Environmental quality in offices

The “Ufficio fabbrica creative” project was an Assufficio brainchild created to study the role of the office in modern economics. Precisely to examine analysis of organisational models of intellectual production and the effects that these have on organisation and planning of the workplace, in particular of the office, the Association that represents the office furniture and furnishings industries has set up and promoted, as part of this project, research plans that help to understand these topics.
After the first study document, entitled “Spaces, context and relationships where innovation is generated”, presented at the Forum Ufficio Fabbrica Creativa on 29 May 2007, a new research project has been completed. “Environmental quality in offices” was started by the Assufficio Technical Commission work group, with collaboration by Milan Polytechnic-Indaco Department.
This is an organic study into environmental quality in office spaces, with the aim not only of identifying the basic elements when planning a workplace, but also checking impact on the well-being of the people who work there and, as a consequence, on productivity and the innovative capacity of a company.
The research starts with a fundamental piece of data: out of the overall costs of an office, personnel accounts for around 80 percent of the total, 19 percent is represented by management costs, and only 1 percent by furnishing costs. Because the profitability of an office depends totally on the profitability of its human resources, investing in good quality working tools costs very little and can produce an enormous benefit. This is even more the case when you consider that, while in 2000 office workers represented 40 percent of the total, this percentage has risen to 50 percent and it is thought that it may reach 70 percent of the total by 2010. The class of knowledge workers, in other words those who work with their heads instead of their bodies, is therefore growing.
This research highlights the biggest issues related to the macro theme of environmental quality in offices, presenting the most important results backed by a rich bibliography. It has been created as a document open to contributions by specialists and experts in the sector to fuel the debate and contribute to creating a new way of conceiving the workplace.
Several fundamental results emerge: the workplace has a direct effect on creative capacity that, depending on the context, can be developed and strengthened, but is also subject to distractions and obstacles.
A real “black hole” in office personnel activity is represented by drops, at times of over 50 percent, in concentration and in daily performance, caused by unsuitable conditions in the workplace, like poor lighting, unsuitable micro-climate or local acoustics: suffice to think that noise is responsible for a 35 percent drop in concentration.
New organisation of work, the need for increasingly more flexible environments and workplaces and evolution of work tools are reflected in the needs that all the elements that comprise both the office exterior and its furnishings must have. Every element can therefore enable optimisation of work quality: office layout, choice of work station, equipment characteristics, lighting and sound-proofing, together with the quality of air, temperature, finishes and colours.