THE INFLUENCE OF WORK ENVIRONMENT ON ORGANIZATIONAL PRODUCTIVITY

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

• Background of the Study

The environment is man’s immediate surrounding which he manipulates for his existences; wrongly manipulation introduces hazards that make this environment unsafe and impede the productivity rate of the  workers. Therefore, the workplace entails and environment in which this workers performs his work (Chapins 1995) while an effective workplace is an environment where results can be achieved as expected by management (Mike, 2010, Shikder 2002) physical environment affects how employees in an organization interact, perform tasks, and are led, physical environment  as an aspect of this work environment have directly affected the human sense and subtly changed interpersonal interactions and thus productivity. This is so because the characteristics of a room  or a place of meeting for a group have consequences regarding productivity and satisfaction level. The workplace environment is the most critical factor in keeping an employee satisfied in today’s business world today’s  workplace is different, diverse and constantly changing, the typical employer employee relationship of old has been turned upside down. Workers are living in a growing economy and have almost  limitless job opportunities. This combination of factors has created an environment where the business needs its employees more than the employees need the business (Smith, 2011).

Lighting and other factors like ergomic furniture’s has been found to have positive influence on employees health (Dilani 2004. Milton, Glencross & Walters, 2000; Veitch  Newsham, 2000) and consequently on productivity. This is so because light has a profound impact on workers physical, physiological and psychological health, and on their  overall  performances at the workplace. Ambient features in office environments, such as lighting,

Temperature, existence of windows, free are movement etc, suggest that these elements of the physical environment influence employee’s attitude, behaviors, satisfaction, performance and productivity (Larsen, Adams, Deal, Kweon & Tyler, 1998, Veitch  &  Gifford, 1996).  Closed office floor plan, whether each employee has a separate office of their own or these are a few people in each closed office, allows staff a greater amount of  privacy than an open plan office layout,. they have the chance to work in place and quiet, keeping them focused  on the tasks in hand without getting overtly started by what their colleagues are doing. it offers employees a thinking fame or be creative without much interruption (Mubexm, 2001)  in the open office plane, noise existences if stressful and demotivating, posses’ high level of distract on and disturbance  coupled with low privacy level (E-van & Johnson’s, 2000). with technological development, innovative commucnaiton methods, virtual reality, e-market improvement and alterative work patterns, workplace continues to change rapidly (Challenger, 2000). To accommodates theses rapid changes while maintaining or improving outcomes, organization have increasingly turned to some version of environment such as open office space (Terricone and Luca, 2002. This type of work environment supports new) .