Does Your Fancy Workspace Work??

Remember when the American workplace got swept up in the “ergonomics” wave a few years back? That was the buzz word companies chanted while  scooping up little foam wrist-guards for every keyboard and chairs that had ninety-three levers each for adjusting to your personal spinal cord.

Or remember when our companies first computerized ordering systems and we declared the modern office was going to become paperless? We imagined some sterile futuristic office out of a sci-fi meeting where we all sat around thinking, Gosh, I haven’t seen a piece of paper in years.

Another popular idea is on the chopping block lately:

If your organization believes in collaboration, set up your work space to encourage employees to cooperate on projects.

A lot of organizations have jumped (or are jumping) on this one too. And why not? The idea sound good on paper.  Our organization gets to boast that “we cooperate around here!” And–added bonus–it gives management the perfect rationale to stick a whole bunch of desks into the same work area and save money in the name of working together.

No doubt select companies find the right balance when using design to drum up synergy. But the majority, according to Professor Alex Haslam from the School of Psychology at the University of Exeter, aren’t really fostering “collaboration”. What they’re accomplishing is just the “illusion of collaboration”.

In studying how work space affects productivity and job satisfaction, he found the following:

• Employees need sufficient personal space. Cramped work environments lessen productivity rather than making people feel “teamed” with all the other people stuffed into tiny offices around them.
• Employees highly value having their own personal storage space–a piece of “real estate”–in the environment where they spend so much of their lives.
• Ideally, people should have a say in how the environment is designed or rearranged, rather than space changes being imposed from the top-down.

In other words, if someone comes in and says “We now value collaboration by doing X” (shrinking offices, taking out cubicle walls, shrinking desk sizes), that’s not really collaboration. Collaboration is pooling everyone ideas to figure out how to make your space best serve the community.

[Read an article about this research here…]