limits expressions of commitment to a few nods in the direction of the design team, employees will feel more justified in protesting. Managers and team leaders with a need to be liked may feel hard-pressed to support change that will affect territories. It is much simpler for them to appear to be heroes by supporting employees’ actual territorial equilibrium – and thereby the conflict escalates. Change is too radical In some companies, a little change goes a long way. Even small environmental changes can be seen as territorial threats. The same territorial ‘hot buttons’ recur in almost every office environment in North America: partition height, 126

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122

especially where walls are being replaced by systems furniture, office or work-

2

station square footage and amount of storage. Changes to these physical

3

elements almost always activate employees’ territorial defences. Space plan-

4

ners and designers can use drawings and photographs to engage users in

5

negotiating new territory. Once they have more of a say in decisions, users

6

often come up with ideas and suggestions that are even more radical than

7

those proposed by professionals, devising innovative work environments that

8

suit the way they work.

9 10

Facilitating the process

1

Disseminating information throughout the process empowers everyone.

2

Workers who know more about the reasoning behind management’s work-

3

space decisions – to reduce overhead, to move to a better location, to open

4

up fixed, enclosed offices, to accommodate growth, to improve environmental

522 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

quality – consider change in a more rational frame of mind than simply how to hold on to their territory. To be effective, information must flow in both directions, preferably guided by a facilitator. The facilitator can be a manager in the company, the project manager on the design team or inside the organization, or a trained consultant. A facilitator trained in process facilitation, with knowledge of the design process, ensures that all stakeholders have their say constructively and at the appropriate times. A facilitated decision-making process that involves not just users but also the various building consultants and specialists, is an effective way to share and exchange information relevant to the sociospatial contract. It is also an effective way to develop consensus around project objectives and buy-in.

8 9

Costs too much

302

The cost argument provides an easy ‘out’ for any stakeholder that does not

1

feel comfortable with territorial change. This might be the facility manager, the

2

project manager, the CFO, the design professional, or employees who prefer

3

to think of a new building or renovation as a conventional building project

4

and are not motivated to look for opportunities for transformation. Almost any

5

innovative workspace solution will cost too much to someone. Contractors

6

tend to quote higher prices for materials or technology with which they are

7

unfamiliar, or for anything they have not done before. Designers feel pressure

8

to keep the project within manageable boundaries so as to be sure they can

9

stay within the fee they have quoted. And on the client side, executives’

40

efforts to act responsibly are more likely to lead to cuts than to innovation.

1

Disempowered employees resisting territorial change have no difficulty

2

quoting cost overruns as a reason to maintain the status quo. 127

Environmental improvement

Need for learning A critical component of the empowerment process is teaching and learning – constructive mechanisms that counter the negative aspects of territorial loss and are thus critical to the sociospatial contract. People need to learn how to get the most out of their workspace in order to appropriate it as territory, and they learn best if they are empowered to determine, first, what needs to be learned, then to learn it themselves, and finally, to teach each other. When they are disempowered, people tend to import old ways of working into new workspace, to become resentful and frustrated when it does not work, and to sabotage the space to stake claims to their old territories. After move-in, when all the consultants have gone away, they may find some old file cabinets to place next to their desks, or pile up books or plants to increase the apparent height of partitions. They may hang paper or posters on interior glass walls to block views in and out; or they may pile up cardboard boxes of files in hallways or under their desks to show how desperately short of storage they are. Over time, another sort of sabotage can occur. As old territorial behaviors find expression, spaces designated for informal meetings, or as a library for quiet reading, or even extra-wide circulation paths, may suddenly be taken over for new workers, or for storage, or to provide room for a file server. Sabotage is less likely to occur if users have been empowered throughout the process, if they had a say in what was built, and if they understand and accept the reasoning behind each decision. Through empowerment, people take ownership of new territory and then act out territorial behaviors in the new setting: defend it, protect it, possess it. They will ensure that new hires understand how to work in the space. They will act to prevent little changes from sneaking in, such as losing a team-room, or a naturally lit wide hallway, to new desks. They will police themselves to ensure that paper does not cover up windows, that old file cabinets do not mysteriously reappear beside people’s desks. A well-designed user empowerment process generates a sense of control over territory. Once users have been involved as acknowledged experts on how they work, it is not cost-effective to un-involve them. To add value to the organization, the learning and growth that takes place during managed workspace change should continue to be applied to managing space throughout occupancy. People whose territorial needs are met work harder and better, are more creative, and increase the productivity of the organization: they honor the terms of the sociospatial contract. Systematically basing workspace design on user feedback ensures a higher level of functional comfort and less time and energy lost in fighting against workspace. Psychological needs for territory and concerns for status, privacy and control are all addressed through the empowerment process during design as well as over the lifespan of the workspace. Assuring psychological and functional comfort 128

Environmental improvement

122

is a constructive way of negotiating the sociospatial contract and resisting

2

a losing ground scenario. Environmentally empowering users in order to

3

combine organizational goals for reducing occupancy costs and increasing

4

efficiency with employees’ goals for comfort and effectiveness results in a

5

gaining ground scenario for all sides. The ideal work environment balances

6

environmental control with environmental demands, and devising the right

7

process to determine and maintain this balance ensures optimal work

8

performance by users and productivity for the organisation.

9

The three unexamined assumptions on which the sociospatial

10

contract is based are territoriality, job performance and control. Armed with a

1

deeper understanding of workspace territoriality, knowledge of how building

2

systems affect environmental comfort and a clear definition of the relationship

3

between environmental control and productivity, we now return to scenarios

4

of workspace change. Many of the examples described in this book illustrate

522

the losing ground scenario of shrinking and standardizing workspace, loss of

6

status and eventual negative impacts on productivity. We now have the know-

7

ledge and concepts to turn these into gaining ground scenarios, where com-

8

panies reduce occupancy costs while increasing their employees’ potential

9

for productivity. The next chapter outlines and illustrates a process that is not

20

based on a deterministic definition of environment as causing more or less

1

worker productivity. It explains how to structure and engage in a process that

2

is sensitive to the complex psychological issues raised in the context of the

3

sociospatial contract. This innovative approach to workspace transformation is

4

based on the complex relationship between workspace and human behavior

5

and draws on the immense emotional energy that is released when territory

6

at work is threatened.

7 8 9 302 1

Notes 1 Sauter, S. and Murphy, L. (eds) (1995) Organizational Risk Factors for Job Stress, Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

2

2 Lazarus, R. and Cohen, J. B. (1977) ‘Environmental Stress’, in I. Altman and J. F. Wohlwill

3

(eds) Human behavior and the environment: Current theory and research, p.89, New York

4 5

Spectrum. 3 Note that earlier versions of this questionnaire have been published in Vischer, J. C. (1989) Environmental Quality In Offices, New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, and (1996) Workspace

6

Strategies, Environment As A Tool For Work, New York: Chapman and Hall, and in Fischer,

7

G. N. and Vischer, J. C. (1998). L’évaluation des environnements de travail. La méthode

8 9 40

diagnostique, Montréal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal/Bruxelles: De Boeck. 4 See Vischer, J. C. (1996) op. cit. Chapter 9. 5 Radmacher, S. and Sheridan, C. (1995) ‘An Investigation of the Demand-Control Model of Job Strain’, in S. Sauter and L. Murphy, (eds) (1995) op. cit. pp. 127–138.

1

6 Ibid. In addition, studies of poor wayfinding in hospitals demonstrate that patients, visitors

2

and even staff suffer increased stress levels when they cannot find their way (see Carpman, 129

Environmental improvement

J. R. and Grant, M. A. (1993) Design That Cares, 2nd edn, Chicago, IL: American Hospital Publishing. 7 Wyon, D. (2000) ‘Individual Control at Each Workplace: The Means and the Potential Benefits’, in D. Clements-Croome (ed.) Creating the Productive Workplace, London: E & F N Spon, Chapter 12. See also Newsham, G., Veitch, J., Arsenault, C. and Duval, C., (2004) Effect of dimming control on office worker satisfaction and performance, (NRCC-47069). Ottawa, ON: National Research Council Canada; and chapters in Teicholz, E. (2001) Facility Design and Management Handbook, New York: Mc Graw-Hill. 8 A variety of other approaches to questioning building users exist in addition to Building-InUse Assessment. User survey questionnaires have been developed for proprietary use by companies doing workplace consulting, such as Steelcase and DEGW. The results of any of them can be evaluated in terms of energy-in and energy-out criteria to determine the value of environmental changes and improvements.In addition, there are several examples, and a ‘Kit of Tools’, in W. F. E. Preiser and J. C. Vischer (eds) (2004) Assessing Building Performance, Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann. See also Ouye, J. (2003) ‘Measuring Workplace Performance Using the Performance Map’. Paper presented at World Workplace 2003 conference, Yokohama, Japan. And Kaplan, R. S. and Norton, D. P. (1996) Translating Strategy Into Action, Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. 9 Selye, H. (1956) The Stress Of Life, New York: McGraw-Hill and Czsikszentmihalyi, M. (1990) Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, New York: Harper Perennial. 10 Karasek, R. and Theorell, T. (1990) Healthy Work: Stress, Productivity and the Reconstruction of Working Life, New York: Basic Books. 11 Ibid, p. 14. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 Vickers, M: (1999) ‘No More Ivory Towers’, Today’s Facility Manager, September, 1. 16 Jaffe, D. (1995) ‘The Healthy Company’ in S. Sauter and L. Murphy, (eds) (1995) op. cit., p. 69. 17 Ibid. p. 75. 18 Reich, R. B. (1990) The Work of Nations, New York: Knopf. 19 Some practical applications of a user-oriented approach to planning, design, constructing and operating buildings have been developed in the context of Building Performance Evaluation (BPE). Each phase in the BPE process is characterized by one or more feedback loops, in which feedback from stakeholders, including building users, is systematically incorporated into critical decisions in the building planning, design, delivery and occupancy process, at the time when these are being made. Applying this approach to workspace design and construction has radical implications for the segmentation of decision-making in conventional building projects. Increased decision latitude for users is assured in a process that requires their feedback at each stage. Techniques exist to engage users in each phase so that their feedback comes in a form that is relevant and useful to each stage in the process. In Preiser, W. F. E. (2003) Improving Building Performance, Washington, DC: National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB). 20 Blyth, A. and Worthington, J. (2001) Managing the Brief for Better Design, London: Spon Press. 21 Williams, C., Armstrong, D. and Malcolm, C. (1985) The Negotiable Environment, Ann Arbor, MI: Facility Management Institute. 22 The importance of leadership is outlined in Becker, F. and Steele, F. (1995) Workplace By Design: Managing the High Performance Workscape, Chapter 11, San Francisco CA: Jossey-Bass.

130

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Chapter 6

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3

The workspace transformation imperative

4 522 6 7 8 9 20

A senior vice-president at Bell Canada responsible for Bell Sygma, the

1

billing and accounting arm of Bell Canada Enterprises (BCE), found himself in

2

conversation with the VP in charge of real estate and building design and

3

construction. He needed more office space to accommodate the growing

4

needs of his organization. She replied that workspace design was changing,

5

that the time was ripe for workplace experimentation, and that maybe rather

6

than simply leasing new space, he should experiment with what he had.

7

Together they decided to initiate an organizational change process, starting

8

with Bell Sygma staff – some 350 people in a large suburban office building

9

built primarily to accommodate the huge computer floor and complex equip-

302

ment needed for telecommunications billing. She was the one to use

1

the phrase ‘Office of the future.’ He was the one who decided to have an

2

‘Office of the future’ experiment on the top floor of Bell Sygma’s six-storey

3

office building.1

4

When the project started, ideas about workspace transformation,

5

shrinking office size and the large-scale installation of systems furniture in an

6

open-plan concept were in evidence, but had not been widely implemented.

7

The sixth floor at that time looked like all the other office floors in the building.

8

Beige walls, gray carpet, brown desks enclosed by 60-inch moveable beige

9

partitions, fluorescent lighting overhead, a computer on every desk and a

40

visitor chair in every cubicle. The most attractive features of the building were

1

its column-free floor area, and its large windows in a continuous band around

2

the perimeter. The suburban location meant a bucolic view of grass and trees, 131

The workspace transformation imperative

the Ottawa River and, in the far distance, Dorval Airport. The lack of neighboring buildings meant direct sun for most of the day, with some heat gain and window glare. The people working on floor six complained mostly about the noise – people moving around, talking to each other over partitions, calling across to see if someone they wanted was sitting in their cubicle. They also complained about the poor ergonomics of their desk arrangements – computer equipment had been placed on desks not designed for computer use and people had aching backs and necks, as well as wrist and finger problems. The four meeting rooms on the floor, which could be collapsed into two larger conference rooms, were always reserved and never available. There was a chronic shortage of space for the frequent short-term projects that usually involved employees from other companies coming to work with in-house teams for anywhere from three weeks to six months. There were also several contractors at any one time, working for temporary periods in the building. The forest of cubicles did not leave much space for visitors’ desks or project war rooms. The team designated to design and implement the office of the future comprised an architect, a work environment specialist, a project manager from Bell Canada real estate services and the facilities manager from Bell Sygma.2 Both Bell Canada and Bell Sygma were organizations with traditional hierarchical cultures. Bell Sygma had grown out of the old, pre-computer accounting arm of Bell Canada – a traditionalist assortment of accountants and book-keepers – and had in recent years taken on younger, computer sciencetrained software engineers who wore jeans to work and liked to work late and order in pizza. The 1990s was a period of rapid expansion and change in the telecommunications industry, with mergers and alliances among telecoms, a vast and rapidly-increasing array of services available to customers and a new world of mobile and wireless technology. Customer billing software was complex, challenging and fast-paced. Bell Sygma was a suitable candidate for future-oriented workspace design. The sixth floor occupants were not thrilled at the idea of being guinea pigs for a new work environment. Early meetings were held to get all workgroups involved, interviews were organized to collect information for programming new space, everyone on the floor filled out a survey questionnaire about their space and representatives from each team were assigned responsibility for participating in the new space planning process. Some of the ideas the design team proposed included removing all screens and partitions from around workstations, providing mobile furniture (desks, partitions, file cabinets on wheels), and an indoor ‘garden’ with café-style tables and chairs. They also outlined a major new telecommuting initiative that would enable people to do most of their concentrated work at home, and several small 132

The workspace transformation imperative

122

team meeting spaces around the perimeter of the floor where teams could

2

work together. Wireless communications technology would mean that people

3

could easily change desks according to project needs.

4

Employees resisted these ideas with some energy. They went into

5

battle to get some – any! – partitioning of individual workstations, finally

6

settling for a height of 48 inches. They accepted furniture on wheels, but

7

signed petitions against moving around to sit at different desks depending on

8

their task requirements. They complained about noise and interruptions, but

9

agreed that, working in clusters of four, the shared printout many of them

10

needed was easier to access and people could see where co-workers were

1

when they needed them. There was less calling out to people in neighboring

2

cubicles, and more movement as people went to consult and collaborate with

3

colleagues at their desks. Space was set aside next to the windows with

4

whiteboards and seating at modular tables to facilitate project team meetings,

522

and sometimes empty pizza boxes were found there in the mornings. Each

6

area of the floor now had access to two enclosed offices with glass walls,

7

each with room for a worktable, a computer and some chairs, which people

8

reserved for more private meetings or for solitary work. The garden area next

9

to the windows had coffee available and provided space to meet visitors or

20

talk informally.3 The effect of these innovations, along with the new, light-

1

weight furniture and the computer-friendly lighting that reflected up to the

2

ceiling and bathed the space in a healthy glow, made the previously dull, static,

3

uniform space open, dynamic and colorful without moving off the floor or out

4

of the building!

5

People had plenty of time to get used to the changes and to make

6

their opinions known. A three-dimensional model was on display, showing

7

workers that the new space contained not only smaller desks with lower

8

partitions but also the garden coffee area with a view and small, adjustable

9

workstations for contractors and visiting teams. Employees participated in

302

planning sessions, feedback sessions and gripe sessions. The design team

1

surveyed them with questionnaires and in focus groups. Research results

2

were published in the company newsletter and a call-in telephone line was

3

set up for people to phone in comments and questions. Drawings of the new

4

space were pinned up near the elevator for everyone to see, and some exam-

5

ples of new office furniture were installed and tested by occupants. These

6

measures helped the employees accept and adapt to the changes, considered

7

radical at the time. The generous feedback also indicated to the design team

8

limits beyond which change would not be tolerated. For example, low parti-

9

tions around workstations were preferable to none at all; and enclosed offices

40

for the three team leaders on the floor were insisted on by all.

1

The final test of the effectiveness of the new workspace concept

2

came when the design team presented the concept to senior executives in 133

The workspace transformation imperative

Bell Canada and Bell Sygma. Reactions were mixed, but over time most of the ideas have since been accepted and implemented into the redesign of the other office floors and other buildings that Bell Sygma employees occupy. It has become no longer an office of the future, but a type and scale of change embraced throughout the company, as it has in numerous other companies. This kind of transformation of the work environment has been welcomed as a team-friendly and cost-effective alternative to the rows of old, gray, partitioned cubicles. On the other hand, like the cases described in Chapter 2, the Bell Sygma project illustrates how users’ territoriality, need for privacy and concerns with status come to the fore in the context of change and uncertainty. The urgent need to address the sociospatial contract was met by the very explicit involvement of employees in the process of workspace transformation. As the above account shows, they were clearly partners in the change management process. At Bell Sygma and elsewhere, employees who have worked out an accommodation with the existing space – however uncomfortable it is – are not ready to see it alter. Imminent change means they must defend territory by demanding privacy, protecting status and holding on to control. Old territories may be lost and new territories must be defined through the change process, although we do not necessarily know how this is done. As we have seen, workspace change sparks an upsurge of employee interest and energy; there is something about the immediacy of space – it is tangible and right there – that forces people to make it a priority. Managers need to capitalize on their employees’ energy and the lively attention that accompanies workspace transformation as an opportunity to renegotiate the sociospatial contract. They need to ensure that the company derives maximum benefit from the opportunity for change, and to avoid users focusing their energy on resisting, countering and undoing change initiatives. This is the opportunity workspace transformation offers. Transforming space signifies the opportunity to improve the organization–accommodation (O–A) relationship, moving from ‘neutral’ to ‘positive’ or even ‘value-added’; it signifies the opportunity to make explicit and renegotiate the sociospatial contract so that the place employees occupy in an organization is redefined to everyone’s satisfaction when space is changed. It signifies the opportunity to derive maximum benefit from the energy and emotional investment that people make in the workspace they occupy. This opportunity in fact is more than an invitation; it is a compelling consequence of workspace change. As such, it is imperative that companies take a holistic view and integrate accommodation into their organizational system, in order to draw the full benefit from workspace transformation and avoid the damaging effects of failing to do so. This chapter describes best practices for managing workspace change in order to respect territoriality, harness positive energy, optimize 134

The workspace transformation imperative

122

functional comfort, enhance performance (productivity) and make the socio-

2

spatial contract explicit. The seven principles of workspace transformation

3

that follow describe how to respond to these imperatives.

4 5 6 7

The transformation imperative: why invest in change?

8 9

The first step in transforming workspace is to take time to understand where

10

a company stands with regards to the desirability of change and how realistic

1

is its vision. As the cases described in this book show, companies decide

2

to effect workspace change for economic, cultural, design and functional

3

reasons. The relative importance of these reasons varies in each case.

4

Companies whose change drivers are primarily economic aim to occupy

522

smaller or cheaper space, fit more people into existing space, or find a way

6

to spend less money on space. Even these companies are aware that there

7

are limits on how much one can compress workers and still expect them to

8

be productive. Economic reasons for change are usually accompanied by a

9

parallel interest in maintaining or increasing productivity. If a company can save

20

almost one million dollars a year and provide a comfortable, modern, efficient

1

and productive workspace for staff, then economic objectives have been met.

2

This is what the Bank of Boston did when it moved its back office operations

3

to a distant suburb, bringing all workgroups under the same roof using light-

4

weight, moveable furniture and a flexible overhead cabling system.4

5

Among the cultural reasons companies change their workspace

6

are modernizing operations, streamlining image and positioning the company

7

for the future. The venerable US retailer Sears Roebuck built the Sears tower

8

to great fanfare in the late 1970s, and was assaulted during the 1980s by the

9

rapid growth of computer technology and retail competition. It finally became

302

evident that occupying a vertical series of spaces, which limited communi-

1

cation and increased the costs of moves and changes, as well as limiting

2

cabling space, was not a way to ensure the company’s future.5 Sears manage-

3

ment decided to move out of downtown Chicago to one of its suburbs, to

4

occupy a completely new building (built by a developer, to facilitate eventually

5

leasing out space) with large floorplates to ensure horizontal relationships and

6

encourage contact among the 6,000 or so people working there. In the late

7

1990s, Cabot Corporation in Boston moved out of a traditional, respectable

8

suite of old-fashioned offices lining darkened corridors with secretaries at their

9

desks outside each boss’s office to an airy and colorful new space, with

40

exposed ceilings, glass-walled offices, and an elegantly comfortable café-

1

bistro just inside the front entrance. This traditional Boston company was

2

seeking a new, contemporary image and a more open collaborative culture. 135

The workspace transformation imperative

Companies that favor innovative design tend to be driven by a need for a new look, for ‘branding’, for marketing image. Companies like Chiat-Day in the 1980s and IBM Global in the 1990s want to make a statement through the design of their workspace. Innovative design is a way of breaking links with history, or with a previous management team or CEO. For a company like Sun Microsystems, business strategies were explicitly linked to workplace design from an early stage.6 As Sun grew in the 1980s, its real estate strategy shifted from incremental, short-term responses to changing conditions within a loose planning framework to a value-based approach. In the words of a senior executive ‘Space here is seen as an employee benefit.’ Such design reasons for workspace change can lead to aesthetic change, a new look, colorful design, as well as to a new concept of workspace and new ways of working. Finally, some companies are convinced of functional reasons for change. Their leaders believe, without needing a demonstration, that welldesigned innovative workspace can increase productivity, make employees feel better as well as work better, help people communicate and motivate people to use new tools and technology. The three companies described in Chapter 2 had functional reasons in mind when they launched their workspace transformation initiatives. Innovative companies, like Ernst and Young Corporate Innovations, Muzak, Google Inc. and even governments have used innovative design to serve functional purposes such as enhancing innovation and creativity in their staff.7 Distinguished by their embracing of values other than those that typify conventional corporate real estate decision-making, companies like these dynamically affect the state of today’s workspace. They fly in the face of decisions driven by the stance of the contemporary investor, whose values were summarized – albeit in rather inflammatory fashion – in a recent New York Times article as, ‘Just give me back as much money as possible. Gouge consumers, cheat employees, poison the environment, lie to the public markets – just do it all sufficiently artfully that it doesn’t dent my portfolio.’8 Workspace transformation will not be fully realized unless the values associated with the imperative of maximum return on shareholder investment are adjusted. The sociospatial contract requires that workspace decisions take into consideration the value of investing in employees and evaluating space-related decisions according to criteria of environmental quality and task performance comfort. Whether companies are primarily driven by economic, cultural, design or functional reasons for workspace change, it is imperative that these goals be made explicit. In each case, structured attention to the transformation process itself is needed to ensure that the complex levels of expectation and demand inherent in the sociospatial contract are addressed. 136

The workspace transformation imperative

122

Workspace transformation principles

2 3

The following seven workspace transformation principles are based on best

4

practices that can be applied to any change process. They are designed to

5

resolve the territorial dilemmas of transforming workspace as well as being

6

sensitive to functional needs and task performance requirements. They origin-

7

ate with culturally and socially defined ways of occupying three-dimensional

8

space. Using these best practices, problems caused by unfamiliar designs,

9

new technology and new furniture can be addressed and constructive solu-

10

tions identified. A successful process ensures that employees are comfort-

1

able moving into new workspace, that they continue to be productive, and that

2

they do not expend energy struggling against the new space. The environ-

3

mental comfort approach to productivity requires that new workspace support

4

workers (energy-in), and not oblige workers to expend energy in order to be

522

functional (energy-out). And, just as important, the process of change itself

6

provides opportunities to redefine territory and increase environmental control

7

through empowerment. A successful process addresses all three areas of

8

sociospatial contract negotiations.

9

The seven workspace transformation principles listed in Table 6.1

20

are designed to help decision-makers ask the right questions and devise the

1

approach best suited to their particular situation. In the discussion that follows,

2

a best practice is identified for each typical dilemma or area of conflict. These

3

principles can be adapted contextually and applied strategically in workspace

4

change scenarios that are being played out in innumerable organizations.

5

Differences among corporate economic, cultural, design and functional objec-

6

tives must be acknowledged and environmental comfort and the need for terri-

7

tory given priority. Applying these principles generates a transformation

8

process that reconciles concerns about territory, productivity and environ-

9

mental empowerment so that workspace change strengthens and restores

302

the terms of the sociospatial contract.

1 2

Principle number 1: Transformation as imperative

3

Companies cannot afford not to take advantage of the opportunity for organ-

4

izational change and improvement that changing workspace provides. The

5

current business environment, one of constant change and adjustment,

6

requires companies to view their space as part of this changing and adjusting

7

system. Improvements to the efficiency and effectiveness of organizational

8

and work processes are the result of workspace transformation. All workspace

9

reconfiguration offers an opportunity for improvement, not just to space but

40

at all levels of organizational functioning. Designers understand this, but do

1

not always make it explicit. Design projects are executed in an environment

2

characterized by practical and financial constraints on the one hand and implicit 137

The workspace transformation imperative

Table 6.1 Seven principles of workspace transformation 1

Transformation as imperative

Stakeholders need to recognize and work with workspace design as a tool for change by being responsive to the opportunity offered by the new workspace imperative.

2

Play out the process

Not all stakeholders want workspace change, or tolerate the same degree of innovation; the process must take its course.

3

Embrace conflict

Conflict is inevitable; steps must be taken to manage constructively the energy it releases, to the advantage of the change process.

4

Avoid the default

The default position in all space decision-making is what already exists and what everybody knows (the tried and true), except that it is a reversion to tradition and not a step forward.

5

Not a zero-sum game

For everything taken away from users when workspace is changed, something must be given back; any loss of the familiar is immediate, whereas gains sometimes take time to be felt.

6

Empowerment is key

It is important to environmentally empower workspace users; the strategic approach to user involvement is explicitly designed to fit the project and organizational context.

7

Change is positive

New workspace implies a new social order, new work processes, even new behavioral norms; these must be addressed explicitly as part of the change process.

and non-rational convictions about, and attachments to, place on the other. Few designers have the time and luxury of demonstrating to clients ways of using space change and new workspace planning to improve organizational functioning, and few clients expect or require this as one of the services they pay for. Decision-makers have a choice regarding how far they want to go to take advantage of the opportunity offered by planning new workspace. Every space change means an opportunity that can be taken advantage of a little, or a lot, or not at all. It is surprising how many workspace changes in modern companies take place without awareness of the invitation they offer to improve organizational functioning. This may be because it looks as though extra work is being added to the relatively simple undertaking of moving to a new office – and sometimes this is the case. Conversely, failing to respond to the new workspace opportunity amounts to turning one’s back on planning for the future and on envisaging improvement, and risking negative fallout from doing so. Not all companies are equipped to analyze their existing business processes with a view to improving them; in fact not all organizations are 138

The workspace transformation imperative

122

rational enough to be motivated to do so.9 In acknowledging that space

2

change is a tool for organizational change, managers need to commit to a

3

rational analysis of how much and what sort of change they favor; but this

4

does not always happen. In Chapter 2, we saw that the Star Tribune drew

5

this conclusion after the fact, once organizational restructuring was in place;

6

whereas Amoco slowly, and Hypertherm immediately, found ways to take

7

advantage of the new workspace opportunity.

8

Taking a rational approach to planning for change in the O–A rela-

9

tionship can be frustrating in view of the emotional attachment people have

10

to space. But, on some occasions, simply the nature of the decision-making

1

process results in major improvements because rational and non-rational

2

issues have been addressed implicitly. A complete vision of an alternative

3

future is not necessary for the process to be effective. Answers to smaller

4

and more manageable questions about who we are and where we are going

522

– and where we want to live – may be sufficient in situations where managers

6

are afraid to vision the future for fear that what they have now may vanish

7

overnight. Nevertheless, whether they see it at the beginning, middle or

8

end of the process, decision-makers ultimately recognize that planning work-

9

space is a powerful tool to be used to achieve a variety of ends. Responding

20

energetically to the imperative of workspace change ensures that the implicit

1

sociospatial contractual assumptions about employee commitment and

2

productivity on the one hand and wages, benefits, and security on the other

3

will be made explicit.

4

The diagram in Figure 6.1 illustrates various scales of workspace

5 6 7 8

transformation, each offering opportunities for organizational change. At one 6.1 The new workspace opportunity

end of the continuum, reconfiguring workspace is a normal part of everyday work life: groups merge or grow, people need to move next to each other, a department moves on to another floor or into another building – in the

9

Churn

Space imposed

Continuum of change

Transformation

Space created

302 139

The workspace transformation imperative

industry this is called ‘churn’. While this is accepted as a cost of doing business, moving telephones and computer equipment can be an important item on the cost side of the ledger. The diagram shows the other end of the spectrum as a major move – building a new building, or moving all departments under one roof, or shrinking offices and moving everyone into an openplan environment. Better characterized as transformation, such changes are a major opportunity for streamlining, cost-cutting, improving technology and changing culture. Workspace change projects can be located at intermediate points along the continuum. At the churn end of the scale, the opportunity for change is small. Maybe employees move closer to equipment they use often, or visitors get a new waiting area, or walls that block the windows are removed to allow more natural light. Moving closer to the transformation end of the continuum, the opportunity for change increases and becomes more urgent: in other words, ignoring it increases the risk of lost benefits to the organization. As described in Chapter 5, feedback from users is a critical ingredient of the new workspace opportunity; the need for user involvement increases with the degree of change envisaged. At the small end of the scale of change, feedback might be applied to improving thermal comfort or lighting; workers may perform better clustered in pods or around war rooms, instead of lined up in ‘six packs’ and ‘eight packs’ of back-to-back workstations. As plans are drawn up, these and other functional comfort improvements are at issue; adequate feedback may come from intermittent employee consultation with most workspace decisions likely to be imposed. However, as the scale of workspace change moves towards cultural transformation, user involvement must increase and users must be empowered to make decisions. The scale of user involvement keeps pace with the scale of opportunity. Minimally, employees are consulted; more ambitious consultation leads to involvement in decision-making; at the large end of the scale of workspace transformation, employees need some control over decisions. Examples of the various tools and techniques for consultation, involvement and empowerment are provided throughout the case studies described in these chapters.10 Managing user participation ensures that user control and decision latitude keeps pace with the psychological demands of the situation. In this way, territorial needs are met with both workers and employers feeling that the contractual obligations symbolized by workspace are being met. Principle number 2: Play out the process People at different levels and with different functions in the organization react differently to the idea of change, and therefore to the possibilities of workspace transformation. For example, the closer the change opportunity is to the 140

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122

transformation end of the continuum shown in Figure 6.1, the more senior

2

management and the CEO is likely to be involved in and even leading the

3

change. Other stakeholders include middle managers and departmental

4

leaders who have to make decisions about the space their staff will occupy,

5

while at the same time protecting their own status and often hard-won terri-

6

torial boundaries. Employees are also stakeholders, but they are not always

7

given a voice, although they are the worker bees who stand to gain or lose

8

most from new space. The facilities staff, or the person who manages accom-

9

modation along with a number of other administrative responsibilities, also has

10

a point of view; and finally the consultants from outside the organization have

1

opinions based on their specialized knowledge and experience. Because each

2

interest group has different priorities, a major challenge in the early stages of

3

the process is to find ways of aligning stakeholders’ priorities so that the

4

project advances towards real change and does not revert to the ‘tried and

522

true’ (see the next principle).

6

Not all stakeholders want change, or want the same amount of

7

change, and some actively resist change. The chart in Table 6.2 can be used

8

to analyze how stakeholder differences play out in a company’s space

9

change initiative. ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ simplify the complex reasons people have for

20

supporting or resisting change, and their positions may change as reasons

1

come to light and can be addressed by the process.

2

Workspace transformation stories, such as those in Chapter 2, can

3

be plotted on this chart. At the Star Tribune, senior management, middle

4

management and design consultants favored change, but employees and

5

facilities staff did not. At Amoco Oil and Gas, it was the facilities team

6

who encouraged middle managers to try out the new teamspace concept, and

7

senior executives in Chicago did not know what was going on until significant

8 9 302

Table 6.2 Consensus matrix on transforming workspace

1

YES Senior Middle management management

2

NO

3

Senior management

4 5 6

Middle management

7

Employees

Employees

Facilities staff

Design consultants

8 9 40 1 2

Facilities staff Design consultants

141

The workspace transformation imperative

changes had already been made. At Hypertherm, senior management drove change, and was supported by the design consultants; those in the other categories were negative or neutral. Using the transformation process to understand where stakeholders stand on change is a useful way of mapping likely areas of conflict and taking steps to respond appropriately. Depending on their placement on the chart, different behaviors can be anticipated. For example, where consultants recommend change but none of the managers want it, facilities staff may go out on a limb to support their designers. But if employees, managers and the CEO all say no, their initiative is unlikely to advance. Without management support, pressure for change from other groups gets winnowed down to something resembling the status quo. Sometimes, workers themselves favor change and have to convince their managers and the facilities staff of the advantages of investing in improved workspace. Employees also tend to ‘sound the alarm’ when they have been moved into new workspace that they do not like. It is therefore difficult to know whether the call for change is along the lines of ‘anything would be better than this’ or more of a real bottom-up change initiative for which workers are prepared to take responsibility. Stakeholders are aware that organizational culture and values are effectively transmitted through workspace and building decisions.11 The values of the organizational culture affect the change process, often as a result of the influence of corporate history. Both pro-change and antichange proponents must understand that not all aspects of an organization’s culture need to be thrown out when change is envisioned: part of workspace transformation is to decide what to keep and what to change. Some companies have important cultural ties to their communities, and do not want to lose them. Others have traditional corporate rituals and symbols that give the corporation a human face to its employees. A recently built corporate headquarters in Montreal has imprinted all the words that indicate its corporate values on the glass walls that soar above the six-storey atrium. The magnified letters are projected into the interior by the light outside, carpeting the interior walls and floor of the atrium – and even the faces of passers-by! In the process of deciding what to keep and what to drop, the yesgroups and the no-groups have to negotiate. Whether this is done explicitly, around visioning and goal-setting sessions in which all stakeholders participate, or whether it is done implicitly, with conflict and contradiction erupting whenever the design team presents plans and models, in the end differences are inevitably negotiated. The outcome should be at the limits of tolerance for change in that organization. The fact that all stakeholders have a different attitude towards and tolerance of change is an indicator of the importance of the process selected and an indicator of the inevitability of conflict. 142

The workspace transformation imperative

122 2 3 4 5 6

6.2 Atrium window in the new headquarters of the Caisse de Dépôt et Placement in Montreal

7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 522 6 7 8

Principle number 3: Embrace conflict

9

Territorial conflicts were described in Chapter 5. Conflict is inherent in the

20

process of transforming workspace and the energy released by conflict can

1

be dynamic and constructive when it is not invested in protecting territory. In

2

order to effect a successful transformation initiative, it is necessary to identify

3

where the impetus for change is coming from, and where there are blockages.

4

To plan the process strategically, decision-makers need to understand the

5

reasons different interest groups have for saying ‘yes’ to workspace change.

6

It may not be obvious what kind of change an organization expects, wants or

7

is able to identify. On the other hand, the reasons for saying ‘no’ to change

8

are usually easy to identify and often explicit. Thus the type and style of resist-

9

ance to change can easily be anticipated, and many examples have been

302

provided in these pages. Each situation brings with it a range of different yes’s

1

and no’s, some with clear and explicit reasons and some with hidden agendas.

2

Embracing and resolving conflict allows the organization’s degree

3

of tolerance for change to be identified. In the transformation process various

4

workspace scenarios are played out and various conflicts come to the fore.

5

Sometimes the conflicts result in people losing their jobs; for example, con-

6

sultants are fired, or some employees lose patience and leave. Sometimes

7

conflict is expressed in the form of threats: signed petitions, union action,

8

official complaints. The architectural design process is a useful tool in the

9

process of negotiating change. Sometimes this happens inadvertently, as

40

was the case at Hypertherm when the client saw a set of drawings for

1

proposed new space and reacted by saying, ‘We don’t know what we want

2

but we know we don’t want this.’ A designer who spends time repeatedly 143

The workspace transformation imperative

redrawing plans and trying to pin down vague concepts and ideas inadvertently becomes an agent of change. However, in a managed transformation process, design decision-making can be structured rather than inadvertent: the designer produces sketches and graphic ideas in order to elicit reactions and feedback and help stakeholders come to consensus. The consultant’s role is then defined differently: as a hands-on facilitator rather than a hands-off design services provider. Instead of trying desperately to get approval for her notion of what the client wants, the designer uses her thinking to engage the client in making what they want explicit. Carrying out this process effectively is satisfying for all concerned, and can provide a solid basis for going forward with design development and detailed space decisions. Tactics to get people talking about space and making their values explicit include extreme scenarios (‘let’s take away all partitions around cubicles’), status challenges (‘let’s put all the senior executives in open workstations’), and futuristic scenarios (what about wireless communications, remote work, mobile offices, new intranet portals. . .?). But such tactics are only effective when stakeholders use them to engage in debate that makes their values explicit. Transforming workspace encourages open debate around new ideas and takes time to reach consensus. If these debates come too late in the process, the design process becomes drawn out and expensive; too early in the process, there is too much time for organized resistance and sabotage by dissenters. Conflict intimidates many people and in many organizational cultures overt conflict is considered wrong or shameful, somehow evidence of failure. Conflicts that focus on space are a less threatening and problematic way to express value differences, making people’s differing viewpoints more explicit and more manageable. This enables some of the unacknowledged assumptions of the sociospatial contract to be recognized and negotiated. Principal number 4: Avoid the default The language clients and users use (‘demand’), and the language building professionals and designers use (‘supply’) are not the same.12 One effect of this difference is that at certain critical decision points along the way, clients and users do not have a response to the questions they are being asked and cannot provide needed feedback about space use. They cannot easily envision future space, what a new place will look like, how it will affect them, whether or not they will be able to work comfortably. This knowledge vacuum creates pressure to go back to what is already known – the default position. This pressure exists throughout the workspace change process. It can take the form of a covert pressure to protect territorial boundaries and maintain the status quo. Clients and facilities managers often consider it simpler to ‘go with whatever is already there’; the groups favoring change and the new workspace opportunity need to know when to push back. Consultants will not 144

The workspace transformation imperative

122

often push back because they do not want to be fired. Unless they are leading

2

the change, users tend to exert pressure to avoid the unknown.

3

Requiring participants to be explicit about the goals and business

4

objectives of workspace change is useful, especially at the beginning of the

5

process. But it is not enough – these must be documented and accepted by

6

all stakeholders. If not, they will later on remember important priorities they

7

did not think of at the beginning, and they will forget the important priorities

8

that they set at the beginning. For example, ‘Yes, give everyone a cubicle,

9

including managers – how innovative and daring!’ easily becomes, ‘What? You

10

mean I do not have an office? Well, change that!’ When people think too much

1

about resisting territorial change and not about how they work and what they

2

need as tools for work, they end up talking themselves out of innovation.

3

Writing decisions down, making lists of goals and objectives, drafting design

4

principles to guide later stage decision-making – all these are tactics that help

522

move the process forward. Then later on, during construction, when the

6

designer or builder has to make a last-minute change or is missing some key

7

information, the knowledge is there in the group to ensure that the spirit of

8

innovation and change is respected. This avoids an automatic reversion to

9

‘tried and true’ ways of doing things, for example, bring back private offices

20

along the perimeter wall, keep low ceilings for conventional lighting, ‘lose’ the

1

outdoor courtyards, and so on. . . .

2

An important corollary of the pressure to default to the tried and

3

true is the invocation, especially once construction starts, of the ‘cost overrun’

4

argument. As described in Chapter 5, clients, designers and builders use cost

5

increases as an excuse for avoiding innovation. Whether or not participants’

6

new ideas are really pushing up costs, invoking this argument can effectively

7

apply the brakes to real change. The whole question of whether or not innova-

8

tive workspace is more costly than conventional offices and conference

9

rooms is more complex than the easily understood but incomplete conven-

302

tional real estate formulas such as cost-per-square foot and net(useable)-to-

1

gross floor area. If workspace innovation, like new technology and business

2

processes, is predicated on improving worker performance and making it

3

easier and quicker to perform tasks, then costs are really investment and

4

a return rather than a loss should be expected.

5

Excessive or unexpected cost is often and easily invoked as a

6

reason to undo change-making decisions or to revert to that which is already

7

known because learning has not occurred. Organizational learning can be

8

‘single loop’, where change is made to fix a problem that has been recognized

9

and identified; or it can be ‘double loop’, in which case the whole organiza-

40

tional system and the way it operates changes through learning.13 Decision-

1

makers using the simple deterministic approach based on a presumed

2

cause–effect link between workspace design and employee productivity 145

The workspace transformation imperative

look for a justification in terms of ‘proof’ of improved productivity for environmental improvement or innovation. As this ‘proof’ is not easily forthcoming, the excuse is there to stay with the status quo. If proof is satisfactorily supplied, environmental change may occur, but the change that is accepted indicates single loop organizational learning: the system itself has not changed. Calculating workspace decisions in terms of investment in employee comfort (and therefore in employee effectiveness in the organization) on the basis of empowering employees to provide feedback that indicates where environmental investment is needed, requires changing the whole system and embracing new values: double loop learning. Simple cost-benefit analysis is not easily adapted to organizational learning: doing everything the same way each time you move, renovate or build is simpler, quicker and possibly cheaper. But not taking advantage of transforming workspace is costly in terms of a lost opportunity, lost productivity increases, lost competitive advantage. Principle number 5: Not a zero-sum game Fear of loss is an area of territorial conflict. Rarely do people think about what they might gain from new workspace, only about what they are losing. When space-use rationalization arguments and occupancy costs are advanced to support proposed change, employees see all gains going to the organization and all losses being sustained by themselves. Conventional decision-making, where no feedback is sought from users and short-term priorities oriented to shareholder returns guide decisions, this may indeed be the case. But to respond to the new workspace imperative, a directed effort must be made to demonstrate that, while there is some loss during the process, ultimately there are gains to both sides. The key to creating a win–win situation is disseminating information. If gains in functional comfort and productivity, as well as cost savings, are the objectives of the innovative workspace project, then all stakeholders must be informed. It can take months after moving before people who fought against smaller workstations, lower partitions and clustered layouts find out that they like being close to co-workers, talking to others without having to call meetings and being able to access other spaces on their floor when they need to concentrate or meet privately. Compensation for territorial loss may be in the form of more shared resources: group territory. At Bell Sygma, employees concerned about the reduced size of their individual workstations were encouraged to think of the whole floor as their ‘office’, compensating for individual loss with more generous shared spaces (the meeting space next to windows, the garden coffee area) and more choices for their teams. However, these employees complained about having to adopt a socialist perspective, where all that was once their own – territory, advancement, 146

The workspace transformation imperative

122

seniority – suddenly became dependent on team performance, and the

2

amenities that accompany success had to be shared. In situations where the

3

individual feels territorial loss because territorial gains are made at the scale of

4

the group, a team philosophy or esprit de corps is needed to make the com-

5

pensation effective. Some companies that built ‘teamspace’ were surprised

6

when employees did not acquire an immediate team spirit and viewed the

7

change as territorial loss.

8

The experience of loss is part of the change process – people resist

9

loss, they fight not to have loss, they feel grief when loss occurs. Gains are

10

not automatic – some teaching and preparation is needed so that people learn

1

to function in new ways and take advantage of the interesting new possibili-

2

ties their new space presents. Unless they are specifically taught to do other-

3

wise, people import their old ways of working and their old processes into

4

new workspace. Inevitably the new space ‘does not work’ and there is an

522

even more acute sense of loss. The more loss is experienced (and unacknow-

6

ledged), the more betrayed employees feel by the implicit contract. However,

7

using a transformation process makes it possible to build gains into new

8

workspace. The table presented in Chapter 2, showing typical workspace

9

changes and the territorial threats they represent, is presented again below

20

with each workspace change represented as either a loss or a territorial

1

gain. The difference is in the way the change process is managed. While the

2

threat of territorial loss automatically accompanies all workspace change

3

initiatives, the possibility of gains must be learned. The most powerful anti-

4

dote to territorial loss is empowerment through information and involvement.

5 6 7

Table 6.3 Choosing between losses and gains

8 9 302

Proposed change

As a loss

As a gain

Flexible furniture layouts

means

Being ‘homeless’

or

1

Having access to more space and therefore to a bigger ‘home’

2

Shared file storage

means

Losing one’s ‘history’

or

Easy way of disseminating information and sharing knowledge

Shared offices

means

No right to privacy

or

Sharing the work and working together; mentoring

Low partitions

means

Being watched

or

Watching, listening and learning

Informal meeting places

means

Not serious work

or

More freedom in how and where work is done

Mobility

means

Sense of impermanence; replaceability

or

Autonomy; trust

Employee participation

means

Chance to grab territory or

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40 1 2

Empowerment and sense of control

147

The workspace transformation imperative

Principle number 6: Empowerment is key As with all organizational change – including workspace change – the people affected by change need to have some involvement in order for the changes to be successful. Ernst and Young used to quote a statistic that 70 per cent of all attempted organizational change initiatives ended in failure. One of their conclusions was that failures occurred when an insufficient number of people bought into the change. Because people’s territorial rules and boundaries are so emotional, users need some control over decisions, and to be effectively involved they need to be informed. This is what is meant by environmental empowerment. Deciding which decisions they have a say in, at which stages in the process they are consulted and how much control they have over the outcome are key issues in the design of the strategic process. There is no one right way of empowering people to make decisions about their workspace. The old idea of ‘user participation’ where designers present their ideas to large user committees and sit for six or eight hours a week in drawn-out consultations is not strategic; it is a recipe for frustration and cost overruns. The modern concept of empowerment is based on user feedback and consultation opportunities designed to be effective within specific time and cost parameters and to respond to real project constraints. By being clear and explicit about how much control users have and when they may exercise it, decision-makers can perform the important act of actually giving away control for that part of the process. Some projects hand over more control than others – for example, Digital’s sales force in Finland and Sears E-commerce group in Idaho are groups that designed their own workspace. In other companies, and depending on the type of project, a wide range of styles and degrees of empowerment have been developed, drawing from a variety of participation techniques and selected to correspond to the scale of transformation opportunity.14 A major advantage of involving users is that their personal knowledge about functional comfort can inform decisions. Workers themselves are the experts on how their jobs are done. The experiences they have had, the ideas they present and the information they share all help improve the quality of decisions, especially functional comfort decisions such as distance from co-workers and equipment, special lighting or acoustic requirements, and needed furniture elements. Techniques such as Building-In-Use Assessment, described in Chapter 5, that help to access this kind of information need to be part of a phased and planned strategic approach: gathering knowledge about how people work is not the same as asking people to plan their own workspace. Indeed, as we have seen in Principle number 4, with too much say in the process, workers tend to favor workspace design that reproduces much 148

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122

of what they already have. Thus the approach to involving users – the

2

user involvement strategy – must be as carefully designed and managed

3

as the design process itself – a point that the cases described in Chapter 2

4

make clear.15

5

There are many ways of environmentally empowering users and

6

not all of them work well in all situations. Topping the list of disincentives is

7

time – time spent in design meetings or choosing furniture is time spent away

8

from the job. Not only do managers not welcome these kinds of interruptions,

9

but also workers themselves are often not comfortable spending their time

10

on tasks that do not directly affect their work. Another barrier to empower-

1

ment is aversion to conflict. People have different ideas about space and how

2

it should work, and not everyone likes to stand up and express unpopular ideas

3

to their peers. A third barrier is the disempowerment most office-workers feel

4

towards their space. Accustomed to being told where to sit and what kind of

522 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

workspace they can have, employees in many companies lack the confidence to make responsible decisions. Workers should be informed so that they can make decisions themselves – not just provided with information about the decisions the design team or CEO is making on their behalf. Managers and design professionals need to remember that empowering others means giving away some of their own power!16 Balancing users’ involvement in decisions with letting them guide the design process means employees who exercise their power responsibly and do not try to take over the process. This is one form that a successfully negotiated sociospatial contract can take. Principle number 7: Change is positive Workspace transformation is by nature a positive force. It is negative when workspace is changed without attending to its effects on the social order, behavioral norms and work processes: in short, without integrating space into

302

a holistic vision of the organization. Looked at this way, the presence of a facil-

1

itator can help move the process forward constructively. When stakeholders

2

are unwilling or unable to resolve or even tolerate conflict, a facilitator leads

3

an explicit strategic workspace planning process designed to have buy-in at

4

all levels. Knowing they will have a chance to voice their opinion helps stake-

5

holders be more tolerant of different points of view. In addition, such a process

6

allows decision-makers to determine limits on employee empowerment, such

7

as degree of participation, time and cost containment and fundamental values

8

and principles to be respected. This ensures accountability and ensures that

9

the process will move forward and not get bogged down.

40

Facilitating the empowerment process along these lines goes

1

a long way towards making workspace decisions more rational while at the

2

same time responding to the symbolic meaning of space in terms of the 149

The workspace transformation imperative

contract with employees. Opportunities are lost and costs incurred when a company seeking workspace transformation and desirous of using it to make improvements throughout the organization makes no effort to alter the traditional space planning and design processes. Conventional design decisionmaking is not facilitated, and workspace decisions are made on the basis of one person or committee giving approval to plans and specifications presented by design consultants. In such a context, desired change founders on the shoals of territorial defense, lack of user empowerment, and the pressure to revert to old familiar ways of doing things. As a result, workers may protest and even mutiny – sometimes after move-in. In one publishing company that imposed open-plan workstations on its employees, the editors went out and leased conventional office space in another building in order to get back their enclosed offices. In this case, where people worked individually and had to concentrate on reading and writing for most of the day, there seemed little rationale for open cubicles. On the other hand, if senior management had made explicit their objectives for a more open workspace, empowering employees to make decisions about both their own and the company’s goals, maybe the editors would have developed more sympathy for a changed way of working. They might have chosen to adapt their work processes and to argue for increased functional comfort; they would have made the move with less resentment. By leaving the new headquarters to occupy space elsewhere, the editors acted territorially without empowerment and the company lost money and productivity. Not all companies that fail to pay attention to workspace transformation see the costs of not doing so as clearly. The Bell Sygma story showed that, in order to be successful, a new workspace must be more than innovation for the sake of innovation. Ten years after the Bell Sygma experiment, more companies are hiring designers to create flashy, catchy workspace with ‘bistros’ and gleaming Italian light fixtures, large surfaces painted primary colors, with glass walls and wood floors. These delightful flights of fancy help to liven up the normally dreary interiors of most contemporary office buildings. But the Bell Sygma design team had another agenda: they studied users’ work patterns and organizational values; they encouraged employees to get involved, stating their tastes and preferences as well as their reservations and dislikes. The process was concerned with ensuring that new workspace meet the dual objectives of protecting what the organization values and its traditions (psychological comfort), while helping make people better at what they do (functional comfort). The overall effect of their workspace transformation was not only positive, it was long-lasting and profound.

150

The workspace transformation imperative

122

Planning the revolution

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 522 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4

The best practices described above come together as the workspace transformation imperative. Effective transformation requires identifying stakeholders and the kind of interests they have, managing the conflicts that arise through the workspace design process and working with the internal forces of corporate culture that impose limits and define the degree of change that is tolerable. The value of transforming workspace lies in increasing environmental comfort, offering environmental empowerment to employees, and negotiating the sociospatial contract successfully. What does this mean in practice? Informing employees about their space, how it works, why they have this and not another one and what changes they can expect, amounts to a revolutionary approach. Space is one area that, even in the most democratic of organizations, is habitually imposed on workers and over which they rarely think of having a say. In order to test the potential of environmental empowerment, certain issues need to be addressed. These include defining a framework of quality criteria for good (energy-in) workspace that has generic application and can be applied to the practicalities of the space design process. Seeking feedback from users on their psychological and functional comfort is one way to do this. The best practices of workspace transformation make the hidden issues and concerns that affect the psychological comfort of stakeholders in a workspace planning process explicit, and thereby

5

open each decision to user input. In this way, the negotiation between

6

employees and employer about the former’s place in the company, the space

7

they occupy and the expectations about role, responsibility and status in

8

return for the employees’ time, energy and knowledge, becomes explicit

9

and manageable.

302

Modern office planning is typically a losing ground proposition

1

characterized by shrinking individual workspace and employees’ fear of losing

2

status and being de-valued. Corporate decision-makers seek to gain ground

3

by making cost-efficient decisions about workspace that result in smaller and

4

more standardized workspace and reduced occupancy costs. Managers also

5

seek to gain ground by changing business processes, adding new technology

6

and expecting employees to work cooperatively in more team-based environ-

7

ments. While these decisions make gains in terms of operating costs,

8

employees experience losses – loss of territory, loss of status, loss of identity.

9

This dilemma arises in part from the cultural symbolism of the space people

40

work in and occupy. The emotional weight of this symbolism is a function of

1

the implicit value that both employer and employees attach to the contractual

2

agreement that the occupation of the employer’s space by the employee 151

The workspace transformation imperative

implies – the sociospatial contract. The power of this contractual agreement lies behind people’s non-rational but deep-rooted emotional attachment to the place where their desk is located and the psychological impetus to act territorially. As corporations transform workspace to reduce occupancy costs, more people work in generic open-plan configurations, are moved around more often, work away from their desks and execute other behaviors in keeping with the requirements of modern business. In so doing, the basic person–space link at the heart of the sociospatial contract is all but destroyed. A responsible and proactive stance towards managing workspace change is the best way to respond. The power of the sociospatial contact explains the importance attributed by employees to their territory at work. Whether it is defined through physical elements, control over information or other rules and procedures of corporate life, employees individually and as workgroups need territorial definition. When companies transform their space in a constructive way, rendering it more dynamic and interactive, giving people more flexibility and more shared resources, but also shrinking individual space and enclosure, employees do not respond warmly. They see this kind of transformation as a loss of individual territory and they resist it. Rational decision-making in the boardroom, aimed at trimming overhead and streamlining operations, translates into loss of home base, shrinking territory, and betrayal of the sociospatial contract. In the larger scheme of things, this chain of events translates into employee discomfort and disillusion rather than a major crisis in the labor force.17 Only a minority of individuals actually feel uncomfortable enough to leave their jobs for this reason alone. But it is a dilemma that has a deadening effect on workers’ performance and prevents companies from deriving the maximum possible advantage from the space they occupy. Viewing space as accommodation rather than simply as a facility has revolutionary ramifications for corporate decision-making. It implies that the space a company ‘lives in’ is a long-term relationship that needs attention and nourishment. Space as accommodation is a critical component of the organizational system; decisions that affect the organization affect its accommodation and vice versa. The processes described in these chapters are aimed at investing in it and improving this holistic view of the organization– accommodation relationship. Analyzing environmental comfort, for example, provides practical details about the way employees use space, on the basis of which improvements can be made so that the space people occupy becomes a useful tool for the performance of work. Three levels of comfort give an indication of the complexity of the concept. Psychological comfort is heavily dependent on territoriality – the complex human need for physical and metaphorical ‘place’. Each of several possible definitions of territoriality says something different about what causes territorial behavior, who displays it, when and 152

The workspace transformation imperative

122

under what conditions and what the behavior is that can be characterized as

2

territorial. Along with territoriality come notions of privacy, status and control –

3

all coming into play when offices are changed, redesigned, shrunk or people’s

4

territories are otherwise tampered with. Environmental comfort is defined in

5

terms of task performance: a company’s accommodation should help users

6

perform work.

7

It is not possible to plan accommodation without considering

8

environmental comfort and, owing to the psychological complexity of the

9

relationship between territory, performance and control, it is not possible to

10

plan accommodation without proposing a new approach to the decision-

1

making process. The new approach is based on providing users with environ-

2

mental control through empowerment. This chapter discussed a variety of

3

ways in which environmental empowerment can be implemented, using

4

information and feedback from users as major tools in decision-making.

522

Transforming the relationship means taking a different view of built

6

space than that which characterizes modern business. Building cheaply or

7

spending money on decorative and image-enhancing features rather than on

8

workspace quality, looking for cause–effect arguments that justify environ-

9

mental improvements in the name of worker productivity, and ‘measuring’

20

the psychology of office-space occupants by simply asking them if they like

1

what they’ve got, are outdated practices that need to be replaced. We now

2

know that environmental quality does affect workers’ performance. We no

3

longer believe in a cause–effect relationship between space design and

4

behavior. We know that seeking user feedback on the complex concept of

5

environmental comfort yields a great deal more than simple assessments

6

of satisfaction levels.

7

Many typical dilemmas that arise when workspace is transformed

8

are issues of change management rather than issues of environmental design,

9

because territorial and status concerns are management issues that affect the

302

terms of the sociospatial contract. To improve the relationship, environmental

1

design decisions need to be based on our growing knowledge of environ-

2

mental comfort, because decisions about space represent an investment in

3

employee comfort and need to be based on the value the company attaches

4

to employee comfort improvement. This makes sense if comfort is under-

5

stood as a complex interaction at many levels, in which users’ performance

6

at work is affected physically, functionally and psychologically. Empowered

7

employees who participate in workspace decision-making, both at the design

8

and the operational stages, acquire new knowledge and a sense of control

9

to bring to negotiating the sociospatial contract. New knowledge and skills

40

may even substitute for lost physical territory and thereby satisfy people’s

1

territorial needs in situations of change. Territorially secure employees can

2

manage issues of privacy, confidentiality and control. Empowerment is a 153

The workspace transformation imperative

control mechanism activated through the process of workspace transformation. Investing in accommodation pays off in terms of better organizational productivity as staff stay longer, take more responsibility and work harder at their jobs.

Notes 1 See Vischer, J. C. (1995) ‘Strategic Workspace Planning’, Sloan Management Review 37(1), 33–42. 2 Michel Dubuc of Dubuc and Dupuis, Architects; Jacqueline Vischer of Buildings-In-Use; Sharron Wylie, Bell Canada space planner and Richard Groulx, Bell Sygma facility manager. 3 McFarland, J. (1995) ‘How to Make the Most of Less Space’, The Globe and Mail Toronto, ON: December 12, p. B9. 4 For a complete account, see Horgen, T., Joroff, M. Porter, W. and Schon, D. (1999) Excellence By Design, Chapter 1, New York: John Wiley and Sons, and Vischer, J. C. (1996) Workspace Strategies, Environment As A Tool For Work, Chapter 1, New York: Chapman and Hall. 5 Vickers, M. (1999)’No More Ivory Towers’, Today’s Facility Manager, September, 1. 6 O’Mara, M. (1999) Strategy and Place, New York: The Free Press. 7 See back issues of @issue: The Journal of Business & Design (published by the Corporate Design Foundation, Boston) for articles on these and other companies with innovative workspace designs; also DEGW (2004) Working Without Walls, London: DEGW. 8 Lewis, M. (2004) ‘The Irresponsible Investor’ The New York Times Magazine, 6 June, 68–71. 9 Mintzberg, H. (1994) The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning: Reconceiving Roles for Planning, Plans, Planners, New York: Free Press and Prentice-Hall International. 10 User involvement techniques scaled to degree of workspace transformation are described in Dewulf, G. and Van Meel, J. (2003) ‘Democracy in Design’, in R. Best, C. Langston, G. de Valence (eds) Workplace Strategies and Facilities Management, Chapter 17, Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann. 11 O’Mara, M. op. cit. p. 283. 12 Blyth, A. and Worthington, J. (2001) Managing the Brief for Better Design, London: Spon Press. 13 Argyris, C. and Schon, D. (1978) Organizational Learning: a Theory of Action Perspective, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company. 14 Sanoff, H. (1999) Community Participation Methods in Design and Planning, New York: John Wiley and Sons. 15 In Part 2 of his book Making and Managing High Quality Workplaces: An Organizational Ecology, New York: Teachers’ College Press, 1986, Fritz Steele outlines each of the steps for an effective workplace-making process. 16 A recent critique of the employee empowerment movement identifies the reluctance to give away control as one of the reasons the movement lacks teeth.See Argyris, C. (1998) ‘Empowerment: the Emperor’s New Clothes’, Harvard Business Review May–June, 98–105. 17 Kilpatrick, A. O. (1999) ‘A New Social Contract for the New Millennium’, Public Administration An Interactive Journal 4(2), 165–183.

154

122 2 3

APPENDIX

4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 522 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 302 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40 1 2 155

Appendix

Building-In-Use Assessment Questionnaire Date ____________________ Building Number _______

Floor _______

Workstation number _______

You will find in the next few pages, a series of simple questions about your work environment. The questions are mostly in the form of a scale from 1 to 5, in which 1 mean uncomfortable and 5 means comfortable. We will analyze your responses to provide a profile of the functional comfort of your work environment, compared to pre-existing norms. This information will be available to you, if you request it. Please answer every question. Please do not discuss your replies with colleagues until after you have completed the survey. You may return completed questionnaires within 24 hours to the research team, or place them in the box for completed questionnaires located on your floor. The identification numbers on each survey form are to aid in data analysis. Please note that all individual responses are anonymous and will remain confidential. Thank you for taking the time to complete this survey (we know you are often asked to fill out questionnaires). Please assess the following aspects of your workspace on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 means uncomfortable and 5 means comfortable and 3 means neutral. Please check one response to each question. Temperature comfort:

1

2

3

4

UNCOMFORTABLE How cold it gets:

1

COMFORTABLE 2

3

4

TOO COLD How warm it gets:

1

1

2

3

4

1

2

3

4

1

2

3

4

1 STAGNANT AIR

156

5 COMFORTABLE

2

3

4

STALE AIR Air movement:

5

CONSTANT TEMPERATURE

UNCOMFORTABLE Air freshness:

5 COMFORTABLE

TOO FREQUENT Ventilation comfort:

5 COMFORTABLE

TOO WARM Temperature shifts:

5

5 FRESH AIR

2

3

4

5

GOOD CIRCULATION

Appendix

122

Noise distractions:

1

2

3

4

5

2 TOO DISTRACTING

3 4

Background noise levels:

5 6 7

1

COMFORTABLE 2

3

4

TOO MUCH NOISE

5 COMFORTABLE

Specific noises (voices, equipment):

1

8

2

3

4

TOO NOISY

5 COMFORTABLE

9 10 1

Noise from the ventilation systems:

1

Noise from lights:

1

4 522 6

3

4

TOO NOISY

2 3

2

5 COMFORTABLE

2

3

4

BUZZING LIGHTS

5 COMFORTABLE

Noise from outside the building:

1

2

3

4

5

7 TOO NOISY

8 9 20

Furniture comfort in your office/workstation:

2

Size of your office/

3

workstation:

4 6

1

2

3

4

UNCOMFORTABLE

1

5

COMFORTABLE

1

5 COMFORTABLE

2

3

4

UNCOMFORTABLE

5 COMFORTABLE

Storage space in your office/workstation:

1

2

3

4

5

7 INADEQUATE

8 9

Access to equipment:

302 1

2

3

4

UNCOMFORTABLE Personal storage:

2

1

Informal meeting spaces:

5

1

2

3

4

Space for collaborative

7

work with colleagues:

8

1

5 ADEQUATE

2

3

4

INADEQUATE

6

5 COMFORTABLE

INADEQUATE

3 4

1

ADEQUATE

5 ADEQUATE

2

3

4

INADEQUATE

5 ADEQUATE

9 40

Space for meetings with visitors:

1

2

3

4

5

1 2

INADEQUATE

ADEQUATE

157

Appendix

Visual privacy:

1

2

3

4

UNCOMFORTABLE Conversation privacy:

1

COMFORTABLE 2

3

4

UNCOMFORTABLE Telephone privacy:

1

1

2

3

4

1

2

3

4

1

2

3

4

1

5 COMFORTABLE

2

3

4

UNCOMFORTABLE Access to daylight:

5 COMFORTABLE

TOO BRIGHT Glare from lights:

5 COMFORTABLE

UNCOMFORTABLE How bright it gets:

5 COMFORTABLE

UNCOMFORTABLE Electric lighting comfort:

5

5 NO GLARE

2

3

4

INADEQUATE

5 ADEQUATE

OVERALL, WOULD YOU SAY THAT YOUR WORKSPACE HELPS OR HINDERS YOU IN YOUR WORK? 1

2

3

MAKES WORK MORE DIFFICULT

4

5

MAKES WORK EASIER

GENERALLY, HOW SATISFIED ARE YOU WITH THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT IN WHICH YOU WORK? 1 DISSATISFIED

158

2

3

4

5 SATISFIED

122 2 3

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3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40 1 2 163

Index

Accenture 17–18, 20

Buontalenti 12

air quality 87, 88; and38 performance 90;

bureaucratic office 5, 19–20

BIU Assessment 110, 111, 112, 113; effect of technology on 89; important

Cabot Corporation 135

component of physical comfort 90–1;

Chiat, Jay 16–17, 18

questionable 119; relationship with

Chiat-Day 16–17, 20, 21, 52, 136

psychological comfort 89–90; and Sick

Cisco Systems 20, 61

Building Syndrome 89; standards of 89

Collaborative and Team Work (CTW) 81

Alcoa 19

comfort see environmental comfort

Allen, Tom 17

communications technology 5

Amoco Oil and Gas 28, 44, 52, 141; and

computers 14

denial/resistance to change 37; employee

control see environmental control

surveys conducted 35; impetus for

Cosimo I 11

restructuring 33–4; and imposition of

cost-benefit analysis 146

change 37–8; and piloting of teamspace concept 34–5; and provision of symbolic

demand-control model, and categories of job

’doors’ 70–1; and teams as business units

productivity/worker effectiveness 116–17;

34; and territoriality 37, 38

and decision latitude 116; development of

architecture 13–14

115–16; and environmental change 121; psychological aspects 118–21; and

Bell Canada 131–2

psychological demands 116; and social

Bell Sygma 20, 146, 150; design ideas 132;

networks/social support 121–2;

and design of office of the future 132–4; involvement of employees 132, 133;

type/strength of social networks 116 design of space, choice/diversity of meeting

problems with space 132; resistance to

places 48; communal, private, individual 47;

suggestions 132–3; and shrinking office size

decisions 150; employee participation in 49;

131; and sociospatial contract 134; and

features of 45–9; flexible, changeable,

systems furniture 131; test of design

reconfigurable layout 46; lower partitions

effectiveness 133–4; top floor experiment

increase visibility 47; shared document/file

131–4; and workspace transformation 131

storage 46; and territorial issues 73; work

Bloomberg, Michael 18

mobility/remote

Bruggen, Coosje van 16

officing 48

Building-In-Use (BIU) Assessment 102, 148;

Digital 148

building-in-use profile 110; database norms

Du Pont 20

110; new building results 112–14; old building results 110–12; in practice 110 buildings, designing/building 8; different types

employees, anxiety/fear of 20–1; and atmosphere of instability 15; effects on

of 7; as expression of cultural values 8;

performance 27; gut-level reactions to

high-rise 8; related to performance of work 9

occupied space 10–11, 15; informing 151;

164

Index

122

and markers of advancement 5; resistance

stress 109, 113–14; supportive/non-

2

to change 3–4, 16–17, 21; role, rank, status

supportive 118; supportive/unsupportive

3 4

of 6, 20, 21, 153; territoriality of 19–22; and well-planned space 27 empowerment, approaches to 123; assigning

108–9, 113; wayfinding 118 environmental control 4, 79, 129, 153; benefits of participatory workplace 121–2; and BIU

5

to employees 123; and benefits of user

Asessment 115; demand-and-control model

6

involvement 148; change as too radical

117–22; and employee empowerment

7

126–7; and conflict 124–9; and

123–4; increased through empowerment

consultation/information-gathering 122, 124;

122–4; and information on building 115; and

and cost-based decisions 124, 127; and

participation in planning/design 115;

9

decision-making 148; difficulties concerning

physical 114–15; psychology research into

10

123–4; facilitating 149–50; and facilities

115; and sociospatial contract 115; and

1

management 122–3, 127; and fear of loss

stress alleviation 114–15; and territoriality

8

2

125–6; and identifying leaders 126; and increasing control 122–4; and mistrust of

72–4, 115 Ernst and Young Corporate Innovations 136

3

superiors 126; and need for learning

4

128–9; of occupants 43; and sociospatial

522

contract 124, 128–9; strategy for 124; and

6

transformation of spce 138, 148–9; ways

Fidelity 66

of 149

Ford, Henry 13

7

environmental comfort, acoustic 87, 99–102;

facilities management 44, 122–3, 124, 141–2, 144

furniture 27, 109; attachment to 44; and

8

air quality 87, 88, 89–91; basic dimensions

choice of accessories 93; and control of

9

of 879; comfort-productivity continuum

environment 71; ergonomic 92; and

20

108–14; concept of 83–4; and decision-

functional comfort 93; inappropriate 119;

making processes 104; effect on

manufacturers 2; and misfit between office

performance 102–3; and feedback from

configuration/demands of task 93–4; as

building users 103; functional 84, 85, 86–7,

moveable 66, 117; and proximity to co-

3

88, 103, 120, 128, 148; habitability pyramid

workers 93; and psychological comfort 94;

4

85–6, 103; health and security 84; how to

reusing 9; size of 94; and spatial comfort

5

value 102–4; and human behaviour 103;

87, 92–4; standardization of 93; storage

and job performance 86; lighting/daylighting

facilities 92, 94; systems furniture 118;

87, 97–9; making evidence-based decisions

wall/partition height 93; worksurface

7

on 84–6; measurement of 86–102, 102;

dimensions 92

8

occupational health definition 114; people’s

9

experience of/reactions to 87, 103;

Gehry, Frank 16

302

performance feedback on 87–8; physical

Google Inc 136

83–4, 85, 103, 104, 120; psychological 83,

Gropius, Walter 13

1 2

6

1

85–6, 86, 104, 114, 128, 152; and socio-

2

spatial contract 104; spatial privacy 87,

Harvard Business Review 24

3

94–7; thermal 87, 91–2; understanding

home working 10

4

102–3; when to invest in 102–4; and

hot desking 5, 20, 71

workspace quality 84–5; workstation/

hoteling 18, 71

furniture 87, 92–4

Hypertherm Inc 28, 44, 52, 120, 142, 143;

5 6

environmental conditions, active 120;

7

acute/chronic 109; Building-In-Use

fear/anxiety in 40; and function of work

8

Assessment survey 110–14; comfort/

environment 39; and leadership/corporate

9

discomfort 109; difficulties with 107–8;

values 39–40; management responsibilities

energy-out situations 109; feedback on

in 38–40, 42; and replacement of architect

110; health risks 118; high strain 119;

with workplace design consultants 39;

1

low strain 119–20; measuring effects on

restructuring of 38–9; successful adaptation

2

performance 108–14; passive 120; and

in 40, 42; and territoriality 40, 42

40

employment involvement 38, 42;

165

Index

IBM Global 136

113; building 101–2; difficulties with 107;

Individual Task Performance (ITP) 81

effect on health 109; experience of 99;

information communication technology

external 101; and functional comfort 99,

(ICT) 14

100; investment in reducing levels of 100, 102; loud/unexpected 101; office 99–101;

Jacobs, Jane 56

and physical comfor 99; poor management

job performance 4, 79, 129, see also

of 119; as primary problem 99; and privacy

productivity job situation, active 117, 120; categories of 116–17; high strain 116–17, 119; low strain 117, 119–20; passive 117, 120; social context/quality of relationships 117

issues 100; and psychological comfort 100; ventilation systems 101–2 non-rational issues 9–10, 28; familiarity 33; status 33; symbolism 33; territory 33; tradition 33 non-territorial office 16–19, 71

Kolind, Lars 19 offices, attached to factory floor 12; current Le Corbusier 12, 13

influences on 14–15; earliest purpose-built

lighting, BIU Assessment 110, 111, 112,

11–12; effect of technology on 12, 14; first

113; and computer-based work 97; and

high-rise 12; importance of achitectural

daylighting 98; difficulties with 107;

design 13–14; and management principles

and environmental comfort 82, 86–7;

12–14; psychological ties to space in 15;

and functional comfort 98; and height of

and time-motion studies 12

ceilings 82; and physical comfort 97; and

Oldenburg, Claes 16

psychological comfort 98–9; quality of 97–9;

open office concept 1, 2, 5, 150; cartoons on

questionable 119; standards of 97; types of

3; decisions concerning 3–4; financially-

98; users’ assessment of 97

driven arguments 3, 4; and implicit deal between employer/employee 4; losing/

MacFadyen, David 17, 18

gaining ground dilemma 3–4; as people-

management, and awareness of territoriality

defining 3; realities of 3; referred to as

49–50; and decision-making 27, 151; as less rigid 15; scientific approach 12–13, 15; and sociospatial contract 27

cubes, cubicleland, cube farm 2, 20; resistance to 3 organization-accommodation (O-A), and

May, 13

balance of environmental demands/control

Microsoft 19

122; case studies 27, 28–42; deriving value

Minneapolis Star Tribune 28, 44, 52, 141; and

from 25; different views of 26–7; as

corporate values 33; and cross-functional

dynamic/interactive 25; holistic view 152;

teams 30, 32; and design consultants 30;

involvement of end-users 43; lessons

and Ergonomics Committee 30; financial

learned 43–5; management challenge

issues 32; move from individual to group

45–9; as ongoing relationship 44–5;

space 29; move from negative to positive

positive-to-negative spectrum 25–6; and

33; neighbourhood/urban environment

power of territory at work 49–50; and quality

theme 30, 32; and respect for non-rational

of space/attachment to it 44; and role of

aspects of workplace 33; restructuring of

consultants 43–4; and senior management

29–30; and territoriality 32–3; top-down

leadership 43; stages of 26; and

imposition 29; use of participatory design process 30

transformation of space 134 Oticon 19

mobile/remote officing 5 Muzak 136

privacy 87, 119, 153; and acoustics 100; assessment of 94–5; BIU Assessment 110,

National Association of Home Builders 17

111, 112, 113; equated with enclosure 95;

noise, adapting to 100; adverse/inappropriate

and functional comfort 94, 95–6; individual

conditions 99; BIU Assessment 111, 112,

control over 96–7; and physical comfort 96;

166

Index

122

and psychological comfort 94; sense of

control over 117–18; defending 28–9;

2

94–7; and status/rank 94; symbols of 94–5;

definition of 52–3; diffuse physical

and territoriality 94

dimension 65; and empowerment 71–2,

3

productivity 4; and Collaborative and Team

128; encouragement of group 73, 76; and

4

Work (CTW) 81; comfort-productivity

environmental control 70–2, 115; and

5

continuum 108–14; and decisions on

establishment of boundaries 70; how people

6

building features 82–3; definition of 80–1;

feel about it 53–4; importance of 5, 72–3;

7

design/layout of space 81; and

intrusions into 63; link with home 53, 73, 76;

environmental factors 81–3; and Individual

and locality consciousness 73; loss of 147;

Task Performance (ITP) 81; influences on

and loyalty/affective ties 55; managing 72–3,

9

81; measurement of 80–1; positive/negative

76; meaning of 19–22; meaningfulness

10

criteria 81–2; and users’ self-reports 81,

dimension 65; as multilayered concept 59;

1

see also job performance

and need for teaching/learning 128;

8

2

neighbourhood studies 56; nesting process Sears E-commerce group 148

66; and organizational hierarchy 60–2;

3

Sears Roebuck and Co 121, 135

perceptual dimension 65; personalization of

4

Semco 19

space 67–8, 70, 73; and physically defined

522

Semler–Ricardo 19

limits 65; power of 32–3, 37, 38, 40, 42,

6

Sick Building Syndrome 89

49–50; primary, secondary, tertiary 53, 54;

social support 121–2

and privacy issues 62–4; and productivity

sociospatial contract 4; adjusting to change 5;

79; protection of 66; psychological

7 8

basic assumptions 4; and Bell Sygma 134;

parameters 56; questionnaire 74–5; and

9

context for 24; different definition of 7; and

random allocation of space 71; role, rank,

20

empowerment 124, 128–9; and

status congruency 58–62; size of 61; social

environmental control 115; evidence of 5;

dimension 65; and social interaction 63–4;

and O-A 26; renegotiating of 28, 37–8; and

and sociospatial contract 152; and team

territoriality 72–3, 76, 152; threats to 28–9;

identity 55; time-space (im)permanence

3

traditional 5–6; and transformation of space

54–8; and virtual groups 59; and visual/

4

134; validity of 5

acoustic distraction 5; and ways of ’getting

1 2

5 6

space see transformation of space; workspace spatial comfort, BIU Assessment 110, 111, 112, 113; dearth of support

there’ 56–8 thermal comfort 87; agreement on 91; BIU Assessment 110, 111, 112, 113; experience

7

space 119

of 91; and functional comfort 91–2; and

8

status congruency theory 62

humidity 91–2; and light levels 92;

9

stress 109; alleviation through environmental

psychological perspective 91, 92; rapid

302 1

control 114–15; and BIU Assessment 113–14; causes of 114; demand-and-control model 115–22; link with social support 121;

shifts in 119; standards of 91; and user control over 92 transformation of space 27; avoid the default

2

results of sustained 116; and

138, 144–6; best practice 151–4; bottom-up

3

wayfinding/spatial orientation 114

initiative 142; case study 131–4; change is

4 5

Sullivan, L.H. 13

positive 138, 149–50; chosen 33–8; churn

Sun Microsystems 10, 136

end of scale 139–40; and conflict as positive 42; consensus matrix 141–2; continuum of

6

Taylor, F.W. 12–13, 14

change 139–40; and cost overrun argument

7

telecommuting 5

145–6; cultural aspects 135, 136; design

8

telework 5

features 45–9; (dis)advantages of 138–9;

9

territoriality 4, 11; and ambiguity of space 60;

dynamic framework 28; economic drivers

animal studies 52, 59, 62, 67;

135; embrace conflict 138, 143–4;

appropriation/behaviour 62–7; causes of

empowerment is key 138, 148–9; and

1

54–8; center-periphery behaviour 53; and

empowerment of occupants 43; and

2

community development/social solidarity 73;

end-user involvement 43; functional 136;

40

167

Index

goals/objectives of change 145; as

Weber, Max 5, 19

imperative 137–40; importance of making

work, changes in 14–15; future of 7; influences

goals explicit 16; imposed 29–33; and improvements in efficiency/effectiveness 137–8; loss/gain choice 147; and

on 14–15; meaning/importance of 5, 8; timespace view of 14, 15 workspace, as accommodation rather than

management dilemmas 45; and managing

facility 152; changes/upheavals in 4, 6–7;

user participation 140; and need for ’new

cultural meaning of 7–11, 151; decision

look’ 136; negotiated 38–42; not a zero-sum

latitude in 120; differing views on 26–7, 27;

game 138, 146–7; and organization-

double standards in 9–10;

accommodation (O-A) 134; planning the

executive/employee resistance to change in

revolution 151–4; play out the process 138,

10–11; experiments in 16–19;

140–2; positive force 4; principles 137–50;

furnishings/desk accessories 1; hierarchical

and proof of productivity 145–6;

nature of 1–2; history of 11–15; identifying 7;

rational/non-rational approach 28, 139;

importance of 6; inhabiting as ongoing

reasons for change 135–6; and role of

process 44; innovative approach to 129;

outside consultants 43; and senior

managerial responsibility for 8–9, 122–3; as

management leadership 43; and single

marker of advancement 5; as open-plan 1,

loop/double loop learning 146; and

2; as organizational resource 27;

sociospatial contract 134; stakeholders in

participation in/consultation about change

141–2; and taking responsibility for process

120; and person’s job 6; popular cartoons

43–4; understanding desirability of 135; and

on 2–3; as private room 1, 3; and quality of

user feedback 140; and value of facilitation

performance 26–7; rational/non-rational

44; win-win situation 146; yes-group/no-

ways of thinking about 9–10; redefinition of

group negotiations 142, see also

7; and regime change 10; responsibility for

workspace

design of 24–5, 27; as reward 5; sabotage of 128; and self-image 6; size/location of 1;

Uffizi Gallery (Florence) 11–12

as social contract 5–7; and social role/rank 6; symbolism of 4, 6, 151–2; as tool for work

Van Der Rohe, Mies 13 Vasari, Giorgio 11 virtual office 5, 17–18, 19

168

26; traditional 5–6, see also transformation of space World Bank 10, 61