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Goldfinger2001
- Senior | Next Rank: 100 Posts
- Posts: 50
- Joined: Mon Jan 03, 2011 9:22 am
"Since the physical work environment affects employee productivity and morale, the employees themselves should have the right to decide how their workplace is designed."
Discuss the extend to which you agree or disagree with the opinion stated above. Support your views with reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.
Employee productivity and morale are two important ingrediences of a successful company. To enhance these two factors, companies should take care of their employees and do the most to make them feel comfortable. Productivity and morale can be boosted by many factors, for example by working at a company that has a good reputation, offers promotion prospects or offers you the freedom to create your personal workspace. Though having the possibility to create your own workspace might increase productivity and moral, it is hard to implement in most businesses.
The first reason why designing your workplace is difficult is that every employee may have a different perception of what he or she thinks is fashionable. If this employee is working in a single bureau this would be, under some circumstances, acceptable but if you are working in a bureau with more than 5 people, rearranging your workplace might be difficult to realize. Imagine your co-worker is a fan of the New York Yankees and decorates his space with posters of the team and you absolutly hate his team because you are a fan of the White Sox. Would this be a boost for employee productivity and morale? I doubt it.
The second reason why I think that employees should not have the right to decide the design of their workplace is that it is doubtful whether the costs of the new design will make up for the possible boost in productivity and morale. If the employees of a small company in a low margin business decide that they want a new cafeteria, kitchen and a room to realax this would defenitely be a incentive for the workers. However, if the costs of this change would lead the company to lay off workers in order to be competetive, employee morale and productivity would probably be on a new low.
Though letting employees design their own workspace is in many cases counterproductive and not realizeable in many businesses, there are examples where this might indeed boost productivity and morale.Take a designer loft as an example. I think it would be a boost for employee productivity if the employees can design their own workplace and live in their organized "chaos" in order to think more creatively. This case would help the company owner by employing motivated and productive employees who produce creative work, and the employees would be also very contend in that they work in their personalized environment where they spend a lot of time.
In sum, letting employees decide how to design their workplace or leaving this decision to the management depends heavily on the field you are working in. While there are opportunities in creative job fields to realize this task, in most other jobs this would be counterproductive.
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I know the conlusion should be longer but I ran out of time...
Discuss the extend to which you agree or disagree with the opinion stated above. Support your views with reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.
Employee productivity and morale are two important ingrediences of a successful company. To enhance these two factors, companies should take care of their employees and do the most to make them feel comfortable. Productivity and morale can be boosted by many factors, for example by working at a company that has a good reputation, offers promotion prospects or offers you the freedom to create your personal workspace. Though having the possibility to create your own workspace might increase productivity and moral, it is hard to implement in most businesses.
The first reason why designing your workplace is difficult is that every employee may have a different perception of what he or she thinks is fashionable. If this employee is working in a single bureau this would be, under some circumstances, acceptable but if you are working in a bureau with more than 5 people, rearranging your workplace might be difficult to realize. Imagine your co-worker is a fan of the New York Yankees and decorates his space with posters of the team and you absolutly hate his team because you are a fan of the White Sox. Would this be a boost for employee productivity and morale? I doubt it.
The second reason why I think that employees should not have the right to decide the design of their workplace is that it is doubtful whether the costs of the new design will make up for the possible boost in productivity and morale. If the employees of a small company in a low margin business decide that they want a new cafeteria, kitchen and a room to realax this would defenitely be a incentive for the workers. However, if the costs of this change would lead the company to lay off workers in order to be competetive, employee morale and productivity would probably be on a new low.
Though letting employees design their own workspace is in many cases counterproductive and not realizeable in many businesses, there are examples where this might indeed boost productivity and morale.Take a designer loft as an example. I think it would be a boost for employee productivity if the employees can design their own workplace and live in their organized "chaos" in order to think more creatively. This case would help the company owner by employing motivated and productive employees who produce creative work, and the employees would be also very contend in that they work in their personalized environment where they spend a lot of time.
In sum, letting employees decide how to design their workplace or leaving this decision to the management depends heavily on the field you are working in. While there are opportunities in creative job fields to realize this task, in most other jobs this would be counterproductive.
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I know the conlusion should be longer but I ran out of time...
