Journal of Ergonomics

Productivity is called the ability of the organization to convert input sources into goods and services [1,2]. Nowadays, productivity is one of the most important organizational goals that promote growth and survival of organizations [3]. In other words, productivity affects all organizational dimensions affecting organizational performance including efficiency and effectiveness, product quality, customer satisfaction, etc. [4].
Employees are always interacting with their surroundings. Therefore, physical environment and office building play an important role for employees and proper work environment design can affect the feeling of comfort and security, motivation, job satisfaction and overall employee productivity [1]. In contrast, inappropriate physical and psychological factors in the workplace can lead to job stress and decrease productivity. Leblebici et al. showed that comfort level (ventilation, heat, natural light, artificial light, decoration, comfort, physical security) and ambient layout (formal-informal meeting status, peace of mind, privacy, work-table area, ventilation) can have a positive impact on productivity [5]. Therefore, physical factors in office environment such as chairs, lighting, sound, environmental arrangement, ventilation, and so on appear to affect productivity. The relationship between the indoor environment (environmental ergonomics), convenience and efficiency has been shown in many studies [6–10].
This study was aimed to investigate the relationship between environmental and demographic factors with staff productivity of Islamic Azad University of Shiraz.

 

In this cross-sectional study, 186 faculty members of Islamic Azad University of Shiraz were surveyed. Inclusion criteria were at least 20 years of age, at least one year of work experience, at least 6 hours of daily work, and no physical and mental disorders. Data collection tools included demographic questionnaire, office work environment architecture questionnaire and Hershey-Goldsmith productivity questionnaire. The Workplace Design Questionnaire was designed by Hameed et al. in 2009 and has good reliability and validity (0.81) [11]. The questionnaire consists of 20 question with 5 items as answer, in 5 parts about chair, sound, lighting, temperature and layout of the work environment to examine the work environment. In addition, Hershey Goldsmith Productivity Questionnaire was used to evaluate the productivity of human resources. The more points obtained from this questionnaire, the greater the productivity of human resources [13-12]. Descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation coefficient and multiple linear regression were used for data analysis.

Among the study subjects, 67.9% were male and the rest were female. The age and work experience of the employees were 41.45 6 6.80 and 11.95 6 6.23, respectively. Of the samples, 83.9% were single and the rest were married. The average working day at the office was 8 hours.
The results showed that there was a significant relationship between the level of education and the productivity score, so that there was a significant difference in the level of productivity with those with a PhD. This means that people with a high level of education are more productive (Table 1).
 

Table 1. Investigating the Relationship between Demographic Characteristics and Productivity Score

Also, the results showed that all factors (chair, noise, temperature, lighting and ambient layout) were significantly related to productivity. According to the correlation coefficient, the effect of environmental factors were respectively on ambient / chair layout, temperature, lighting and noise, although this relationship was statistically significant but the relationship was weak. Also, multiple linear regression results showed that only layout had significant effect on employee productivity (P=0.014, β=1.089).

Table 2. Relationship between Work Environment Factors and Productivity

The overall purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between environmental and demographic factors with staff productivity of Islamic Azad University of Shiraz. The results of this study showed that the variables of chair, noise, temperature, lighting and ambient layout affected employee, (ambient/chair layout, temperature, lighting and sound respectively had the most impact on productivity). In other words, proper design and quality of work environment that takes into account the needs of the people and to meet their comfort, increases the efficiency of the staff. This result was in contrast to the findings of the study by Hameed et al. [11] as well as the study by Akhtar et al. [9]. This can be due to the different populations and environmental conditions of office buildings. It seems that the reason for the poor relationship between environmental conditions and productivity is that the environment is only one of the factors that can affect productivity, and other factors such as job satisfaction, mental and other factors should also be considered.
According to the results of the regression and examining the simultaneous effect of demographic and environmental factors on productivity, only the alignment factor of environmental factors had a significant relationship with productivity. It seems that improving the productivity, environmental factors are more effective compared with demographic factors and among the environmental factors ambient layout is the most effective one. The effect of strong association between layout and productivity has been shown by Akhtar et al. Since the entire layout of the workspace and environment is optimally and appropriately designed in a way that incorporates quality enhancements and a sense of satisfaction, it can improve productivity by increasing motivation, understanding and adaptability. In their study, Choubineh et al. showed that inappropriate workstation and postural design increases the risk of musculoskeletal disorders, especially in the lumbar and cervical region [14]. Therefore, it seems that modification of work environment factors, especially chair and layout, can help reduce the prevalence of musculoskeletal system problems and subsequently increase productivity.

 

The results showed that there is a direct relationship between environmental factors and productivity. This relationship can also be affected by demographic characteristics. But in exploring the simultaneous impact of both factors, layout showed to be more effective.

 

The authors would like to express their gratitude and gratitude to the authorities and staff of Shiraz Islamic Azad University.

 

The authors declared that there are no conflicts of interest.