DIFFERENCE IN SATISFACTION WITH OFFICE ENVIRONMENT AMONG EMPLOYEES IN DIFFERENT OFFICE TYPES

摘要

Differences between office types may have an influence on the employees' satisfaction and psychological responses with respect to different aspects of the office environment. For this study, 469 employees rated their perceptions of and satisfaction with the office environments of seven different office types, which were classified as cell-office, shared-room office, small open-plan office, medium open-plan office, large open-plan office, flex-office, and combi-office. Three domains of environmental factors were analyzed: (1) ambient factors, (2) noise and privacy, and (3) design-related factors. Employee responses were evaluated using multivariate logistic and Poisson regression. Adjustments were made for potential confounders such as age, gender, job rank, and line of business. Substantial differences between employees in different office types were found. The analysis of frequencies in complaints within the three domains shows that noise and privacy is the domain that causes the most dissatisfaction among office employees. Cell-office employees are most satisfied with the physical environment overall, followed by those in flex-office. However, the results for cell-office are not uniformly best, since they score low with regard to the social aspects of design-related factors and, in particular, on support of affinity. The most dissatisfaction is reported in medium and large open-plan offices, where the complaints about noise and lack of privacy are especially negative. Architectural and functional features of the offices are discussed as the main explanatory factors for these results.