The effect of the collaborative work environment on individual work

Abstract

THE AIMS OF THE PAPER

Organizations intend to provide ideal working conditions for the employees, including the office environment and the communication culture, in order to support the efficiency of work and the job satisfaction.

It is a great challenge for companies to find the ideal level of communication and collaboration at work. The number of the colleagues’ inquiries and the virtual interruptions can easily reach the level to block work efficiency.

The research aims to investigate the individual aspects of the collaborative work environment, discover how Hungarian employees feel about the different types of interruptions, and which are those they identify as hindering factors.

METHODOLOGY

We collected information from depth interviews and questionnaires about work environment, communication channels, communication preferences, disruptions, and individual steps taken to avoid interruptions. This paper presents the results of the questionnaire completed by 141 office workers by the following topics: opinion on personal communication, the role and possibilities of the individual work, and the overall impression of the disruptive factors.

MOST IMPORTANT RESULTS

The most important result of the research shows that while more than one third of the respondents consider office noise as a disturbing factor, personal inquiries are welcome and considered useful, even if in such cases the work environment will not be convenient to solve tasks requiring concentration. The results show that tasks demanding concentration take a smaller proportion of an average employees’ time, but employees have to avoid busy working hours, or take cognitive load tasks home to be able to complete them.

RECOMMENDATIONS

With our research, we intend to help organizations to find a way to improve the working conditions of the employees to reach a higher level of job satisfaction. Based on the survey, our most important suggestion for the organizations is to find a solution for 2-3 hours of interruption-free work to support cognitive load tasks.