Measuring employee attitudes toward their physical environment

Architecture may be defined as the manipulation of forms and materials for the creation of physical environments conducive to its users. However, many spaces appear to be designed arbitrarily, forcing the user to conform to what is there. This lack of congruency seems to be especially prevalent in the design of work environments. Often work environments are designed upon assumed employee needs and desires that have not been first substantiated or tested. By measuring employee attitudes toward features in their physical environment, an understanding of employee needs and desires could be gained. But because very few attempts are made to obtain employee responses towards their physical environment, the methods for obtaining this type of information are not well established in the design fields.

This study has evaluated the questionnaire as a potential instrument through which to measure employee attitudes about their physical environment. The case chosen for this study was the convention hotel. As background for the development of the questionnaire, the history of the hotel industry was explored and interviews and on site observations by the researcher were conducted. The interviews were extremely helpful in determining which factors to address in the questionnaire. Various statistical programs were executed upon the questionnaire data to establish relationships between features considered important in the work environment and the various employee groups in the hotel for use as guidelines in the design of work environments. The questionnaire was proven to be a reliable instrument through which to measure employee attitudes toward their physical environment and by further supplementing its results with other data collection methods, a more thorough understanding of those features in the physical work environment considered important to the employee could be gained, enabling the architect to design work environments that are more conducive to employee needs and desires.