CfPB presents recent research outcomes and views at new Workplace Research conference
17 january 2018
CfPB warmly welcomes the first Transdisciplinary Conference on Workplace Research in Tampere Finland.
This conference to be held in September 2018 is expected to provide a unique collaborative platform with The Workplace Environment as the central subject. Practice and academia will meet and share views, visions and look for available evidence as is collected in research. At CfPB we feel this is for us the place to be. As a knowledge center we hold this intermediate position between fundamental and applied research, between making knowledge an sharing knowledge, between storytelling and presenting evidence, between implicit organizational objectives and clear but limited scientific answers.
Below we share the abstract of two contributions. This provides a very limited view on the scope we take and the issues that are at stake in practice.
We like all our contacts from academia and from practice that are eager to learn on Workplace issues to consider joining us in Tampere.
Impact of offices on employees’ health
In September we will join the conference with two studies. In one we will present a systematic literature review on the impact of offices on employees’ health. Aim of the study is to find out which elements of the physical work environment do have a positive or negative impact on physical or mental health and wellbeing of office workers based on empirical evidence. For that approximately 2600 papers published in international scientific journals across different disciplines from 1993 until today have been reviewed, with almost 200 papers included for the final analysis. Preliminary findings show that the past ten years the amount of research in this field has grown substantially. More studies seem to focus on indoor climate, than on elements of workplace design like layout, furnishing or greenery. Recently design to activate the employees has become a popular subject.
Impact of employee satisfaction with facilities on perceived productivity support – facilities matter!
The other study aims to explore whether the findings from the study of Batenburg and Van der Voordt (2008) on the relationship between satisfaction with buildings and facilities and perceived productivity support are similar in a repeat study with more recent data. This follow-up study is interesting, since Batenburg and Van der Voordt conducted their research (“Do facilities matter?”) almost ten years ago. Since then, the database they used has increased more then tenfold and covers a period of almost 15 years instead of 5 years.
The research found that than 41,5% of the variation of the perceived support of productivity of an office employee can be explained by his or her satisfaction with facilities, satisfaction with the organisation, job satisfaction, and personal- and job-related characteristics. By far the most important predictor of perceived support of productivity is employee satisfaction with facilities. These results confirm Batenburg and Van der Voordt (2008). The most influential counterproductive factor is distraction by lack of concentration.
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