Aug 17 2005
Poorly-designed offices could be cutting UK productivity by a fifth, costing British business up to 135 billion pounds Sterling every year, according to new research by international design and architecture firm Gensler (http://www.gensler.com).
Summarized in the report "These Four Walls: The Real British Office", the findings are based on a survey of senior and middle managers in the legal, financial services, and media sectors who claimed that an improved workplace would increase employee productivity by 19% -- an equivalent to a 135 billion pounds annual increase in UK service sector output. The research also highlights the importance of office design to job satisfaction, recruitment, and retention, with four out of five (79%) professionals considering the quality of their working environment very important to job satisfaction and more than one third stating that it has been a factor in accepting or rejecting a job offer.
A shocking 58% of professionals believe their office has not been designed to support their company's business objectives or their own job function, with the majority of professionals citing minimizing costs as the main driver behind their office design. Only half (52%) of those surveyed rate their working environment as above average, while close to one fifth (19%) would actually be embarrassed to show clients their office.
Gary Wheeler, workplace design director in Gensler's London office said, "The challenge for 21st Century business is to increase knowledge worker productivity. By not focusing on office design and its impact on employee performance, businesses are missing out on potential productivity gains."
Independent research firm Vanson Bourne interviewed 200 UK middle and senior managers drawn at random in March 2005. Professionals interviewed estimate that "a better working environment would increase employee productivity" by 19%.
Multiplying the service sector GVA (Gross Value Added - latest available figure, 2003) by 19% provides the following results (figures from UK National Accounts, Blue Book 2004):
(% Productivity increase x UK Service Sector GVA) - UK Service Sector GVA = pounds Productivity Increase (1.19 x 709 907 million pounds) - 709 907 million pounds = 134 882 million pounds (135 billion pounds, where billion means a thousand million)
The report summary is available at http://www.gensler.com/pdfs/WhitePaperSummary.pdf