A place that works

By VICKI JAYNE


Are you sitting comfortably? For this is a tale of the ideal workplace - one that combines ergonomic ease with creative ambience, where environmental conscience dances gracefully with organisational excellence and photocopiers never break down.

It is a place suited to work flexibility with accessible "hot" desks, airy meeting rooms and kiddy centres. The air smells fresh and is neither too hot nor too cold. There are spaces to plug in, rev up, ease down or chill out.

Chairs are specifically designed for body types and work styles. Keyboards have become obsolete and all electronic equipment responds to quiet verbal command. Lunch and meeting rooms open to leafy vistas and wailing sirens have been replaced by the gentle swish of waves on the shore.

You are indeed very comfortable.

Okay, storytime over. Back to real life.

Most work-spaces trail sadly behind the ideal. While some employee-friendly organisations run ergonomic assessments on individual work stations, most keep trying to jam square pegs into round holes. Employees have to adapt to a given work-space rather than vice versa.

Shorties get the same workstations as their loftier colleagues, everyone listens in on other people's phone conversations, the lunchroom looks out on a concrete wall and individuals have little control over noise levels, lighting or air temperature.

Beverley Main, chief executive of the Human Resources Institute, recalls one workplace which in winter was freezing cold.

"If you complained to the boss, he'd just tell you to wear more clothes."

Which could explain why her first thoughts on the ideal workplace include "lots of blue sky and sand". More realistically, she plumps for seamless support systems and flexible work-space.

"The ideal is somewhere with enough space to create different work areas so you can do more than just sit at a keyboard. A place where you can have peace and quiet if you need it or you can be part of the buzz if you want."

Ergonomically speaking, flexibility is a good thing. Dynamism is better yet, as Stephen Legg, director of the Centre for Ergonomics, Occupational Safety and Health and Professor of Ergonomics at Massey University, explains.

"Most people will look at books on standard positions for keyboard users and what they will see is a perfectly upright, straight-backed, sitting-square sort of posture that is touted as the ideal.

"In practice the ideal is to encourage dynamic movement and interaction with work station elements - chair, desk, keyboard and computer - so you don't have individuals forced to hold fixed postures for a long time."

Two years ago he visited a Swedish university to lecture to senior students in the ergonomics department.

"I was quite surprised when I walked past the secretary's office to see her standing at her desk and asked whether it was a special desk. 'No,' she said, 'this is normal.' When I went back 20 minutes later, she was sitting at the same desk.

"It turned out that she was using an electronically adjustable desk and chair system which was standard for all general staff at that university. That's an example of modifying the workplace to fit the person."

Which, he says, is the central tenet of ergonomics.

"It's about fitting the workplace environment and equipment to the capabilities and limitations of the people who work in that environment. That includes body size and shape, strength capabilities, cognitive abilities, their understanding of the work systems - an ergonomist will look at the whole picture."

And that includes the psycho-social environment - whether people are happy and getting on with one another or over-worked, stressed to the max, playing office politics and bickering.

"In problems such as OOS [occupational overuse syndrome] there are two components. One is the physical muscle fatigue that occurs through maintaining fixed postures for long periods. Secondly, that is exacerbated by working in an environment that is not relaxed.

"So even if you designed an environment which is physically well organised and people get regular micro-breaks and so on, the overriding tension associated with poor management or relationships is still a factor. That's why ergonomics covers both."

In his ideal work-space workers have more control over how they do things and the environment is better physically designed to ease muscle tension.

How workers respond to physical work-space has a lot to do with perception, says Leanne Markus, an organisational psychologist and director of Performance Group International.

"Environmental factors usually affect job performance indirectly - their primary impact is on mood."

So crowding people into inadequate spaces will make them grumpy, affecting job satisfaction and their commitment to the company.

On the other hand, people don't like too much privacy, says Markus. They prefer to have co-workers close by and supervisors further away.

"The partitioned office meets these preferences if carefully designed to give feelings of adequate personal space. People also feel more positive the further they are from the office entrance - it's a status thing."

Decor also makes a difference. Research suggests darker colours are more stimulating and people may make more errors in a uniformly pale environment. A scenic view helps to lift mood and people like windows - though scenic paintings can be helpful if there are no external views.

Clean and aesthetically pleasing offices are associated with better job satisfaction, says Markus.

Putting people in dingy or rundown premises is a recipe for making them negative about their work, agrees Gay Barton, New Zealand general manager for Drake International.

"While usually thought of as an issue for office or corporate environments, it's amazing how a lick of paint can raise the spirits even in a dirty, dusty factory. People's attitude to work often reflects their environment. If their environment is not cared for, then they won't show pride in their work."

Work productivity tends to rise on the strength of just about any evidence that the boss cares about the work environment.

That was spotted back in the 1920s during research on optimum lighting levels at the Western Electric plant in Hawthorne, Illinois, when workers responded positively to every adjustment because they were aware of the study.

The "Hawthorne effect", as it was dubbed, can make it a bit unclear whether positive impact comes from a specific environmental change or just the fact that somebody cared enough to change it.

But little things can make a difference. Fresh water, fruit bowls and "proper" coffee are part of the environment at Main's Wellington office.

"The bottom line is showing an interest in your staff, investing in their comfort and creating an environment that's a bit dynamic."

Both Main and Barton cite temperature as important. Main delights in having windows that open so everyone doesn't get the same cold every year. Barton believes good control of air conditioning "goes a long way to ensuring staff comfort - though it's often only noticed when things go wrong".

Barton also cites poor security, unreliable equipment (from dodgy lifts to outdated PCs), overcrowding, and insufficient resources as other environmental factors that damage employee morale. Topping her list of positives are good location - workplaces that are in a pleasant environment, easily accessible, and close to services - as well as physical comfort. Other pluses are natural lighting ("nobody likes to be cut off from the outside world") and good layout ("rabbit warrens and mazes only suit rabbits and rats").

The problem with defining an ideal workplace, says Barton, is that each business has unique needs and/or company culture.

"The best way of describing it is to say that everything should work so well that you don't merely take it for granted, you don't even notice it's there.

"That leaves people free to focus on their business activities, which is why they're there in the first place."