The science behind your office choice

Trends

Science can explain your love/hate relationship with the office

Reading time:  6 Minutes

From the temperature of your cubicle to the artwork on the walls, you may think your taste in office design is as unique as you are. Still, you’re more influenced by certain factors than you might realise. Here, Etan Smallman investigates how our generation, gender and culture all play a role

 

When it comes to office space, one employee’s paradise can be another staff member’s purgatory. Open-plan and minimalist could just as easily be experienced as clinical and soulless. Somewhere that is personal and cosy to you can seem cluttered and distracting to the colleague at the next desk.

The challenge is that one size rarely fits all. Our office preferences – from lighting and seating to desk layout and window proximity – can be influenced by everything from our age and gender to cultural background, personality type and working style.

And whether your commercial priority is sparking creativity or maximising productivity, optimising the environment can be critical. After all, this is about much more than aesthetics. Countless studies have established a link between well-designed offices and employee engagement, performance and innovation(1). Pioneering companies, for example, are five times more likely to have workplaces that prioritise both individual and group workspaces(2).

Regus Sarona in Tel Aviv offers a coworking space suited to solo working

 

The gender gap

Gender is one factor that influences office design preference. And it starts small: with the temperature. A 2015 study in the journal Nature(3) found that women are suited to an average office temperature about 3°C warmer than men.

This is because women have a significantly lower metabolic rate than men. Men tend to be comfortable at about 22°C, while women often find that a bit cool. The problem is, as The Guardian explained(4), that climate control in office buildings is based on a comfort standard first set in the 1960s, which was in turn based on the metabolic rate of a 40-year old, 70kg man.

When it comes to other gender-determined preferences, research also suggests that women may feel more comfortable in closed, compartmentalised office space rather than open-plan. According to a study published in the journal Gender, Work and Organization, office workers were more conscious of their visibility and often found this unsettling rather than liberating.

Lead author Dr Alison Hirst, of Anglia Ruskin University in the UK, says, “Women in particular felt anxious about the idea of being constantly watched, and felt they had to dress in a certain way.”(5)

Looking more broadly, a US study(6) shows that “ambient identity cues” can impact gender participation in the workplace.

“Walking into a school adorned with Christian symbolism may make a non-religious student wary of enrolling,” explains one of the study’s authors, Sapna Cheryan. “Driving through a city with bicycle stores and ski racks crowning every other car may make that city unappealing to those who do not consider themselves outdoor enthusiasts. Entering a store with loud dance music may signal to older shoppers that they would be out of place there.”

She adds: “Note that these physical environments, though exclusionary for some, can be welcoming to others – namely, those for whom the ambient identity cues signal inclusion. Environments that are incompatible with one of the more prominent social identities, for example, gender and race.”

In an office environment, you may find several ambient identity cues – are the conference rooms all named after notable men, for instance? Is the art on your walls a woman-free zone?(7)

Regus Gati in Jerusalem

Regus Gati in Jerusalem keeps its decor gender-neutral

 

The generation gap

What about your age? Does that have any bearing on your office design preference? There is evidence of a generational divide, with some surveys showing younger workers being more sensitive to bad office layouts – or perhaps simply less willing to put up with them.

According to a study last year by Ipsos, 76 per cent of workers aged 18 to 34 said office design influenced how they felt about a company, compared with only 39 per cent of those aged over 55(8). And more than a fifth of 18- to 24-year-olds have left a job because of poor office design, according to one poll(9).

Older workers, too, have preferences that shouldn’t be ignored. Baby boomers (those born between the early 1940s and mid-1960s) are still estimated to make up about a quarter of the workforce and are staying in work for longer than ever before, leading to a widening age gap in our offices.

While their younger colleagues rate “the quality of meeting rooms” as the least important factor of a great office, boomers have almost the opposite view(10). A study by Davenport(11) shows a preference among boomers for closed offices – particularly when undertaking solo work involving concentration tasks, while research by trend forecaster Springwise(12) shows that they benefit from alternatives to screen-based work for creating, processing and storing information.

According to a report by industrial designers Knoll, “These changing priorities will drive a fundamental shift in office design, away from merely supporting work function and process. Future workspace will need to provide a consistent, engaging, work ‘experience’ that supports a wide choice of work styles and seamless flow of work, regardless of location.”

The cultural gap

Attitudes to workplace layout and density also vary widely from country to country. For example, employees in Chinese cities are used to working in about a third of the space of their European and American counterparts(13).

And, according to the Harvard Business Review(14), “in China people don’t think about individual privacy in the same way that Westerners do. Chinese workers are most concerned about information control: keeping personal data private and seeking refuge from the feeling of being watched. Offices that allow workers to have their backs to the wall are considered prime real estate.”

The types of office space required can vary among cultures, too. In France, compared with America, for example, more time may be dedicated to meetings. “[I’ve found that] French meetings tend to be a lot longer, with a lot more conceptual debate,” says French-born Emma Seppälä, who teaches at Yale and Stanford University. Speaking to Business Insider(15), she says: “American meetings are all: ‘You’re going to do this, and you’re going to do this…’" In contrast, she has found that, "There’s this very strong focus in the French person’s mind that, before you come to a conclusion, you have to talk about all of this theory, all of these concepts, all of this philosophy.” An office without adequate meeting space, therefore, is not going to be suitable.

Regus Torre Aragonia in Zaragoza, Spain

Regus Torre Aragonia in Zaragoza, Spain, has semi-private spaces for group work and meetings

 

Buffer solutions

It is easy to get bogged down in analysing individual subsections of your workforce, but Neil Usher, author of The Elemental Workplace, advises: “Excellent workplace design is about balance – rarely is a skewed solution applicable,” he says. “Designing to a demographic or personality type is inherently restrictive. Our workplaces need to reflect diversity and inclusion, and for this they need to embody choice and the requisite permission to exercise it. The single biggest tip: avoid the merry myth-making you’ll find on the internet and adopt a much more critical mindset.

“It’s possible, anywhere in the world, in any sector and to any budget. Companies that are not doing this will be impacted in terms of the individual and collective ability to work effectively and whether people decide to stay.”

Joanna Yarker, associate professor in occupational and business psychology at Kingston University, London, says that while many companies are shifting to hot-desking, most workers appreciate “personalisation” – regardless of their demographic or personality type.

“What we’ve found is that people like to personalise their space and that can be a buffer to some of the stresses that they experience in the workplace,” she says. “If you’re not able to have things on your desk, then you might put different screensavers that are personal to you on your computer. It allows you to have a connection to things that you value.”

Reconciling differences

Often, what is really required is simply more thought. “For example, if you ask somebody who has Asperger’s, working in a busy environment can be quite challenging,” says Yarker. “So having a quiet workspace is really important. If you’re somebody who’s got irritable bowel syndrome, then thinking about where your desk is located relative to the facilities is very important.”

The answer to multifarious demands, she explains, does not need to involve more space, but rather making the space you have more flexible. “Managers role-modelling, moving about and using different spaces as opposed to just being stuck at their desk from 8am till 7pm helps to give that courage to employees to use the space in the way that they want to as well,” she adds.

Engagement of staff is also crucial, explains Sir Cary Cooper, professor of organisational psychology and health at Manchester Business School. “Let them own it, rather than you impose it,” he says. “If you do the latter, it’s not going to work. And they may come up with ideas that you would never have even thought of. As long as you collect the data, you can reconcile the differences in what people want and you may be able to design for different groups of people in different parts of the business.”

 


Etan Smallman is a UK-based journalist

Sources:

(1) https://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobmorgan/2015/12/03/how-the-physical-workspace-impacts-the-employee-experience/#726dc3fe779e

(2) https://www.gensler.com/research-insight/workplace-surveys/us/2016

(3) https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2741

(4) https://www.theguardian.com/money/shortcuts/2015/aug/04/new-cold-war-why-women-chilly-at-work-air-conditioning

(5) https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/women-feel-pressured-to-dress-up-in-open-plan-offices-a3828846.html

(6) http://sciencewithart.ijs.si/pdf/How%20stereotypical%20cues%20impact%20gender
%20participation%20in%20computer%20science.pdf

(7) https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/3/5/women-portraits-kennedy-school/

(8) https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/workplace-design-matters-when-it-comes-to-millennial-appeal-300545467.html

(9) https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/uk-millennials-rejecting-employers-offices-workplace-design-architecture-a8270686.html

(10) https://www.knoll.com/document/1352940439350/WP_GenerationalDifferences.pdf

(11) https://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/14630010810925136?fullSc=1&journalCode=jcre

(12) https://www.regus.com.sg/work-uk/how-the-over-65s-are-shaking-up-the-office/

(13) https://www.cbre.com/research-and-reports/apac-space-utilisation-the-next-frontier

(14) https://hbr.org/2014/10/balancing-we-and-me-the-best-collaborative-spaces-also-support-solitude

(15) http://uk.businessinsider.com/differences-between-french-american-work-culture-2017-7?r=US&IR=T