Employees’ perception toward conducive working environments in selected offices in Selangor, Malaysia

• Main Author: Ang, Lay Swan
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: Work environment
• Online Access: http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/85578/1/FRSB%202014%2014%20ir.pdf; http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/85578/
• Institution: Universiti Putra Malaysia

In today's modern society, office workplace has received much attention in the area of conducive environment settings. There has been a shortage of workspace cubicle and comfortable office environment to motivate and to reduce work stress in the office. This research objective was to identity the perceptions of the employees on the current design of built environment workspace and to determine the variables known to be contributing to poor working environment such as workspace arrangement, lightings, furniture, storage, visual privacy, noise level, thermaI condition, plants, work satisfaction, hygiene and cleanliness as well as color preferences. The analysis was achieved through a quantitative questionnaires survey that was instrumented in 17 food and processing companies in selected area in Selangor in order to get the employees' expectations and perceptions on the working environment such as their level of satisfaction, preferences and user behavior. This research also include a proposed design guideline for the survey office which consists of cubicle size, distance between two workspaces, number of filing cabinet needed, number of cubicle allocated in one area, appropriate partition height and ergonomic chair needed. The design guideline was then validated by the research company. For survey questionnaires, the data was then analyzed through a descriptive statistic approach to identify and investigate many variables that include frequency, percentage and reliability test. The findings revealed that most employees find that their office workspace are crowded, lack of visual privacy and the noise level were affecting their work and concentration. The result also shows that most employees feel that having a conducive working environment will help to increase their work performance as they are looking forward to a conducive office workspace that is aesthetic, relaxing and conducive. The results from this study contributed to the interior design and architecture industries to understand the needs and perceptions of the individual employee. It also creates awareness to the employers that it is important for the organizations to upgrade and provide a conducive office environment to motivate and inspire the employees to work in a felicitous and productive environment. This will help to improve employees' creativity and reduce stress in order to achieve optimum work efficiency.