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This paper aims to explore the relationship between satisfaction with buildings, facilities and services and perceived productivity support and to test whether the findings from a similar study of Batenburg and Van der Voordt (2008) are confirmed in a repeat study after 10 years with more recent data.

Data were traced from a database with data on user satisfaction and perceived productivity support. These data were collected through the work environment diagnostic tool WODI light. The data include responses from 25,947 respondents and 191 organisations that have been analysed by stepwise multiple-regression analyses.

In total 38% of the variation of office employees’ satisfaction with support of productivity can be explained by employee satisfaction with facilities, the organisation, current work processes and personal- and job-related characteristics. The most important predictor of self-assessed support of productivity is employee satisfaction with facilities. In particular, psychological aspects, i.e. opportunities to concentrate and to communicate, privacy, level of openness, and functionality, comfort and diversity of the workplaces are very important. The findings confirm that employee satisfaction with facilities correlates significantly with perceived productivity support. Other factors that are not included in the data set, such as intrinsic motivation, labour circumstances and human resource management may have an impact as well.

This research provides a clear insight in the relation between employee satisfaction with facilities and the perceived support of productivity, based on survey data collected over almost 10 years in 191 organisations.

This paper aims to investigate how facilities management (FM) and corporate real estate management (CREM) can add value to organisations by contributing to improved productivity of knowledge workers, and to explore interrelationships between productivity, employee satisfaction and other value parameters.

This is a literature research of possible contributions of FM and CREM to improved labour productivity in relation to five activity areas of FM/CREM (portfolio management, project management, space and workplace management, property management and service management) and a first exploration of interrelationships between productivity and other value parameters.

The findings indicate that FM and CREM most directly can contribute to productivity by space and workplace management that supports different types of work and organisational activities. Portfolio and project management can mostly contribute by providing appropriate locations, adjacency relations between different parts of the organisation and supporting process flow and logistics. Property management can contribute to productivity by ensuring business continuity and comfortable indoor climate. Service management can contribute by relieving staff from trivial tasks by efficient services and by providing exiting experiences. Productivity shows to be mainly positively related to satisfaction; insights into interrelationships with other value parameters are still limited.

The results can be used to obtain a deeper understanding of how FM and CREM can add value to organisations by contributing to improved labour productivity. Practitioners can find inspiration on how to contribute to labour productivity and additional benefits within specific activity areas of FM and CREM. The exploration of interrelationships between productivity and other values can be used as input to a future research agenda.

The paper adds new insights to the growing body of knowledge about how FM/CREM can contribute to increased labour productivity and how other value parameters may be interrelated with productivity.

The purpose of this paper to develop a better understanding of the behavioural challenges in workplace performance evaluation and how the issues raised regarding validity and reliability of Likert scales could be addressed in future occupant surveys.

A review of the literature was conducted to identify some of the more important issues in occupant evaluations of built environment performance. Disparate fields of research were particularly given the changing nature of the workplace and work itself. The appropriateness of the Likert scale was then examined in some depth, with evaluation data presented by this method analysed to gauge the extent of error in reporting self‐assessed or perceived workplace productivity.

The review points to significant challenges in obtaining valid and reliable information in occupant self‐evaluations of workplace performance using linear Likert scales. When the occupant rating is negative, arithmetic means were found to be significantly lower than geometric means. The converse was found to be true for positive ratings. Magnitude estimation using a free modulus approach has been shown to be potentially free of bias and scale limitations

The survey data available for analysis were limited, but the implications of the findings for the credibility of workplace performance evaluation are significant given the widespread use of linear Likert scales. Researchers are encouraged to pursue the questions raised and test the propositions further.

With modern work becoming more complex, information rich, mobile and team oriented, more sophisticated occupant performance evaluation tools and methods are needed to replace simplistic self‐assessment questionnaires.

This paper addresses the paucity of research into the validity and reliability of self‐assessed measures for workplace productivity. It integrates findings from disparate fields including aviation and cognitive functioning. It presents a stronger behavioural emphasis in evaluation, while encouraging the development of more effective measurement methods.

This paper aims to explore the added value of healthy workplaces for employees and organizations, in particular regarding employee satisfaction, labour productivity and facility cost.

The paper is based on a narrative review of journal papers and other sources covering the fields of building research, corporate real estate management, facilities management, environmental psychology and ergonomics.

The review supports the assumption of positive impacts of appropriate building characteristics on health, satisfaction and productivity. Correlations between these impacts are still underexposed. Data on cost and economic benefits of healthy workplace characteristics is limited, and mainly regard reduced sickness absence. The discussed papers indicate that investing in healthy work environments is cost-effective.

The findings contribute to a better understanding of the complex relationships between physical characteristics of the environment and health, satisfaction, productivity and costs. These insights can be used to assess work environments on these topics, and to identify appropriate interventions in value-adding management of buildings and facilities.

Work environment change from the traditional cell- and open-space offices to activity-based work (ABW) generates many concerns among workforce and management. The purpose of this study is to observe impacts of ABW change on several knowledge work performance drivers and outputs.

A quasi-experimental design was applied to distinguish the impact of ABW on several dimensions of knowledge work performance in three governmental organizations. The empirical measures that were observed in the study were: perceptions of physical environment, virtual environment and social environment, individual ways of working, well-being at work and self-assessed productivity.

Well-being at work or productivity will not collapse because of ABW change. Most of the facets of self-assessed productivity and all of the well-being facets did not change because of the adoption of ABW. ABW change had a positive impact on group work effectiveness but negative effect on perceptions of the facilities as conducive for efficient working. ABW change had an enhancing effect on the routine of protecting one’s concentration from software-induced interruptions and decreasing effect on using mobile technologies to work during idle times and using technology to avoid unnecessary traveling. ABW change made telework more acceptable.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study was one the first studies following real-world change to ABW with quasi-experimental design. The difference-in-differences approach made it possible to isolate the causal impact of ABW change on the knowledge work performance drivers and outputs from other simultaneous changes taking place in the studied workplaces.

The purpose of this study is to pilot test the effectiveness of the experience sampling approach for measuring employee satisfaction with the workplace environment. Additionally, the authors also aimed to explore, which aspects of environmental comfort have the strongest impact on momentary well-being and productivity.

In total, 15 knowledge workers in an open-plan office environment were sent a brief survey (measuring environmental comfort, momentary well-being and perceived productivity) each day over an 11-day study period and provided 78 individual survey responses in total.

All but one of the measures on the survey had low test-retest reliability, indicating that employees’ experiences of environmental comfort varied significantly each time they completed the survey. Additionally, higher environmental comfort was associated with improved well-being and productivity.

The results suggest that an experience sampling approach to the workplace occupant survey is justified to better capture the temporal variability in experiences of environmental comfort. The results also suggest that improving environmental comfort, particularly by reducing the level of distractions, will enable employees to work more productively.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first field study which has attempted to directly address limitations in traditional occupant surveys by using an experience sampling approach rather than a one-time-only questionnaire.

The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between career development and productivity of the university staff with the mediating role of self-regulation.

The research approach is quantitative-relational and is based on structural equation modeling (SEM). The population consisted of the staff of two Iranian universities in 2018 out of which 331 participants were selected using Cochran's formula and a proportionate stratified random sampling method. To gather data, the self-regulation questionnaire (SRQ), the career development questionnaire (CDQ) and a researcher-made employees' productivity questionnaire (EPQ) were used. In terms of reliability, Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the instruments was found to be 0.97, 0.84 and 0.88, respectively. Face and content validity were confirmed by a group of field experts.

The findings indicated that the staff’s self-regulation had a positive and significant effect on individual, organizational and environmental productivity factors. In addition, self-regulation had the ability to predict those factors. It was found that self-regulation had a mediating role in the relationship between career development and staff productivity. According to the results, educational institutions, especially universities, can provide their staff with the opportunity to exploit their full potentials through reinforcing their self-regulation and increasing their productivity.

Higher self-regulation capacity among university staff helps them liberate their potential energy for disinterested selfless service to the society. Higher self-regulation capacities allow individuals to increase the energy resource for self-regulation and contribute to the productivity and quality of life. The statistical population of the quantitative section is confined only to the staff working at Iranian universities. Therefore, our results should be cautiously generalized to universities in other countries.

Our findings can help in empowering human resources and consequently improving education and research processes.

Universities play a decisive role in the economic growth and development of countries because of their diverse services in the production and distribution of science and knowledge.

This study was conducted on university’s staff productivity, while most previous researches have been conducted in industrial enterprises. Thus, the present study seeks to fill this research gap by means of providing new perspectives and information on the factors affecting staff productivity and the relationship between research variables in higher education institutions.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the drivers that allow for enhanced personal productivity of knowledge-based workers in Central London focusing on the physical and social environment as well as worker’s individual preferences.

A closed-ended questionnaire was sent to employees of eight professional companies (Consultancy, Financial and Media Services) based in Central London. Of the 500 questionnaires sent, 213 were successfully completed and returned, representing a response rate of 42.6 per cent.

The findings from this trial study show that comfort, convenience, IT connectivity, good design and working to a specific time scale were strong drivers of personal productivity. Knowledge workers prefer a flexible range of office settings that enable both a stimulating open and connected work environment, knowledge sharing, collaboration, as well as quiet concentration locations, free of distractions and noise. It was also found that moves of knowledge workers into open-plan office space (and especially fee earners) is normally met with initial resistance. However, there is normally greater acceptance of open space after experiencing an actual move into open-plan, with benefits improving teamwork and communication being highlighted. The research also stresses that office design considerations need to be closer aligned with knowledge worker’s overall well-being and individual psychological needs.

Limited to Central London offices and self-assessed evaluation of productivity drivers within the knowledge worker’s office environment.

Corporate real estate managers and office occupiers, designers and facilities managers can use the findings as part of their workplace strategy by providing a range of flexible workplaces that allow the knowledge worker a place for greater personal productivity through the provision of a well-designed collaborative office environment alongside private and quiet working spaces. Developers and landlords should also be aware of these requirements when taking their decisions.

This paper focuses specifically on the high-productivity knowledge-based work environment, demonstrating that there is a need to consider the collaborative physical and social environment and the individual preferences of knowledge workers to ensure enhanced personal productivity and well-being within the office. This can be achieved through the provision of a well-designed office space that allows for open, connected and comfortable work environments, as well as opportunities to use dedicated concentration spaces that are free of distraction. It was also shown that hot-desking was unanimously disliked by knowledge workers.

Work environments are undergoing a transformation where organizations have various spatial solutions at their disposal. However, organizations may have challenges in making the right decisions in a work environment change, when the spatial solution is only one dimension of the work environment. The purpose of this paper is to approach this problem in a holistic way and explain the relationship between work environment changes and the development of organizational performance in the activity-based work (ABW) environment.

The results are based on an extensive quantitative survey involving 471 participants. The survey was theory driven and built on former literature. The participants were randomly collected from the largest cities in Finland, and the data were analyzed with a regression analysis.

The results showed that ABW environments require no more attention to the different work environment dimensions when compared to other office types, with the exception of the social work environment; the changes of which have a relatively strong relationship with the development of organizational well-being. In the ABW environment, a change in the physical work environment has a stronger relationship with the development of organizational productivity and a change in the social work environment has a stronger relationship with the development of organizational well-being than a change in the other work environment dimensions.

This study yields empirical evidence of the relationship of physical, digital and social work environment changes with the development of organizational performance in the ABW environment. The value of this paper is that it offers a simple but holistic research model to distinguish the outcomes between the different work environment dimensions so that relevant expertise is applied to take concrete and targeted action.

The aim of this paper is to provide a validated theoretical framework for the measurement of office productivity.

The study's strength is that it is based on two sizable data sets. The data collected consists of data about the physical characteristics of the office environment and data pertaining to the behavioural environment.

One of the key contributions of this study was the development of the components of office productivity, which were: comfort, office layout, informal interaction points, environmental services, designated areas, interaction and distraction. The components were reduced to four in preparation for subsequent analysis. The four distinct components were comfort, office layout, interaction and distraction.

This study establishes that it is the behavioural environment that has the greatest impact on office productivity. It demonstrates that it is the dynamic elements of the office environment, interaction and distraction that are perceived as having the greatest positive and negative influences on self assessed productivity.