Posted by Heidi Schwartz
There’s good news for business owners, executives, and facility management professionals facing tough decisions about which workplace designs will best meet their needs. It’s now easier than ever to harness the remarkable power of science to inform specific workplace strategies.
Workplace Evolutionaries (WE), a community of practice within the International Facility Management Association (IFMA), has teamed up with the IFMA Foundation to produce a comprehensive research-based document to demystify modern workplace strategies with scientific data, analysis and research. “Applying What Scientists Know About WHERE and HOW People Work Best,” by Dr. Sally Augustin, PhD outlines hundreds of scientific workplace strategy guidelines, each supported with complete citations.
“The workplace is a powerful tool that can improve health and quality of life, boost productivity, and protect the environment,” said Dr. Andrew Laing, PhD., Global Practice Leader, Strategy+ at AECOM and WE Research Advisor. “To achieve these benefits and many more, facility management professionals have access to a tremendous amount of useful scientific research to take the guesswork out of key strategic decisions. This paper is a gateway to unlocking the potential of any workplace.”
“Applying What Scientists Know About WHERE and HOW People Work Best,” is a product of Workplace Strategy Summits, industry polls and surveys and a remarkable amount of expertise derived from first-hand experience. This piece not only informs contemporary debates about workplace strategy, it sets the stage for the workplace of the future.
The variety and detail of the content in this report is suggested by the breadth of the publication’s table of contents, which includes:
- General Studies
- Implications of Sensory Experiences
- Worker Experience and Basic Architectural Forms
- Psychological Factors Affecting Worker Performance
- Workplace Design and Worker Behavior (General)
- Particular Workplace Configurations and Their Repercussions
- National Culture and Workplace Design
“Navigating the options in the modern workplace can feel like reading tea leaves if you don’t have a strong foundation of empirical research to base your decisions on,” said Kate North, vice president of global development at e-Work.com and the founder and chair of WE. “Workplace Evolutionaries is excited to have been able to team up with the IFMA Foundation to offer a resource for employers and key decision makers around the world. We couldn’t have done it without the financial support of the IFMA Corporate Facilities Council and Kimball Office.”
The full report is available for download in the IFMA bookstore, online here.
The report was published with support from the WE Research Team and the IFMA Foundation.
