In a previous article “Can Artificial Intelligence (AI) Help to Shape Office Design?” we briefly touched upon the importance of integrating employee feedback into office design and refurbishment plans to produce a user-centric office design which better understands employee’s needs “leading to an office designed to enhance productivity and health and wellbeing which in turn can boost employee morale and satisfaction which is beneficial to both businesses and employees.”
In this article we look at why employee feedback is important, what benefits come from having an engaged workforce and the best ways to gather employee feedback for your next Kent or London office design.
Workplace Satisfaction and Employee Engagement
A Steelcase report found that the factors that impact workplace satisfaction and employee engagement, strongly correlate with workplaces where staff have control over their physical environment. Where staff are able to feedback what works for them, and what doesn’t and make their own choices about where and how they work, when they can move around the office easily and work in areas based on the work they need to do; report the highest employee engagement levels. The report goes onto say that “employers could be missing a trick when it comes to planning their employee engagement strategies.” Being able to influence how an office is designed allows staff to ensure the office space works for them, helps guide when private space, when concentration is required, can be accessed or the ability to work in teams on a task that requires collaboration by moving to a more appropriate space when required.
A paper by Emerald Insight “User-focused office renovation: a review into user satisfaction and the potential for improvement” investigated “users’ needs and the physical and psychological factors affecting user satisfaction, as input to office renovation projects.” They found a number of factors increased user satisfaction. These factors were associated with “physical and psychological satisfaction and comfort” and included user control, privacy, concentration, spatial comfort, thermal comfort, air quality, noise, light, communication/collaboration and social contact.
“Designing an office worth going back to”, an article by the University of New South Wales found that “Prioritising user experience, fine-tuning work spaces to support user needs and designing for health and wellbeing will deliver higher levels of satisfaction, perceived productivity and creativity.” They state that the key to the office of the future isn’t just about flexibility but how office space addresses the challenges faced by staff, “taking into account physical workspace, the diversity of people’s needs and the power of technology.”
In a 2005 Gensler workplace survey “Are poorly designed offices eroding productivity?” showed that poorly designed offices could be costing British businesses up to £135 billion per year. They found that four in five professionals believed that the quality of their work environment was very important to their sense of job satisfaction, yet the vast majority didn’t believe their office has been designed to support their company’s business or their own job function.
Arch Daily’s “The Employee Experience: Designing Workplaces from User Research” looked at how office designers can draw inspiration from user experience and research to design office spaces that not only meet quantitative metrics like seat ratio, cost per square foot and occupancy rates but could also meet qualitative metrics such as job satisfaction and addressing pain points experienced when using a workspace, to help design the ideal workspace.
Public Health England’s “The impact of physical environments on employee wellbeing” says “surroundings in which employees spend their working lives are an important source of job satisfaction and impact on work motivation and patterns of interaction.” They conclude that “the office environment including office layout, office furniture, workplace lighting and temperature and employee control over their work environment should be considered “in order to ensure that the physical characteristics of the work environment do not have a detrimental effect on engagement, productivity and wellbeing.”
Public Health England recommends that employers “recognise the potential impact of the physical office environment beyond the legal requirements of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), engage staff in workplace design and where possible allow greater flexibility and integrate evidence into practice, drawing on best and promising practice.”
Employee Engagement vs Employee Disengagement Stats
Analysis of more than 250 global organisations by SHRM found that companies that scored highest on employee engagement showed four times higher average profits, two times higher average revenues and 40% lower turnover.
According to Firstup engaged employees are 18% more productive, can boost profitability by 23% and absenteeism is reduced by 78%.
Gallup carried out its 11th employee engagement analysis by examining employee engagement and performance data from 456 research studies across 276 organisations in 54 industries and 96 countries across more than 183,000+ teams equating to 3.3 million+ employees with a view of evaluating the connection between employee engagement and 11 key business outcomes. Gallup concluded that “the relationship between engagement and performance at the business/work unit level is substantial and highly generalizable across organizations.” They found that business where employee engagement was high showed an increase in profitability (23%), productivity (sales) (18%), productivity (production records and evaluations) (14%), absenteeism (78%) and wellbeing (70%).
Previous Gallup research has also shown that “companies with engaged workforces have higher earnings per share (EPS)”, and that “businesses with a critical mass of engaged employees outperformed their competition.”
Quinyx states that “studies into employee engagement from a host of different companies, including Forbes who found that companies with engaged employees can outperform companies without by an incredible 202%.” Quinyx goes onto explain that there are a number of reasons why keeping employees engaged is business critical including the finding that an engaged employee is more productive by up to 22% and “are likely to show behaviours that are above what is required of them – adaptability, proactivity, willingness, responsibility” and engaged employees are more likely to be customer-centric.
Conversely, where employees are unhappy in the workplace they are disengaged.
AON’s “Employees don’t feel heard or listened to as gap between employee feedback and employee response identified” highlights research by the Workforce Institute which found that a majority of UK employees (83%) feel they are not heard “fairly or equally.” While 46% feel underrepresented and 60% believe their views and opinions are ignored in the workplace.
Chris Mullen, executive director of The Workforce Institute says, “employee engagement is an important part of the overall employee experience, and if employees don’t feel heard, then their engagement and sense of belonging at work suffers.”
Data from Gallup’s State of The Global Workplace report shows that 62% of employees are not engaged, 15% of employees are actively disengaged, leaving only 23% of employees engaged at work in 2024, down from 39% in 2021. The reports estimates that low employee engagement is costing the global economy $8.9 trillion each year which is around 9% of global GDP.
With Staff Engagement Comes Benefits
When employees feel that their workplace is one that they are proud of and look forward to coming to because it’s designed with them in mind, supports them in their job and brings job satisfaction, they are much more likely to be engaged and happy in their work.
From engagement comes many benefits including:
Increased Employee Satisfaction
A well-designed office that meets staff needs and is designed and refurbished with them in mind, can increase employee satisfaction, morale and as a result, increase employee engagement. When employees feel that the company they work for cares enough to take into account their needs they feel appreciated and are far more likely to go above and beyond in their job.
Strengthens Trust
Engaging staff and listening to their feedback on the design of their office space strengthens trust between employee and employer. When businesses demonstrate that they value employee’s contributions, it signals to employees that their opinions matter and their input is welcomed, and they are valued which helps to build a collaborative workplace environment.
Improved Understanding of Workplace Needs
Employees are a great source of office design ideas and solutions as they understand where the office roadblocks are, and which parts of their office environment work well. Employee feedback can help to identify where the workplace can be improved and provide valuable insights into how employees experience the workplace including what works and doesn’t work for them, what acts as a barrier or obstacle to getting the job done and what increases their efficiency in completing a project or task.
Finding The Right Balance
By understanding how employees work and what they need office designers can put together office design plans that specifically address the business’s and employee’s work processes and create office spaces that provide the right balance between private, quiet areas and collaborative spaces alongside breakout areas that support staff in their work activities.
Improved Collaboration
Teamwork and collaboration are vital to many businesses and having the workspace to be able to bring people together is a must. So, while privacy and quiet are important so too are office layouts that allow staff to come together to collaborate. A well-designed office can ensure collaborative spaces are available for teams to get together when collaboration is key.
Better Use Of Office Space
Given that a report by XY Sense “Workplace Utilization” shows that in the 2023 workplace use in the UK was just 53% and that most offices have far more individual workstations than are needed to meet the number of staff going into the office with “28% of decks are never used, 51% are occupied for less than one hour per day and just 12% are used for more than 5 hours per day” it’s important to ensure that available office space is used to its maximum advantage and to understand how staff use office space to identify areas which are under or overused so that businesses can make informed decisions on how to redesign office space to optimise layout for better usage. Employee feedback can be invaluable in helping to identify where the layout of the office could be improved to make better use of the available space.
Retaining Staff and Recruiting New Staff
Having a user-centric office space brings a competitive edge when it comes to recruiting new staff as an office designed with and for staff is more likely to attract and meet the needs of new staff. By staying competitive businesses are also more likely to retain staff as happy and engaged staff are less likely to look around for other job opportunities.
Quinyx estimates the cost of hiring and training new staff to replace staff who have left is now above £10,000. The Telegraph reports that the cost could be even higher saying that “Replacing staff costs British businesses £4bn each year [with] the average fee for replacing a departing staff member is £30,614”, explaining this includes advertising, agency fees and the time taken to conduct interviews and train new employees. They also mention that “the cost of replacing top-tier talent can be even higher, thanks to extended recruitment processes and complicated handovers.”
Ways To Gather Employee Office Design Feedback
It’s clear that including staff in the office design process is vital but how do businesses ensure staff have a say in how their office is designed? There are a number of ways to gather employee feedback when it comes to your next office design and refurbishment, some of which are outlined below:
Company Wide Surveys
Surveys can be the easiest way to gather employee feedback, especially in larger companies and through AI processing of data. They can be setup quickly through any one of a number of online survey platforms.
The problem comes from ensuring that the feedback being sought is good quality and can’t be misinterpreted and that the numbers of returned surveys is as high as possible otherwise only a small minority of staff will be represented in the final office design plans. It’s therefore worth spending time planning the questions that the survey will ask.
Consider using both open and closed questions to catch as many responses as possible. Open questions will help to gather feedback that you may not otherwise cover, and closed question can help you to home in on areas and get more detailed information. Also think about whether you need to incentivise survey responses to ensure you get a good return rate. Don’t carry out surveys too often, keep them for important data collection otherwise you run the risk of staff burnout where surveys maybe ignored.
Making surveys anonymous can also encourage people to not only take the time to fill out a survey but may also help staff to be honest in their feedback without the fear of being singled out if they give negative responses.
Employee Steering Group
An employee steering group can be made up of a range of employees from across a business who can work with and provide feedback to the management team and office design company. They can also act as a bridge between management and staff and help to gather comprehensive feedback from all staff. Having a range of staff within the steering group and enabling them to collect feedback from everyone can help to ensure there will be inclusivity in the office design.
Employee Representatives
Employee representatives can be recruited to the team who will be responsible for the new office design. It’s important to ensure that the staff chosen to provide feedback are from across the organisation and are effective communicators who are happy to liaise with other members of staff.
Team and Departmental Meetings
Team and departmental meetings can also be an excellent way to elicit feedback from staff. By bringing staff together in a format that they are used to and is part and parcel of their day-to-day routine can ensure staff are comfortable in providing feedback, both positive and negative. In departmental meetings representatives of each department can provide feedback on behalf of their colleagues.
One To One Meetings
A more personal approach is to hold one to one meetings with staff to gather feedback. This approach may work better for smaller business rather than businesses that have hundreds of employees. The personal approach may appeal to staff and if they’re used to having regular one to one meetings this format may provide a valuable on-going source of input.
Suggestion Box
A suggestion box may seem too informal for something like gathering feedback on an office design, but it can act as another way of encouraging staff to report issues as and when they happen. Issues and ideas can be forgotten if left to a quarterly or annual survey or meeting whereas a suggestion box ,which is present all year round, can provide an immediate, timely vehicle for comments and criticism. Make sure the suggestion box is sited discretely otherwise employees may not want to run the risk of being seen using it.
Exit Interviews
Some companies hold exit interviews when employees are leaving. This is a useful way to ask for feedback on the current office design, whether there were any issues they encountered that they hadn’t previously mentioned and if they were part of the reason for leaving. On leaving staff maybe more likely to give feedback that they’ve held back before. This may give insight into any issues that may be part of the reasons affecting staff retention.
“Stay” Interviews
Stay interviews are meetings between managers and staff to help retain staff within a company and are used as a retention tool. Managers can meet informally to touch bases with employees to collect feedback on what they like and dislike about their jobs and work environment, what keeps them engaged at a company, what would influence them to leave and what could be improved to retain them. Where prompted and staff mention any office design issues this should be fed back into any future office design plans for discussion to help address any problems in the future.
New Employee Onboarding
As well as stay and exit interviews, it’s worth having a new employee onboarding process. Asking new employees to fill in an onboarding questionnaire can help to provide insight into whether a business’s offices were a contributing factor into why a new employee joined. It can highlight what impressed them when they visited the offices and if this made a difference in their job-hunting decision making.
Employee office design feedback can help businesses to stay productive and competitive in an ever-changing, ever-evolving world.
JBH Refurbishments, Experts In Office Design and Refurbishment
JBH Refurbishments are a cat a and cat b fit out contractor and have over 30+ years experience in Kent and London office design, office refurbishments and fit outs. We can provide the right expertise for your Kent or London office refurbishment. We understand what’s required to carry out an office refurbishment.
From your brief, to putting together a project plan, to developing your office design and layout to delivering your office fit out JBH Refurbishments will provide the right expertise for your project providing peace of mind. You can contact us on 0333 207 0339 or via our contact page or by calling us on 0333 207 0339 today for a free on-site consultation.
