Issue 68
Recently there is a debate over that whether the employees should have the right to decide how their workplace is designed. This topic is controversial, and different people may hold different views due to distinct backgrounds. Some people may assert that physical work environment affect employee’s productivity and morale, so they should have the control to decide their working environment, while others hold the opinion that it's unnecessary to give employees such a freedom. To some extent, I agree the author's stance that employees should have the right to decide how their workplace is designed; however, the best approach is a case-to-case analysis.
To begin with, allowing employees the right to decide how their workplace is designed can improve their productivity and morale generally, because of two reasons. First, the employees will think the company respect them and consider their thoughts, thus in return work productively and be loyal to the company. Second, uncomfortable working environment or poor working location design indeed affects the employees' productivity. For example, consider that the energetic and creative people in a high-tech game design company are seated in a dark and boring office box, it will be hard to stimulate their creation at work; on the other hand, if they are allowed to choose or decorate their work environment such as changing the tables arrangement, or hanging their favorite arts posters in the wall, the effect will be quite different in a positive way.
Nevertheless, by the same token, it also needs to take some factors other than only considering the employees' stance into account, namely, in the company's stance, and judge that how far to give employees the right to decide how their workplace is designed. For instance, in companies dealing with new technology and innovation, there could be more room for the employees to design their own work environment, but in more traditional companies such as shopping mall or banks, a more unified and formal design relating to the company's image may be put into the priority.
Moreover, to allow employees the right to decide how their workplace is designed is not to indulge them with unlimited freedom. Their decision about decorating their own space should not affect or offend other people such as colleagues or even the company images. For instance, such "designs" as hanging erotic pictures in the wall should be avoided and forbidden.
To sum up, physical work environment affects employee’s productivity and morale to some extent so they should be responsible to decide their working environment, but nevertheless the company should justify that how free the employees should use the right and how far the employees should go. As long as the employees' design of their own space or the whole work environment doesn't influence others and the company negatively, they should be given the right to design their workplace.
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发表于 2009-6-1 18:05:00
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