Dive Brief:
- Employers spend a lot of money on strategies they hope will boost employee performance. But according to new research from cloud-based talent management provider Cornerstone OnDemand and the Harvard Business School, the simple act of rearranging employee seating can be one of the fastest and lowest-cost ways of increasing performance.
- The study explored how the distance between two employees’ desks affects various performance measures, and how placing the right type of workers in close proximity to each other has been shown to generate up to a 15% increase in organizational performance with an estimated $1 million in gains annually for some employers.
- The research uncovered three types of workers: Productive, Generalists and Quality. Simply by seating Productive and Quality workers together and seating Generalists separately (in their own group) the result was a 13% productivity gain and a 17% "effectiveness" gain. Bottom line, "symbiotic relationships" are created from pairing those with opposite strengths.
Dive Insight:
Productive workers are very productive but lack in quality. In contrast, Quality workers produce superior quality but lack in productivity. Generalists are average on both dimensions.
The “Planning Strategic Seating to Maximize Employee Performance” report analyzed data from more than 2,000 employees over a two-year period provided by a large technology company with several locations in the U.S. and Europe.
Jason Corsello, senior vice president of strategy and corporate development at Cornerstone OnDemand, said that with today's employers shifting to open floor plans and flexible workspaces, the study shows that there is actually science behind employee seating charts.
Even more, it shows how people analytics can deliver business value in some interesting and unlikely ways. In this case, employers who put some thought into who sits where can deliver some very impressive performance gains. Seems that based on this research, employers should take a second look at how they arrange their people in the office setting - and it won't necessarily cost a fortune.