The built environment affects our physical, mental and social well-being. Here renowned professionals from practice and academia explore the evidence from basic research as well as case studies to test this belief. They show that many elements in the built environment contribute to establishing a milieu which helps people to be healthier and have the energy to concentrate while being free to be creative. The health and well-being agenda pervades society in many different ways but we spend much of our lives in buildings, so they have an important role to play within this total picture. This demands us to embrace change and think beyond the conventional wisdom while retaining our respect for it. Creating the Productive Workplace shows how we need to balance the needs of people and the ever-increasing enabling technologies but also to take advantage of the healing powers of Nature and let them be part of environmental design. This book aims to lead to more human-centred ways of designing the built environment with deeper meaning and achieve healthier and more creative, as well as more productive places to work.

This book brings together concepts from the building, environmental, behavioural and health sciences to provide an interdisciplinary understanding of office and workplace design. Today, with changes in the world of work and the relentless surge in technology, offices have emerged as the repositories of organizational symbolism, denoted by the spatial design of offices, physical settings and the built environment (architecture, urban locale). Drawing on Euclidian geometry that quantifies space as the distance between two or more points, a body of knowledge on office buildings, the concept of office and office space, and the interrelationships of spatial and behavioural attributes in office design are elucidated. Building and office work-related illnesses, namely sick building syndrome and ailments arising from the indoor environment, and the menace of musculoskeletal disorders are the alarming manifestations that critically affect employee satisfaction, morale and work outcomes. With a focus on office ergonomics, the book brings the discussion on the fundamentals of work design, with emphasis on computer workstation users. Strategic guidance of lighting systems and visual performance in workplaces are directed for better application of ergonomics and improvement in office indoor environment. It discusses the profiles of bioclimatic, indoor air quality, ventilation intervention, lighting and acoustic characteristics in office buildings. Emphasis has been given to the energy performance of buildings, and contemporary perspectives of building sustainability, such as green office building assessment schemes, and national and international building-related standards and codes. Intended for students and professionals from ergonomics, architecture, interior design, as well as construction engineers, health care professionals, and office planners, the book brings a unified overview of the health, safety and environment issues associated with the design of office buildings.

The research in this dissertation focuses on identifying variables that influence employee satisfaction with the BMW Group’s new working environment in Munich, Germany. In order to determine how physical elements in the working environment and new workplace practice affect employee satisfaction, change monitoring techniques are applied throughout a two year longitudinal study. Additionally, the learning culture is analyzed in response to the new working environment, specifically regarding how workplace changes influence the perceived effect of the working environment on the learning culture.

This book focuses on workplace innovation, which is a key element in ensuring that organizations and the people within them can adapt to and engage in healthy, sustainable change. It features a collection of multi-level, multi-disciplinary contributions that combine theory, research and practical perspectives. In addition, the book presents new perspectives from a number of nations on policies with novel theoretical approaches to workplace innovation, as well as international case studies on the subject. These cases highlight the role of leadership, the relation between workplace innovation and well-being, as well as the do’s and don’ts of workplace innovation implementation. Whether you are an experienced workplace practitioner, manager, a policy-maker, unionist, or a student of workplace innovation, this book contains a range of tips, tools and international case studies to help the reader understand and implement workplace innovation.

Facilities Management (FM) and Corporate Real Estate Management (CREM) are two closely related and relatively new management disciplines with developing international professions and increasing academic attention. Both disciplines have from the outset a strong focus on controlling and reducing cost for real estate, facilities and related services. In recent years there has been a change towards putting more focus on how FM/CREM can add value to the organisation. This book is driven by the need to develop a widely accepted and easily applicable conceptual framework of adding value by FM and CREM. It presents the state of the art of theoretical knowledge and empirical evidence about the impact of buildings and facilities on 12 value parameters and how to manage and measure these values. The findings are connected to a new Value Adding Management model. The book is research based with a focus on guidance to practice. It offers a transdisciplinary approach, integrating academic knowledge from a variety of different fields with practical experience. It also includes 12 interviews with practitioners, shedding light as to how they manage adding value in practice. This is a much needed resource for practitioners, researchers and teachers from the field of FM and CREM, as well as students at both undergraduate and postgraduate level.