Measuring employee satisfaction about new offices

What is it about?

This paper presents a toolkit to measure employee satisfaction and perceived labour productivity as affected by different workplace strategies. The toolkit is being illustrated by a case study of the Dutch Revenue Service. The toolkit has been developed by a review of literature and tools for data-collection. The toolkit has been tested and explored further in a number of case studies. The toolkit includes a working environment diagnostic tool for an indicative or diagnostic evaluation, a list of key performance indicators that can be used for benchmarking purposes, and a space utilization monitor to measure the occupancy of workplaces. Data collected with the tool provides organizations with a clear picture of user experience of the working environment on its own, in comparison to other organizations and in comparison to the goals of the organization. Employees are also asked to rank the issues in order of importance to overall satisfaction and perceived productivity. The modules on economic added value and costs to explore the facility costs effects of different office concepts have not been tested yet.

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Why is it important?

The toolkit and the data from case studies can be used by managers to support decision making on interventions with regard to the organizations’ accommodation policy, re-designing or adaptation of the present building, or moving to another building. Scientifically, the data from case studies and cross case analyses can be used to explore and test hypotheses about the best possible fit between people, processes and place. Although a number of data collection tools have been developed earlier, the strength of the present toolkit is its integral approach and is applicability to both traditional and innovative offices.