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Over the past century, office designers have adapted to changing work conditions across various industries by creating workspaces that cater to the needs of modern workers. As a result, a range of office layouts have been developed, from traditional private offices to open-plan setups. The choice of layout can significantly impact communication, social interaction and overall performance. This study aims to explore the social and mental well-being of employees working in open-plan offices in the public sector in South Africa.

The research was conducted in the Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality, South Africa, focusing on five governmental departments. Using purposive sampling, employees working in open-plan offices were identified. A structured online interview form with open-ended questions was distributed to all selected employees between May and September 2021, resulting in 54 responses. Thematic content analysis using ATLAS.ti was used to analyze the data.

The findings suggest that while open-plan offices can enhance teamwork, communication, accessibility and inclusivity, their design can negatively affect employees’ perceptions of social and mental health in the workplace. Specifically, open-plan designs are perceived to compromise privacy, shorten attention spans, lower productivity and increase stress levels. Interestingly, absenteeism was not reported by employees in this study, which contradicts previous research and requires further investigation.

These findings can be valuable for human resource managers, facilities managers and office space designers.

This research contributes to the ongoing conversation surrounding the impact of open-plan offices on the mental and social well-being of employees in the public sector within the South African context. The contribution of this paper thus lies in the South-African context and the public sector angle plus a more in-depth insight on well-being through an extensive set of 54 interviews.

The purpose of this paper was to extend the current knowledge on the impacts of activity-based workplaces (ABWs) on productivity in knowledge work. It offers more background information that is needed to properly evaluate ABWs’ suitability for different organisations. In the results section, ABWs are compared to the cellular and open-plan office types.

This study was conducted using a survey method with 5,841 respondents. The data were collected between 2015 and 2019 from 32 public-sector organisations.

The findings of this paper reveal that ABWs offer clear advantages over the other office types but requires careful design and well-implemented solutions. The superiority between ABWs and cellular offices also depends on workers’ profiles and needs and is not for everyone.

For practitioners, this paper offers valuable information to compare the three office types: ABW, cellular and open-plan. It also highlights the importance of careful planning and good implementation, which are both essential to making the ABW environment productive for employees. Finally, this paper clearly provides evidence that ABWs and open-plan offices differ in their facilities and productivity.

This paper included a unique and large sample with open variables, which are fairly rare in ABW-related papers. It also provides evidence that ABWs, when implemented correctly, seem to be an excellent option for some work profiles.

This paper aims to illustrate the extensive benefits of qualitative data analysis as a rarely undertaken process in post-occupancy evaluation surveys. As a result, there is limited evidence of what occupants say about their buildings, especially for operational parameters, as opposed to how they rate them. While quantitative analyses provide useful information on how workers feel about workplace operational factors, qualitative analyses provide richer information on what aspects of the workplace workers identify as influential to their comfort, well-being and productivity.

The authors analysed 6,938 comments from office buildings worldwide on workers’ perception of workplace operational factors: design, storage, needs, space at desks and storage in their work environments. These factors were analysed based on the buildings’ design intent and use, and the associated comments were coded into positive, negative and balanced comments. The authors used a combination of coding, descriptive analysis, content analysis and word cloud to dissect the comments.

The findings showed that whereas workers rated these operational factors favourably, there were significantly more negative comments about each factor. Also, the Chi-square test showed a significant association (p < 0.01) between the satisfaction scale and the type of comments received for all the operational factors. This means that when a factor is rated high in the satisfaction score (5–7), there were fewer negative and more positive comments and vice versa. The word cloud analysis highlighted vital aspects of the office environment the workers mostly commented on, such as open plan design, natural lighting, space and windows, toilets, facilities, kitchens, meeting room booking systems, storage and furniture.

This study highlights the importance of dissecting building occupants’ comments as integral to building performance monitoring and measurement. These emphasise the richness and value of respondents’ comments and the importance of critically analysing them. A limitation is that only 6,938 comments were viable for analysis because most comments were either incomplete with no meaning or were not provided. This underlines the importance of encouraging respondents to comment and express their feelings in questionnaire surveys. Also, the building use studies questionnaire data set presents extensive opportunities for further analyses of interrelationships between demographics, building characteristics and environmental and operational factors.

The findings from this study can be applied to future projects and facility management to maintain and improve office buildings throughout their life cycle. Also, these findings are essential in predicting the requirements of future workplaces for robust workplace designs and management.

The authors identified specific comments on the performance of workplaces across the globe, showing similarities and differences between sustainable, conventional, commercial and institutional buildings. Specifically, the analysis showed that office workers’ comments do not always corroborate the ratings they give their buildings. There was a significantly higher percentage of negative comments than positive comments despite the high satisfaction scores of the operational factors.

The purpose of this study is to analyse perceived physical and social isolation and how they are linked in various places of work.

A nationwide study was conducted involving 3,352 Estonian office workers in spring 2021. Physical isolation was measured in terms of what proportion of time a person works away from co-workers (0%, 1%–25%, 26%–50%, 51%–75%, more than 75%). Social isolation diverged into two factors: lack of contacts and lack of meaningful connections. The different places of work the authors considered in the study included working from home with and without a dedicated room and different types of offices (private office, shared-cell office, activity-based office and open-plan offices of various sizes).

The results show that the negative consequences of physical isolation in the form of perceiving social isolation start to show when a person works 51% of the time or more away from others. However, the authors revealed the dual nature of social isolation in that when a person experiences a lack of contacts, the connections they do have with their colleagues are actually more meaningful.

The originality of the study comes from the fact that the authors uncovered the paradoxical nature of social isolation. This reveals itself in various places of work depending on the conditions at home and the type of office. Therefore, the authors move away from the simplified distinction of home vs office and take into account the level of physical isolation (what amount of time a person actually works away from colleagues).

This study aims to examine the key components to facilitate flexible work arrangement (FWA) and the issues and challenges arisen in preparing the workplace for FWA during Covid-19, and to recommend better approach of FWA implementation in workplace.

This study adopted extensive literature review and case studies approach using interviews and observations to determine the key components to facilitate FWA and the issues and challenges arisen in preparing the workplace for FWA during Covid-19, and to recommend better approach of FWA implementation in workplace. Three offices that owning FWA experience during Covid-19 and featuring flexible workspace concepts, elements and layouts in Klang Valley, Malaysia were chosen as case studies.

Findings have suggested that there are four components required to form flexible workspace for FWA adoption, such as open plan workspace design, task-oriented space, hot desking policy and IT infrastructure. Interestingly, the interview findings do not support the idea that the flexible furniture can facilitate FWA; instead, they believe that versatile, acoustical and aesthetical furniture may be installed when necessary. Among the issues and challenges faced were rearranging and designing open office plan layout, hot desk relocation and reconfiguration of spaces where people may congregate. Lastly, this research recommends that innovative planning software and tools, smart technology and apps, modern IT technology and infrastructure, and digital apps can be introduced to the workplace to help FM manage and monitor the facilities operations, workplace situations and occupancy rates.

Since the outbreak of Covid-19, FWA such as “Work From Home” and remote working have become the mainstream in the workplace, affecting how the workplace looks and feels as flexible working is fundamentally related to the flexible workspace. From Facilities Management (FM) perspective, FWA is the biggest consequence of Covid-19, but it also presents opportunities and certain challenges to incorporate a new office environment and employees’ needs in terms of FWA into the corporate culture.

The Listen to Learn for Life (L³) Assessment Framework is a framework that outlines how to systematically assess the links between the classroom environment, listening, learning and well-being. The purpose of this paper is to review the published literature to understand what is known about the characterisation of activity component of the L³ Assessment Framework and determine what is not known and needs to be investigated in future research.

Literature reviews (Web searches for systematic, scoping or general reviews; scoping reviews following the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses extension for scoping reviews protocol; and extended Web searches) were conducted to characterise lecture, group work and independent work activities in terms of the perceptual setting, source degradation and transmission degradation.

Most research that has been conducted is for classrooms in general and does not specify results specifically for lecture, group work and independent work, which is important for understanding how the learning environment changes with the different activities. What is known about the lecture, group work and independent work activities are discussed; however, it is noted that this often comes from only a few studies. Future research areas to contribute to this literature as well as fill current research gaps are proposed.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first review paper to synthesize previous research characterising the classroom environment for different activities using the L³ Assessment Framework. It provides an analysis of the limitations of existing literature and proposes future research to help fill in these gaps.

Meetings with colleagues are an essential activity in workplace collaboration. The iterative nature of collaborative work demands spaces that team members can access quickly and easily. Creating suitable meeting spaces will become more critical if the hybrid work model continues and the workplace environment becomes the hub for face-to-face collaborative time, learning and training. Workspace and fit-out is expensive so it is crucial that the investment in meeting spaces supports employees’ collaboration activities.

This paper presents a case study of a corporate organisation undertaken in New Zealand to investigate how employees from two business units use their workspace to collaborate within their own team and across other teams in their organisation. The study uses ethnographic techniques, including participant observation and in-depth face-to-face interviews.

The findings show that the frequency and nature of small group work in collaboration was underestimated in the initial planning of the new workspace. Although participants found the design and fit-out of the formal meeting rooms supportive of collaborative work, the meeting rooms were in high demand, and it was difficult to find a room at short notice. The breakout spaces were confusing because they lacked key design attributes identified by the participants as conducive to small group work. Design shortfalls together with fit-out features perceived as supportive of collaborative work are identified.

The research reports on employees’ perceptions and experiences across two functionally diverse business units, reflecting their different needs and concerns.

Our study centered on activity-based workspaces (ABWs), unassigned open-plan configurations where users’ activities determine the workplace. These workspaces are conceived and shaped by accommodation professionals (APs) like managers and architects and are loaded with their ideas, ideals, norms and values; therefore, they are normative and hegemonic. Previous research has largely failed to consider how APs’ spatial conceptions materialize in the workplace. To address this omission, we adopted a narrative approach to study APs’ impact during the conceptualization stage.

The data were collected via a 10-year at-home ethnographic study at a Dutch university, including observations, interviews, documents and reports. Studying the researchers’ organization allowed for a longitudinal research approach and participative observations. The data focused on the narrative techniques of APs when establishing an ABW.

In introducing ABWs, APs resorted to two principal narrative strategies. Firstly, the ABW concept was lauded as a solution to a host of existing problems. Yet, in the face of shortcomings, lecturers were often blamed.

Despite the considerable influence of APs on both the physical layout of workspaces and the nature of academic labor, there is little insight into their conceptions of the academic workspace. Our research contributes a novel perspective by revealing how APs’ workspace conceptions drive the narratives that underpin the roll-out of ABWs and how they construct narratives of success and failure.

The recent COVID-19 emergency has brought to light issues connected to physical work environment, particularly to offices and to its impact on service employees’ internal responses, behaviors and outcomes. As the topic is characterized by fragmented theoretical approaches as well as a lack in consolidated empirical research, this study aims at providing a clear understanding of the main – as well as the most recent – issues debated in academic literature today.

The study is a systematic literature review. Specifically, 124 papers, retrieved by Scopus, Web of Science and EBSCOhost research databases, are here systematically analyzed.

The main findings are connected to the prevalence of studies investigating employees’ satisfaction and productivity as main outcomes, the increasing attention by academics to new workplace designs, characterized by peculiar attributes such as flexibility and nonterritoriality, and finally, the lower interest in nonoffice working environments.

The review sheds light on the current knowledge of the relation between physical work environment and service employees to identify the main issues debated in academic literature and make suggestions for further research. First, the need to explore aspects of the physical work environment and employees’ outcomes that have not been adequately studied. Second, the relevance to investigate the above relation in public sector. Moreover, the importance of careful planning of the physical and virtual work environment in the context of the COVID-19 emergency.

The Purpose of this paper is to identify statistical relationships between visual environment and occupant productivity. Visual environment is one of the most important indoor environmental quality (IEQ) parameters, and it directly impacts occupant productivity in offices. The literature outlines the significance of the impact. Still, there is a lack of investigation, statistical analysis and inter-relationships between the independent variables (IEQ factors), especially in the hot and arid climate.

This study presents a research study investigating the effects and shows statistical relationships between IEQ on occupant comfort and productivity. The study was conducted in the Middle East, and data was collected for 12 months. It used the response surface analysis to perform analysis.

This study outlined seven unique relationships highlighting the recommended range, inter-dependencies. Results include that illumination has maximum effect on visual comfort and temperature, daylight having direct influence and relative humidity, wall type next to the seat and kind of workspace also impact visual comfort and productivity. These findings would help to improve occupant comfort and productivity in office buildings. It is recommended to include results and recommendations on design guidelines for office buildings.

This study presents the unique effects of non-visual IEQ parameters on visual comfort and productivity. This investigation also provides a unique method to develop the statistical relationship between various indoor environmental factors and productivity in different contexts and buildings.