Methods for Analyzing the Impacts of Workplace Changes on Knowledge Work

Knowledge work productivity and well-being are being developed through utilizing flexible and mobile work practices, places and tools. For example, multi-use office designs, teleworking, mobile and social technology as well as trust-based and result-oriented managerial principles are often used as methods to redesign knowledge work. The main idea is to provide more flexibility and allow workers to decide when, where and how their work gets done. Thus, workers can choose the most suitable place and tools based on the task at hand. The benefits of work environment changes and new working practices for knowledge workers include, for example, improved autonomy and motivation, better work-life fit, as well as ability to concentrate and communicate when needed. Further, improved productivity and work well-being is expected in addition to a various other benefits for organizations and also for the wider society. Research offers some evidence on the positive and negative impacts of modern work environment redesign and related practices but there is still a lack of examining methods that could be useful in capturing the overall impacts and how to measure them. These methods are crucial when management is considering further improvements and need information on the impacts related to workplace changes. This paper presents and empirically demonstrates the application of three complementary ways to analyse the impacts of knowledge work redesigns, which include work environment changes and new work practices. These methods include interview framework, survey tool and multidimensional performance measurement. Different measurement approaches may be needed due to many different organizational contexts and management needs. For example, analysing the productivity potential of new working practices and work environment (ex-ante) is a different management and measurement task compared to evaluating the impacts of a change project (ex-post). Therefore, it is important to have empirical understanding on the application and usefulness of different measurement approaches in differing managerial contexts.