Talent & Tech Asia Summit 2024
human resources online

Is your work environment more open-plan or private-office?

New research commissioned from Ipsos by Steelcase and Microsoft dives into employee attitudes and engagement at work across the globe, with focus on office layouts and their impact on productivity.

It found that open plan offices only make up a global average of 23%, and that only 33% of global employees now work in open spaces in assigned workstations. Meantime, about half of all global workers can now, at least sometimes, work remotely (45%).

Titled Engagement and the Global Workplace, the report shows that workers are unsurprisingly technology traditionalists on the job, mostly desk-bound with desktop computers (80%) and landline telephones (86%).

Additionally, only a global average of 35% have relatively easy access to videoconferencing, a stark contrast to the highest in the world, India, with 58%.

 

Covering 12,480 participants from 17 countries (including China and India), it was found more workplaces are configured with entirely private offices than those comprising completely open space configurations (31% vs. 23%). The majority of workplaces (46%) consists of both open and enclosed private spaces.

Office configuration ratios vary significantly by individual country. For example, in the United Kingdom nearly half (49%) report working in open-plan workstations and only 14% in individual offices, while in Germany the reverse is true—more than half (54%) report working in individual offices and only 19% in open plan. Most employees (60%) are assigned to either an individual or shared private office.

Approximately one-third of employees have assigned workspaces in open environments, and a small fraction (8%) are nomadic workers who are not assigned to a specific space and who regularly work in different places in the office.

Again, this varies significantly by country; workers in the Netherlands, United Kingdom and Belgium have sizable populations of mobile workers, while in China and Russia this practice is almost nonexistent.

 

All images / Steelcase

Follow us on Telegram and on Instagram @humanresourcesonline for all the latest HR and manpower news from around the region!

Free newsletter

Get the daily lowdown on Asia's top Human Resources stories.

We break down the big and messy topics of the day so you're updated on the most important developments in Asia's Human Resources development – for free.

subscribe now open in new window