The impacts of visibility and privacy in the workplace on organizational productivity as conducted through informal interactions

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to investigate two important factors of workplace layout, visibility and accessibility, and their impacts on “face to face” interaction in the workplace. It is believed that a certain space layout will provide the opportunity for employees to interact with each other thus increases the possibility of team working. The greater level of team working in any organization will lead to higher productivity. The methods to improve the possibility of unplanned communication and ease of interaction within a work area are classified under spatial interconnectedness. This spatial interconnectedness contains workers’ visibility, worker`s movements and accessibility within the work space. In this study, employees in an office were asked to complete a survey that calculated variables of the research. They received a questionnaire including measures for each of the key variables. Some of these procedures were taken from a research made for a large corporation, and others were certified measures from the physical workplace contemporary literature. SPSS statistic software was used as software to analyze the data and layout plans was analyzed by Depth map. The results indicate that the visibility of the worker`s and the accessibility in a work area is significantly correlated to interaction. The study highlights the importance of workplace productivity and manipulating informal interaction as a measurement of productivity in the office space.