Is everyone obsessed with productivity right now? From entrepreneurs hawking their goal-setting systems to students sharing tips on how to study more efficiently, an entire industry has been built around the idea that we can all be more effective in our personal and professional lives. The advice can be helpful, but it can also promote unhealthy working practices. After all, quiet-quitting and employee burnout are productivity issues that are trending too. It highlights the balance that employers must strike between helping employees to work more efficiently while also respecting physical and cognitive limits. Workplace productivity is often different from personal productivity. Individuals have more autonomy over personal productivity, whereas employers often have more influence in the workplace. Think about all the ways performance and morale can suffer in a working environment: inefficient systems, poor management, low morale, and even office design can influence productivity, increase absenteeism, and presenteeism. An employee may not be working as efficiently as they’d like or as effectively as they could. It's important that employers address any issues to ensure not only that the business runs efficiently but that employees feel happy and secure in their role. Of all the many challenges employers face, how does office design affect productivity? What is Workplace Productivity? According to Mind Manager, workplace productivity is 'the efficiency with which tasks and goals are accomplished at an organisation'. So, employee productivity reflects individual output. And it used to be easier to measure. Employee output in both industrial and post-industrial societies was often counted physically by the number of parts assembled, the amount of fruit picked, or customers served, etc. Today, we live in a knowledge-based economy. This is intellectual capital, which exists largely in people's experience and brain. This is harder to measure. Let’s use this article as an example. How do we measure the productivity of the person writing it? By the number of words in the final version or the number of words typed during the entire writing process? Do we measure clarity? For effective use of grammar and syntax? Is it solely on engagement with the call-to-action? What about the time spent researching or formatting? What about the editorial process in which more words may have been deleted than used in the final document? Is it better to have 1000 words of poorly written and communicated content or 250 concise and impactful ones? What if it took thirty-minutes to write and only 50 people saw it. But what if it took five-days to write and 10,000 people saw it? What about any feedback or changes added by the client or by a manager or editor? The same could be said for a web developer, researcher or a product design engineer. Why High Productivity is Beneficial High productivity looks different depending on who’s measuring it. For Qualitics, the 'most obvious benefit of high employee productivity is that work is being done within your business...more products are being manufactured, more services delivered, more customers helped...' High levels of productivity are also closely linked with other benefits like higher levels of staff morale and retention, employee wellness, positive brand image and PR. Ways that Office Design Kills Productivity Office design can impact productivity in several ways. Most of us will have some experience of working somewhere with a poorly thought-out layout or insipid and uninspired decor. When the pandemic created a change in working habits, it forced some employers to rethink their workspaces, especially if they were looking to downsize or attract hybrid and remote workers back into the office. Distractions in the Office Open-plan offices are great for collaboration but often less than ideal for focused work. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, you're always 'available' in an open-plan office, even when you're not. People can see you. You’re visible, which makes them more likely to stop by your desk with 'just a quick question' or 'are you busy?'. These well-intentioned by irritating interruptions by a colleague or manager can be very detrimental to productivity. One study by Rescue Time found that 98% of people were 'interrupted at least a few times every single day.' It also found face-to-face interruptions were the most distracting. It is much harder to ignore a request when the person is standing right in front of you. The issue is that while many of us may appear ‘available’ just by sitting at our desks, we fulfil many different tasks, including focused work, collaboration, making and taking phone calls, answering emails, having meetings, eating lunch, etc. Equally, we’re all probably guilty of being fixated on our own tasks without effectively establishing whether now is a good time or not to disturb someone else. Open-plan offices therefore can lack boundaries. But this doesn't mean we all have to be locked behind doors or cubical walls. One of 2024's office design trends is activity-based working, where office layout is dictated by 'zones' rather than specific desks. Employees move around depending on the task they're working on, so if someone is doing focused work they’ll sit in the quiet zone, which is a cue to anyone looking for them that now is not a good time to chat. If they were dialling into a remote meeting, they'd be in a modular booth or an area with headphones. Some offices might also have an area set aside for physical activity to help employees manage stress and boost creative thinking. If this style of working can't be accommodated, then finding a system so that everyone is clear when someone is focused on deep work (and respects it) is vital. It may be when someone has headphones on or a red light on their desk that they’re not disturbed. If you’re using work communication channels, then there is often a status option signifying if a person is available or busy. You may also be sitting next or near to a distraction. This isn’t necessarily going to be the office chatterbox (although, it may well do), but rather people who take or field a lot of calls or meetings. Phone conversations can be particularly difficult to ignore. There's even a name for it: the halfalog. Fast Company describes it as only hearing half a conversation, which is harder to tune out than hearing both sides as 'it's hard for your brain to predict when a voice will start and stop when you only hear half a conversation.' Sitting people too closely together can make this worse. Furniture work explains that voices are harder to ignore than ambient background noise because voices have tones, enunciations and pauses, which are more distracting. Background music (especially without lyrics) can help with this. Low-fi beats are popular on streaming services like Spotify and YouTube for this reason. The issue with in-person distractions or loud noises from phones, etc, is that everyone handles distractions etc differently. Some people find concentrating with music playing more difficult. Others find total silence more challenging. If someone sits near the door, then this can also be distracting. It’s a good policy to be open to employee concerns about distractions and to facilitate solutions, especially if a problem can be solved by adjusting layout or adding in features to support employee efficiency and morale. What's interesting is that volume isn't always the issue when it comes to distraction from noise. Boss Design cites a 2015 meta-analysis of more than 100 research papers and found 75% of office noise was unrelated to its volume. The research argued that it’s the psychological effect of noise rather than how loud it is that’s often the problem. The researcher says that issues with sound are often because we have no choice but to process it and that even low-level noise can lead to as much as a 30% drop in cognitive performance. For example, suppose you're sitting at an office desk with your back to everyone else. You won't be distracted by movement until someone appears in your peripheral vision or in front of you, but you’ll still process the sounds people are making, which is why open-plan offices can make it difficult to concentrate. Headphones are one way to get around this. They’re not always ideal, however, and it even has its own name, ‘headphone prison,’ where people feel forced into wearing them to reduce distractions. If you can’t invest in activity-based working or have a smaller office, then acoustic design can help. Oscar Acoustics offer several solutions that may help with noise levels, like adding carpets and rugs, installing solid core doors, and adding acoustic spray to ceilings and walls. Acoustic spray is a type of plaster. Introducing hybrid working can help too. Employees then have the option to work from home on tasks that require their close attention. This can also help reduce ambient noise in the office on certain days. It could also Embracing hybrid working can help, too. Employees could have the option to work from home on tasks requiring their full attention. With fewer people in the office, it could also allow for desks to be allocated to quiet areas or even set up new collaborative or communal areas. Chatting to colleagues can also be a distraction, too. Small social breaks can be incredibly effective in boosting productivity, building morale, and creating a sense of community, but regular disruption will impact a person's output. Incorporating a welcoming communal area like a kitchen or sitting area may help. This encourages people to take breaks away from their desks and to socialise with others. It may also help reduce the number of distractions happening around workspaces. Online Distractions In-person distractions aren't the only ones killing productivity. More jobs are now dependent on productivity software. We use Microsoft Teams and Asana at Energym. Both have advantages, but they can also be distracting, especially when notifications are turned on. If you’re in the middle of a task and receive a notification, it can be highly distracting even if the request itself isn’t urgent. While this may not seem like a big deal, one study suggests it takes 23 minutes to focus back on a task after a distraction. HBR calls it 'task-switching' because it's not possible to pay attention to two things simultaneously. One way around this is to use an online communication system that practices' asynchronous communication', where companies make it policy that it's OK not to reply to messages straight away. Educating employees about what constitutes an urgent message versus what is a standard request. Office Design Lacking Fulfilment One study found that 73% of workers surveyed said they'd consider leaving their employer if the 'workplace environment didn't inspire them to fulfil their role'. Productivity hacks can often be focused on how to encourage employees to work more effectively. This often overlooks how important regular breaks are. Office design that doesn’t support regular and productive break-taking can have an impact on efficiency. One study found that breaks can help prevent decision fatigue, while another found that taking a lunchbreak away from the desk increased energy levels and decreased exhaustion. Bupa also conducted a survey which found that it costs the UK economy £50 million each day in lost productivity when employees don’t take lunch away from their desks. One study by Tork found that 22% of workers felt judged when they took a break. However, 94% of employees who took a break returned to their work with a new perspective and fresh eyes. Encouraging managers to step away from their workstations and helping employees manage their workload can help. Another way to encourage people to take a break is to create an inviting area – this can be a kitchen with a nice comfortable seating and a table area or a break room that's relaxing and inviting. It could be providing outdoor seating for the nice weather. You could also add in something like the ECO:POD, which is a modular, self-contained workout zone fitted out with electricity-generating bikes so people can exercise. Physical exercise has been shown to reduce stress, boost creativity and beat the post-afternoon slump. Lack of Outdoor Influence Nature can help employees reconnect with their job. Biophilic design uses indoor plants and water features to bring the outdoors inside. It seeks to create a genuine connection between workers and the outdoor world by replicating textures and patterns frequently found in nature – spirals, for example. Natural lighting has been shown to greatly impact productivity and employee health and even improves employees’ sleeping patterns and reducing the number of sick days taken. One study by the University of Oregon found that employees who had a view of trees and a natural landscape took ‘an average of 57 hours of sick leave per year compared with 68 hours taken by employees with no view at all. Adding natural lighting has also been shown to relieve headaches and eye-strain, which can have a significant impact on productivity. Not to mention that it just makes for a far more aesthetically pleasing space. This can also be integrated into a business value proposition, especially if a business is pushing more toward a sustainability-minded approach. Office design can be about more than just how pieces of furniture fit together. It can also be a place to improve productivity and wellbeing and can enhance brand messaging. The modern office must now also compete with remote and hybrid working models. Enhance your office space with the ECO:POD, a modular exercise and relaxation area where employees can generate clean electricity, store it and then use it to power electronic devices.