Abstract
Occupant density is an important and basic metric of space use efficiency. It affects user experience of privacy, crowding and satisfaction. The effect of agile working has been two fold. Firstly, offices have an increasing range of workspace settings such as break out space, collaborative space and contemplative space in contrast to the traditional workspace settings of assigned desks and formal meeting rooms. Secondly, office workers have become increasingly mobile as they are able to work from a greater variety of locations both in and out of their main place of work. This study asks whether workers who occupy agile workspaces and those with greater mobility experience privacy differently from workers with more conventional offices and work patterns. The experience of privacy can be considered in terms of retreat from people, control of information flow and control of interactions. Our results show that agile workspaces improve the ability to control information compared with open plan offices. It was also found that highly mobile workers are more sensitive to the negative effects of interacting with people. From this a taxonomy of offices is defined in terms of the features that contribute to the experience of privacy.
Highlights
An increase in agile workspace and remote working has changed the way that work is done and offices configured
The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of agile working on the experience of privacy, crowding and satisfaction
Three different typologies of office were chosen for the study: traditional cellular offices, with assigned seating, formal meeting rooms and a number of small open offices; traditional open plan, with assigned seating, formal meeting rooms and a small number of uniform break out spaces; and agile open plan workspace with assigned seating, formal meeting rooms and a large number of varied break out spaces
Summary
An increase in agile workspace and remote working has changed the way that work is done and offices configured. Experiences of privacy are diverse; it can be thought of in terms of the desire for withdrawal, control of information flow and control of interactions [1]. These are important health and wellbeing issues for building occupants [2,3]. Understanding how agile workspaces and remote working affects occupants’ experience is of utmost importance. In commercial literature the term is used to describe a variety of concepts including an individual’s mode of working (an agile worker) and a type of office design (agile workspace or agile offices), see Table 1. This study uses the term agile workspace to describe a particular type of office design. When talking of both mobile workers and agile workspace together the term agile working will be used
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