It is better to design work spaces that allow employees to choose what is true to their personality.
Shared workspace (Photo: ShutterStock)
Dissatisfaction with the workplace among employees may harm their productivity and worse, their mental and physical health.
A new study published recently examined the connection and the influence of a significant factor on these kinds of feelings.
The study, published in the Journal of Research in Personality, found that the design of the work spaces has a real effect on the satisfaction that the employees experience with their work performance and their career.
The researchers analyzed the relationship between personality types and preferences related to the workplace.
Their goal was to try to find out whether the personality differences between the employees in a certain place affect the design of their work space.
The work spaces examined in the study included private offices, cubicles and shared open spaces (Oven Space).
270 office workers were equipped with monitoring devices that monitored health indicators and filled out questionnaires about their feelings in the various work spaces.
"It is better to design offices where there are several types of work spaces, than to design an office with one type of work space that should suit everyone," said one of the authors of the study Esther Sternberg, director of research at the Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona.
"Although everyone understands that different people have different personalities, this aspect is not always taken into account in the design of work spaces," wrote another researcher who participated in the study - Mathias Mehl, a professor of psychology at the University of Arizona.
Introverted people and people prone to worry and apprehension preferred to work in private offices (Photo: ShutterStock)
"The message that should be taken from this study is that a variety of choices and adapted workspaces should be provided, so that each employee can choose what works best for them," Sternberg explained.
In their research, they discovered that employees with an extroverted personality are more comfortable working in open and shared spaces.
Whereas introverted people and people who tend to worry and apprehensiveness, preferred to work in private offices.
On the other hand, other personality traits, such as: likability, conscientiousness and openness, had no clear connection to the preference of a certain type of work space.
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For the mental and physical health of employees, both.
The study also identified a number of simple steps that can be taken in any office or workspace to improve the mental health of employees.
Maintaining a noise level of up to 50 decibels has been identified as optimal for reducing stress.
Exposure to bright natural sunlight between 8:00 and 12:00 and red lighting in the afternoon and evening were found to be associated with better work environments.
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