Satisfaction assessment of ABW work settings

Research on perceived indoor environment quality has identified several aspects of the material, ambient, and socio-spatial environment that affect users’ health, well-being, satisfaction, and work performance. However, these aspects are often assessed on a general level of work environments (such as office floors), thus neglecting differences between work settings as offered in ABW environments and the different patterns of office workers’ use of the different settings. We collected data on Overall Work setting satisfaction (OWS) and satisfaction with environmental features of workplace settings in ABW in 5 office buildings (n = 455) using online questionnaires. Participants indicated that within ABW their most preferred setting were open space workstations (136), medium-sized meeting rooms (69), informal multipurpose rooms (46), and other settings (14). This indicates that individual references may differ when filling in a satisfaction survey. Furthermore, participants switch between different workplace settings: 59 per cent of participants indicated that they switched 2-5 times per day and further 14 per cent answered that they switched 6-10 times a day. The assessments of environmental features of the workplace settings differed to some degree in satisfaction between the settings. Overall, the results show that satisfaction assessments for preferred and frequently used settings in ABW are generally similar.