Differences in Occupants’ Satisfaction and Perceived Productivity in High- and Low-Performance Offices

Abstract

This paper reports the results from a dataset comprising 9794 post-occupancy evaluation (POE) surveys from 77 Australian open-plan offices. This paper specifically focuses on a sub-set of 20 offices (n = 2133), identified from ranking 10 offices each, with the least (n = 1063) and highest (n = 1070) satisfaction scores, respectively. The satisfaction scores were evaluated on the basis of seven factors (i.e., building/office aesthetics and quality, thermal comfort and indoor air quality, noise distraction and privacy, personal control, connection to outdoor environment, maintenance and visual comfort, and individual space). Using the POE survey data from 20 offices, regression analyses and two-way ANOVA tests were carried out to understand the differences in occupants’ satisfaction and perceived productivity arising from open-plan offices. According to the statistically significant regression analyses results, it was identified that building/office aesthetics and quality (β = 0.55, p < 0.001) and noise distraction and privacy (β = 0.33, p < 0.001) were the two strongest predictors contributing perceived productivity in low-performance offices. Two-way ANOVA test results for the 10 high-performance offices indicate that the perceived productivity was strongly associated with the office’s physical configuration, the employees’ working experience, and the working hours at that office.

Keywords

• indoor environmental quality
• open-plan offices
• user satisfaction
• perceived productivity
• office design
• post-occupancy evaluation