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Research

Increasing Employee Productivity with Personal Environments®

Here are the facts:

Fact: A direct correlation exists between environmental comfort and employee productivity in open office environments.

In the past 15 years, dozens of scientific studies on productivity in the workplace have proven that individuals respond very differently to their environment.1 Dissatisfaction with indoor environmental conditions has been shown in study after study done in North America and in Europe.2 Many managers have already recognized that increased environmental satisfaction helps improve employee productivity.3

Fact: At minimum, 1% of the salaries in an average 500,000-square-foot office building amounts to more than $975,000.

This conservative figure is arrived at by using an average hourly pay of $11.54, adding an additional 30% for the cost of benefits, and assuming an average occupancy density of 154 square feet per person.4 The cost per square foot of salaries in an average facility is anywhere from 8 to 13 times the cost per square foot of building operations, often topping $200 per square foot, per person, per year.5

Fact: A 2.8% productivity gain is absolutely possible when employees are given control over their environments through the installation of Personal Environments.6

Actually, a 2.8% improvement is at the low end of what researchers have found. In one study predicting control on productivity, providing employees with individually controlled systems showed productivity increases of as much as 8.6%, depending on the type of work.7 Studies have reported productivity gains in the range of 15% for managerial employees and 17% for clerical employees when environmental factors are carefully designed and controlled to meet the needs of employees.8

Fact: That same 3% productivity gain would translate into $2,925,000 per year of productivity improvements in the average 500,000-square-foot office.

Improvements to the workplace environment are highly cost-effective ways of enhancing employee satisfaction. These improvements have low payback periods when the cost of salaries is factored into the equation. Because environmental satisfaction means increased productivity, even a small improvement in productivity can pay off huge dividends for companies and organizations with employees working in open office environments.

For a more comprehensive summary of research related to Environmental Comfort and Worker Productivity, click here, or contact Johnson Controls at 1-414-274-5412.

FOOTNOTES

1 - Wyon, David, The Economic Benefits of a Healthy Indoor Environment, National Institute of Occupational Health, Copenhagen, Denmark, 1994.

AND

Chiu, Mao-Lin, Office Investment Decision-making and Building Performance, Dissertation, Department of Architecture, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, 1991.

2 - As high as 60% dissatisfaction in the study: Center for Building Performance and Diagnostics, Carnegie Mellon University, DOE Building Studies, October 1994.

3 - Lorsch, Harold, and Abdou, Ossama, The Impact of the Building Indoor Environment on Occupant Productivity-Part 1: Recent Studies, Measures and Costs, ASHRAE Transactions, 1994.

4 - IAQ and Productivity: How Much Does Poor Air Quality Cost?, Indoor Air Quality Update, Cutter Information Corporation, Oct. 1996.

5 - Lorsch and Abdou.

6 - Kroner, Walter, et al, Rensselaer’s West Bend Mutual Study: Using Advanced Office Technology to Increase Productivity, The Center for Architectural Research, 1992.

7 - Wyon, David, Predicting the Effects of Individual Control on Productivity, White Paper 960130, 1996.

8 - Brill, Michael, et al, and the Buffalo Organization for Social and Technological Innovation (BOSTI), Using Office Design to Increase Productivity, Workplace Design and Productivity, 1984.

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