It seems like work from home during COVID-19 has raised employees’ expectations from their office environment when they physically come back to the office. Not only was this change feasible for the employees, but many managers also noticed the increased productivity of their employees when they worked from home. So now, the big question that arises in everyone’s head is how to make sure that the employee would actually want to come back to the office?
I know most would like this to continue for as long as they can as working from home gives them ample time to not only do their office work in peace but also spend more time with their families and complete other chores or even pick up on new skills or revisit old hobbies! It gives them flexible working hours while also getting more work done than in a closed cubicle environment where they would be sitting in front of the monitor in the fixed place for hours and not getting much done.
A new study conducted by UCL reveals that there are certain factors that need to be taken into account when talking about a person’s productivity and how to utilize it to its maximum potential. Researchers analyzed and conducted surveys at four different floors of an IT company and found that having too many desks and sitting facing a wall led to less satisfied employees. Whereas employees that were able to collaborate with fellow workers and have visual control over their environment were more focused and showed higher signs of productivity. It’s believed that office workers should have open and spacious working areas, ideally next to a window and not too many desks clustered in one place. “Our findings raise important questions regarding the current popular practice in workplace design of providing large open-plan offices for technology companies,” said Dr. Kerstin Sailer, lead author of the study.
This study shows that having smaller offices with more creative spaces is what an employee is really looking for. Maybe after the pandemic, large companies would try to change the dynamics of the working environment to better cater their employees.
