The influence of personality on user satisfaction: multi-tenant offices

Abstract

Many different multi-tenant offices have arisen over the last decades, as building owners address the changing nature of the workplace -a need for users to share facilities. However, the existing literature on multi-tenant buildings from the point of view of user satisfaction is scarce, limiting input for user-centred design. This study analyses the influence of personality on user satisfaction with multi-tenant office characteristics. Data were collected through a questionnaire distributed among users of 17 different multi-tenant offices (business centres, incubators serviced offices and co-working places), which yielded 190 respondents. To determine the effects of personal characteristics, a multiple regression model was performed per office variable category. Results showed that users who are more extraverted, open to new experiences and more agreeable were overall more satisfied with the multi-tenant office characteristics. However, the effects of demographics and work-related characteristics were much larger. Men, older users and users working in an open and flexible work environment were overall more satisfied with the office characteristics. Owners, developers and managers can use these results for developing user-centred designs, optimizing the level of satisfaction in their offices.

Analysing user preferences for co-working space characteristics

“…However, research on users' preferences for characteristics of coworking spaces is still limited. One of the few studies on the characteristics of multi-tenant offices in general focused on user satisfaction, which is related to user preferences (Hartog, Weijs-Perrée, & Appel-Meulenbroek, 2017). Several physical characteristics of multi-tenant offices were divided into 10 important multi-tenant office factors, namely: location, office exterior and division, office decor, facilities and services, seclusion rooms, office leisure, information and communication technology (ICT) and equipment, privacy and office climate.…”

“…Hereby, the choice options were self-employed worker, freelancer or entrepreneur; employee of a small company (2-10 employees); employee of a medium-sized company (11-50 employees); employee of a large company (more than 50 employees); and student. These user groups were selected based on previous research on co-working spaces (Deijl, 2011;Hartog et al, 2017;Kojo & Nenonen, 2014;Moriset, 2013). Respondents were also asked to indicate their position in the organization whereby they could choose between supporting staff, regular employee, manager, board member/owner or does not apply.…”

“…Less typical co-working space characteristics were excluded, namely 24-h access, access to tools, resources, and network and virtual platforms. Also, indoor climate was not included as this aspect is not a very typical for multi-tenant offices (De Been & Beijer, 2014;Hartog et al, 2017). Table 3 shows the eight attribute and attribute levels chosen for the choice experiment.…”

Employee Satisfaction With the Physical Work Environment: The Importance of a Need Based Approach

“…In addition to effects of the workspace, work environment satisfaction research generally also includes the direct effects of personal characteristics such as age and gender, which have been shown to be significant (e.g., Bodin-Danielsson & Bodin, 2008;De Been & Beijer, 2014). Hartog, Weijs-Perrée, and Appel-Meulenbroek (2018) also found that personality affects satisfaction with the work environment in multi-tenant offices. Also, as ABOs have different types of workspaces for different activities, it can be assumed that an employee's activities could influence work environment satisfaction (De Been & Beijer, 2014).…”

Employee-workplace alignment

“…Other studies have highlighted the importance of personality traits. In particular, introversion-extraversion has received significant research attention, with studies showing that introverts are more dissatisfied and disrupted than extraverts in the presence of background noise in general (Geen, 1984) and in open-plan offices in particular (Hartog et al, 2018;Oseland and Hodsman, 2018). Researchers have also considered the role of sensory processing sensitivity, an innate trait concerning the individual's sensitivity to external stimuli.…”