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MEASURING WORKPLACE SATISFACTION & PERFORMANCE RICHARD WATTS Dip Arch RIBA FBIFM Principal, RKW Space Management Consultants
Changing the way people work and their work environment can significantly affect staff morale and productivity. The difficulty is always to quantify the effect of any changes, particularly in the office environment, where consistent work measurement is virtually impossible. Without such measures it can be difficult to attract funds to projects that introduce new ways of working or re-design the workspaces. Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE) is one technique to measure workplace performance. The focus of a POE is on user satisfaction, measured by means of opinion surveys or interviews. It is usual to record both the occupants’ satisfaction with their working environment and their judgement on how the working conditions have affected their work attitudes and behaviour. It is a particularly valuable technique in evaluating pilot and experimental projects before wider application. The drawback of using a POE to measure satisfaction is that there is often no baseline of data with which to compare the responses. If 51% of users are satisfied with a new workplace, is this a good or a poor result? Much depends on the level of satisfaction with the former workplace. Methods have been developed in workplace consultancy that provide a firm basis for comparison and yield other valuable benefits. Pre-implementation user surveys Where it is possible to survey user attitudes before the changes are implemented, then a base line can be established to measure the impact of workplace change more reliably. A Pre-Implementation User Survey (PIUS) can be undertaken in a similar way to a POE. The questions asked in both surveys need to be carefully constructed to provide comparable data, so that the results of the two surveys can be matched later. Questions can be limited to enquire about the current working conditions - personal workspace, group workspace and common facilities. But this is limiting the potential of the consultation process. Questions on the pre-implementation user survey can also be phrased to extract information from users which anticipate the outcome of the change and probe their attitudes to it. For example, in a recent survey, undertaken before implementing a teleworking project, the following question was asked: “How much of your work do you think you could do at home, without affecting its quality or your effectiveness” Respondents felt, on average, that they could do up to 40% of their work at home. In the subsequent POE the same group were found to actually be home working an average of 46% of the working week. The business case for undertaking the teleworking project, which assumed a 40% reduction in desk occupation, proved to be accurate in practice. The PIUS should be timed to allow the change management team to study the results and make adjustments prior to implementing the workplace change. The survey results then become a tool to assist the management team to focus on the key user concerns. In reality, this means that the users need to be informed about the proposed changes in order to make an educated response to the survey questions. It is recommended that a PIUS becomes a part of the training and orientation package for the proposed changes. In a recent project, PIUS forms were distributed to everyone who attended a workshop which outlined the proposed project. It was emphasised that their feedback would be valued by the project team. The fact that there was a 50% response rate suggests that a significant number of users believed that their input would be of value. In this example, concerns about technology and expenses were the most significant issues and were addressed by the project management team prior to implementation. Other potential issues, such as loss of own office space, were not found to be of significant concern to a majority of participants either in the pre-survey or the post-survey. Post Occupancy Evaluations It is good practice to undertake a Post Occupancy Evaluation two to three months after implementation of the workplace changes. This time period allows users to adjust to the new working environment, and yet the old working conditions remain fresh in their minds. The objectives of a POE can be to:
If the POE data is to be collected by anonymous questionnaire, then it important to ask about both satisfaction and importance. Users are asked to rate both of these factors in responding to each question on the survey form. It is then a simple matter to list responses in order of either satisfaction or importance. Comparative analysis of the data will then yield an action list already in priority order. To give two actual examples from a POE of a new building: Air conditioning rated satisfactory - 41% A/C rated important - 82% Artwork rated satisfactory - 43% Artwork rated important -15% Questions usually start with the individual’s work pattern space and facilities then broaden out to probe their perceptions of the effect of the change on the group. Finally, facilities and services provided centrally can be explored in as much detail as is appropriate. Open ended questions and boxes on the form for comments often provide an outlet for any frustrations - sometimes very specific: Q. How satisfied are you with the toilets? A. Dissatisfied -the second urinal doesn’t flush. General comments have been found to provide valuable feedback to the project team, as satisfied people do not often offer positive feedback without the prompt of a survey. Team morale was boosted by this recent unsolicited example: Q. How satisfied are you with this new way of working? A. Very Satisfied. My working environment has much more variety - I work from home, visit the office and travel to deliver training. If I have a task that requires face-to-face contact I can easily arrange to work at the office, or for work involving quiet concentration, I can work at home. Wonderful! The POE is also valuable in providing feedback on the process of change. Questions about the process of moving to a new building or a new way of working can be incorporated into POE questionnaires or interviews and form part of a continuous quality improvement process. Providing feedback to the participants on the general results of surveys is courteous. However, the level of interest in the results is not often very high. A summary of key results posted on the client’s intranet or published in the house journal is probably sufficient. Use of positive results to justify further development of the workplace change programmes are another benefit of undertaking POE surveys. BT are currently expanding their home working programme to target 7000 of their staff, supported by the results of a POE of a pilot project in BT Cellnet where 91% were satisfied with home working and 77% considered it to have increased their productivity.
Measuring productivity In the changing world of office work there is little opportunity to compare outputs or results over a long period in order to measure changes in productivity. The POE can be used to measure productivity. It relies upon self assessment, but if workers feel that their productivity has been affected by changes to their working conditions, then this is a reasonable assessment, unless more reliable measures can be found. In a POE, a single question can ask participants to indicate the percentage change in their own productivity that has resulted from the workplace change. Results can be consolidated to give an average for each participating group. POE survey participants are unlikely to exaggerate productivity gains resulting from improved working conditions, as there is little incentive to do so. However, if they believe that the working conditions have deteriorated so as to affect their work, they are likely to make a strongly negative response. Negative results from a POE may therefore be somewhat exaggerated, but positive results are likely somewhat conservative. Results from a number of such surveys show a pattern of productivity gains of between 2% and 10%. Decision makers are likely to find results in this range more believable than productivity gains in the region of 20%-30% that have been claimed by some programmes. The productivity improvements can be translated into financial savings or benefits to support the business case for further expansion of the project. Conclusions The two types of user survey described above are adaptable to a wide variety of activities ranging from small pilot projects to large relocation programmes. Their focus on performance and productivity measures complements other more commonly used measurements that focus on financial benefits or building efficiency. PIUS and POEs can provide key indicators in a quality improvement process involving customers in defining their priorities and judging their satisfaction with the outcome. Their value needs to be more widely recognised, so that they are routinely commissioned in all workplace change management programmes. END Richard K Watts heads an independent consultancy with wide experience of developing and implementing flexible working concepts. Specialising in strategic workplace planning, space supply management and post-occupancy evaluation, his practice has worked with a number of major UK businesses and public organisations. Richard Watts is a Chartered Architect and a Fellow of the BIFM. RKW Space Management Consultants Tel: 01420 478763 Fax: 01420 472219 Email: richard.watts@rkw.co.uk © Richard K Watts |