H567/03 Section B Option 3 - Wells (2000) and office personalisation

Personalisation and wellbeing questions

Wells investigated office personalisation and its relationships with employee and organisational wellbeing. Personalisation means deliberately decorating or modifying a setting to reflect identity. In an office, meaningful objects can express individuality, mark territory, support attachment and communicate interests. These social and control mechanisms differ from the information-processing mechanism of an ergonomic display.

The study asked four questions: do men and women personalise differently; is personalisation associated with employee wellbeing; is it more important to women's wellbeing; and are permissive company policies associated with organisational wellbeing? The proposed employee model linked personalisation to satisfaction with the physical work environment, then to job satisfaction and then to employee wellbeing. This was a model of relationships to investigate, not an experimentally proven sequence of causes.

Organisational wellbeing included perceived climate, morale and outcomes such as turnover. Employee wellbeing concerned the person's global, physical and psychological wellbeing. A pleasant personal workstation need not ensure a healthy organisation if workload, pay or management relationships remain poor.

The background included changing office practices and temporary workspaces. Wells focused on personalisation of employees' permanent workspaces. This makes the research relevant to territorial identity but limits direct transfer to contemporary shared desks or home working. Those are novel applications that require testing.

Recruitment and the sample

The research took place at 20 companies in Orange County, California in winter and spring 1997. Companies were recruited through the Small Business Workplace Wellness Project. Of 763 invitations, 652 were eligible after excluding companies with too few office workers and returned letters. Twenty-seven companies expressed interest, about $27/652\times100\approx4.1\%$; seven were subsequently omitted, leaving 20 participating companies.

This company response rate is not the percentage of individual employees who completed a questionnaire. Low company participation raises a self-selection concern: organisations interested in employee wellbeing or willing to expose their policies may differ from those refusing. A variety of businesses participated, but variety does not remove volunteer bias.

The employee survey had 338 respondents: 187 men, 138 women and 13 who did not report gender. Most were aged 25–44 (62%), 69% were White and 55% married. Average time at the company was 5.6 years. These characteristics help define the sample; they do not justify stereotypes about individuals.

Five companies also participated in case studies. Twenty-three employees, 15 women and eight men, were interviewed and their workspaces observed. This smaller volunteer subset provided depth, but its findings are not automatically representative of the full survey. The study was conducted in a specific place and period, so cultural norms, job roles and policies may differ elsewhere.

Surveys, interviews and observation

The research combined self-reports and observation; it did not randomly impose personalisation policies. The employee survey measured numbers and types of personal items, reasons for displaying them, desired versus permitted personalisation, arrangement control and team-space personalisation. It also included nine five-point items on physical-environment satisfaction and five five-point items on job satisfaction.

Further scales measured global, physical and psychological wellbeing, perceptions of organisational climate and morale, personality needs such as privacy and affiliation, and demographic and workspace details. Company coordinators completed additional questions about policy and organisational wellbeing. Ratings make relationships analysable, but reports of productivity or climate are not automatically objective company performance records.

In the five case-study companies, structured open-ended interviews lasted 10–15 minutes at the employee's workspace. Questions addressed displayed objects, their importance, perceived effects of personalisation and feelings about a possible prohibition. Interviews were recorded, transcribed and analysed qualitatively. Open answers supplied meanings that a count of objects could not reveal.

After interview, a checklist recorded item-category counts, unusual themes, aesthetic ratings and the occupant's gender; workspaces were photographed. Observation provides a check on displayed items, but counting an object does not show why it matters. Agreement between observers would support consistency, while aesthetic ratings remain partly judgement-based.

This is a mixed-method correlational investigation: it can identify relationships and explore explanations. Different measures add depth and may corroborate each other, but combining them does not make the design causal. Employees may also answer differently if they fear management sees their responses. Consent, confidential reporting and careful handling of photographs are important in any such research; the guide does not document every safeguard used here.

Results, including disagreement

Both survey and observational evidence supported differences in personalisation between the sampled men and women. Survey means were 11.2 items for women and 7.68 for men, a difference of 3.52 items. In the interviewed subset, observed means were 18.5 and 8.3, respectively. These are different samples and measures; do not substitute the subset means for the survey means.

Women more often reported identity, emotional expression and improving the feel of the space as reasons; men more often reported status. Women displayed more relationship symbols, plants and trinkets, while men displayed more sports-related items. These describe sample patterns, not fixed biological traits or prescriptions for men's and women's desks.