Robysearch Limited
Introduction.
Robysearch Limited is an Information Technology giant in the market today, and it brags of having come up with several Point of Sale software packages and designing websites for hundreds of clients who are happily satisfied with their choice of making Robysearch Limited their IT partner. Robysearch provides jobs to about sixty young people who are graduates in several fields, mainly Information Technology and Computers Science. According to the management, the workers would be assigned one open space office and several private room offices. The major problem arising from this layouts is that those workers who stay in private offices idle too much and sometimes spend most of their time working on something that does not benefit the organization (Brand 2009). On the other hand, workers in the open space office take most of their time gossiping due to too much closeness. The other problem arising from the open office is that when some decision is needed, some shy workers are not able boldly to air their views due to fear of shame and being gossiped later by colleagues (Kim & De Dear 2013).
This research seeks to improve the productivity of the organization by providing possible solutions to these problems caused by office layouts. From other researchers, open offices have been a critical blow to organizations. Open space offices make the communication more complex instead of quickening it, (Rasila & Rothe 2012), decreasing some workers’ motivation, causing distractions since several people are operating in one room at ago, whereas on the other hand, open offices have been known to consume fewer resources,(Ajala 2012), and promote openness and transparency. I propose to introduce a clustered style office layout in which workers with similar duties are allocated one room, thus reducing the number of workers per room but not making the rooms private. Following past research, team clusters will be better.
Proposed methods
The research will involve only workers at Robysearch Limited. A simple questionnaire will be used to gather data from the employees of Robysearch Limited. As a back up to the survey, private interviews are to be conducted to each of the employees separately. The last exercise will involve a joint meeting with the management to collect their views as well. The questionnaire would only collect information about how the office a worker resides affects them and how they would feel like if they would have found a placing to the team clustered offices.
Proposed Results
It was found that only 10 of 60 workers were unwilling to move to team clustered offices. 40% of the workers were unable to work to their full capacity due to lowered self-esteem. However, only 3 of 7 employees in private offices were willing to move to team clustered offices. They gave reasons, including privacy and distractions. A whopping 100% of the management wanted the workers grouped in teams.
Discussions
After carefully analyzing the results collected, an agreement was reached to restructure the office layout and construct rooms that would harbor fewer similar workers. In this proposal, the high ranking officers who frequently need privacy such as one on one talk with clients, a private room will remain necessary, and they would stay in private rooms. Clustering workers means only workers who deal on one item will be together; for instance, those who work on the web design would get allocated one office. Those who work on web-based applications could be placed in a cubicle next to or close to the web designers since they often communicate.
Employers working on the client based systems could be allocated a different room or cubicle so that they can arrange it to suit their needs. And those who work one on one with clients such as sales and marketing managers should be allocated private rooms to provide more privacy and confidentiality to clients. After implementing this proposal, Robysearch Limited should experience a significant improvement on productivity since workers will feel more confident of themselves, accessible communication while still attending to essential things, or even attending to customers, while again assuring their privacy.
Challenges that may face this layout will be a distraction, though very minimal as a result of the other employees sharing the room or cubicle. Another problem may arise when the privacy of the workers is slightly compromised; however, the positive side of the research outwits the negative side. Further studies should be on how to get rid of the slight privacy and distractions for an even better working experience for employees.
References
Ajala, E. M. (2012). The influence of the workplace environment on workers’ welfare, performance, and productivity. The African Symposium.
Brand, J. L. (2009). Should Your Company Transition from Traditional Private Offices to an Open Office Plan?. Change/Transition Management White Paper, 5.
Kim, J., & De Dear, R. (2013). Workspace satisfaction: The privacy-communication trade-off in open-plan offices. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 36, 18-26.
Rasila, H., & Rothe, P. (2012). A problem is a problem is a benefit? Generation Y perceptions of open-plan offices. Property Management, 30(4), 362-375.