Symposium: The future of the office: Multiple perspectives on the impact of innovative workplaces

There is a trend in today’s organizations to implement new ways of working in terms of the place where work-related tasks are performed (e.g. activity-based office spaces). However, consequences of this increased flexibility and variety are not well understood. The key feature of these changes in office design is that the different working locations match the requirements of different kinds of work activities, customer or service-related demands and/or employee needs. This may change well-established work routines, such as having assigned desks, monotonous physical work posture and invariable social contacts with colleagues which might affect employees’ wellbeing, motivation and performance.

At the individual level, innovative office design are seen as an idiosyncratic flexibility tool meant to improve employees’ demands-abilities as well as their needs-supplies fit and as such their health and wellbeing (mentally as well as physically) and their willingness, capability and opportunity to perform. Likewise, from the organization’s perspective innovative ways of organizing offices are seen as a strategic tool for improved productivity, collaboration and customer service. However, the underlying mechanisms why innovative office designs and increased autonomy in choosing where to work lead to diverse consequences are still unclear (Wohlers & Hertel, 2017).

This symposium combines different perspectives on the impact of innovative workplaces in an attempt to better understand how both organizational and individual level objectives are obtained. Multiple forms of office designs (i.e. standing desks, activity-based office spaces, teleworking, experience-driven office spaces, shared offices…) as well as multiple consequences (i.e. performance, motivational and physical outcomes) will be discussed in a set of four presentations and a general discussion.

CHAIR
Rein De Cooman
KU Leuven, Antwerp, Belgium
DISCUSSANT
Anja Van den Broeck
KU Leuven, Brussels, Belgium

IN THIS SYMPOSIUM

Telework and its associations with employee well-being and performance: Employees’ self-identity as a key individual difference?
Maria Gaudiino, Anja Van den Broeck, Rein De Cooman, Marijke Verbruggen
KU Leuven, Brussels, Belgium.
KU Leuven, Antwerpen, Belgium.
KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

Place and time independent working: Meant to benefit employee and organization, but what about the customer?
Rein De Cooman1, Jonas De Kerf, Lynn Germeys, Sara De Gieter
KU Leuven, Antwerp, Belgium.
KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium