Mainly for Students: Boosting productivity in the workplace

In the first article of the series, I set out the strategic importance of corporate real estate and its potential impact on countries, organisations and individuals when people, process and place are aligned. Productivity is the holy grail of CRE strategy. It is sought by all organisations but it is complex and both attainment and measurement remain elusive. What is productivity? Productivity is defined as the relationship between input and output. There are three possible ways of increasing productivity: have the same input with more output; have the same output with less input; and both output and input increase, but output increases more rapidly than input. In a CRE context, we are measuring productivity in terms of building input and people output. In each of my lectures on productivity, I start with a photograph of a 10×10 grid showing headshots of people of different generations, genders, ethnicities and orientations; then I show a huge open-plan office with identical places to work. I ask the question: “When people are infinitely variable and look like this, why do offices look like this?” This must be the starting point, because people respond differently to inputs and their outputs are not uniform. The simplest example of this is the variation in comfortable office temperatures recorded by men and women. Despite decades of research, workplace productivity remains grim. The 2023 Gallup State of the Global Workplace report records only 21% of the global workforce being engaged, costing the global economy $7.8tn (£6.1tn). Let’s link these two concepts together. According to Gensler’s US Workplace Survey 2020, two-thirds of US knowledge workers operate in open-plan offices. The mismatch between human preferences and one-size-fits-all workplaces continues to be a problem. Open-plan offices, devised in Germany in the 1950s as Bürolandschaft (office landscape), aimed to eliminate workplace hierarchies but ignored individual psychometrics, behaviours and mobility patterns. Today, with the introduction of hybrid and activity-based working, understanding the human component is more important than ever. Productivity discussions tend to fall into two components and examples are set out in the table below. 1. Physical: building environment 2. Human centric Thermal comfort and ventilation Personal control of the environment Lighting (artificial and natural) Engagement Noise Distraction Cleanliness and maintenance Motivation Wayfinding and adjacency to colleagues Links to nature Variety and choice of work settings Mindfulness and mental health Visual stimulation, art and colours Creativity Physical and horizontal movement Exercise and physical health One: the physical and more measurable and controllable aspects, such as air quality, humidity, temperature, and light. These environmental aspects can be measured empirically, or using perception-based studies, such as the Leesman Index. Two: the human-centric aspects of motivation, mood, concentration, cognitive load and wellness are much more variable and difficult to measure but are equally important. Even simplistic studies of inputs and outputs create noise, due to human complexity. In the Hawthorne Works experiment at Western Electric’s factory near Chicago in the late 1920s, the impact of improved lighting (the input) on the rate of manufacture of a component (the output) was measured. Not surprisingly, the output increased with the improved lighting. But the output remained high, even when the new lighting was removed. Elton Mayo’s conclusions were that the social interaction with the workforce, which was being asked questions and felt involved, also affected the output. How is productivity measured? Humans are highly variable and react differently to the same input. Isolating the impacts of an intervention, such as improved air quality, may be difficult, making control-based experiments necessary. Many productivity studies use perception-based questionnaires, measuring sentiment around productivity. The Leesman Index is such a survey, and now has a hybrid version exploring home and office working. It focuses on work activities, impact of design, workplace features and workplace facilities. It asks many questions about the perceived impact of factors such as noise, lighting and air quality, as well as, for example: whether an office is somewhere respondents are proud to bring people to; and if it creates an enjoyable place to work. While not perfect, it has a huge number of data points and allows companies to benchmark its facilities internally and against competitors in their sector/industry. There are also many examples where a more experiment-based approach has been adopted. Cognitive load and IQ-based responses can measure the time taken to return to a defined mental state. This type of research is useful for examining distractions in the office. Researchers at the University of California, Irvine observed that the typical office worker is interrupted, on average, every three minutes. Most significantly, it takes 23 minutes to get back to where they left off. This alone was reported as costing the US economy more than $1tn. Another empirical study, undertaken by Elizabeth Nelson at CBRE, examined the impact of removing coffee and sugar from the office and recording the affect on performance. Studies by the World Green Building Council and a research report by Human Spaces showed that biophilic design can improve productivity by 6% and creativity by up to 15%. In a recent experiment at an accounting firm, reported in the Harvard Business Review, researchers entered the offices at night and placed potted plants at some employees’ desks and similar pots, filled with office supplies, on others. Measuring the attitudes and job performance of the two groups confirmed that even small doses of nature at work improved higher task performance and enhanced creativity. Productivity and the human dimension Human performance is further complicated by the influence of psychometrics, generation, personal preferences and culture. Many studies illustrate significant differences in response to temperature, noise, movement and other factors, reinforcing the fact that one-size-fits-all solutions do not create productive workplaces. Some employees thrive on the buzz of an environment and can be highly effective, both screening out chatter and eavesdropping on intelligence. Others simply cannot get to the same state of consciousness in the same environment. Modern hybrid and ABW environments are designed to give choice and variety to drive productivity, but as Leesman’s and other studies demonstrate, the picture is highly complex and the behaviours, psychometrics and mobility patterns of workers make ABW solutions difficult to get right. Another problem is that positive and negative impacts on productivity can be different sides of the same coin. For example, in many published studies, including my own over 30 years, the most significant negative impacts are noise and distractions, and the most positive are collaboration and spontaneous interaction. Designing an ABW solution to do both, and manage the tensions between them, can be a tricky balancing act. Introducing ABW should create a closer fit between the needs and preferences of individuals, the tasks they perform and the work settings (or kit) provided. However, studies show that ABW is not always successful and without sufficient data, analysis and the creation of the right choice of appropriate places to work, ABW will not automatically guarantee a productive environment. A profile of the employee, using psychometric, generational, mobility, work style and other data is required to accurately align an ABW hybrid workplace with an organisation’s employees. Productivity post-Covid With the disruption of office work and the imposition of remote working, productivity took some interesting twists and turns. Leesman introduced a home-based index which initially, and surprisingly, showed many home environments to be productive, often more so than offices. However, Zoom fatigue and the mental health impacts of not separating work and home soon shifted the narrative. Currently there is a polarisation of thought, with many bosses wanting their employees back in the office, a kind of Presenteeism 2.0, and employees wanting greater and sustained flexibility. For me, no one is asking the right questions around who should be in the office and why. There is no doubt that productivity suffers in the absence of what I call the 5Cs: collaboration, connectivity, creativity, camaraderie and culture and this requires some employees to be in the office. Two of the biggest studies report conflicting perspectives. In Gallup’s report, respondents from 140-plus countries working hybrid said they were experiencing more stress and more anger than employees in the office. At the same time, Gallup data showed that remote and hybrid employees across the world were more engaged and productive. A study by Future Forum suggests that flexible working plays a key role in fostering positive organisational culture. A framework for productivity To summarise, productivity resonates with Maslow’s motivational theory and hierarchy of needs. In a workplace context it might look something like the diagram above. The significant point is that just as in Maslow’s original work, an individual’s basic needs must be met before they become motivated to achieve higher-level needs such as self esteem. In a building context, the same applies. You ignore the basic core needs such as air quality, temperature and natural light at your peril, because not getting these right will undermine any chance of increasing engagement, creativity, connectivity, knowledge transfer and fulfilment – all of which are proven to boost productivity. Nick Nunnington is an associate professor at Neapolis University, Paphos, Cyprus and course co-ordinator at the University of Adelaide. Paul Collins is the editor of Mainly for Students and teaches at Nottingham Trent University Image © Kate Sade/Unsplash