Participation in workplace change—Practical report on employee involvement prior to moving into new office premises

Abstract

The increase in mobile-flexible work will have a substantial impact on changes in the working environment in the future. The potential for employees’ active involvement in workplace change is particularly high since besides office design the familiar ways of working are also affected. Yet it is often unclear how participation can be effectively implemented and what success factors and barriers are associated with it. In this contribution to the journal Group. Interaction. Organization. (GIO), we report on our learnings from a project in which 550 employees participated in workplace change prior to moving into new office space. We give an overview of the employed comprehensive participation concept and its implementation and discuss the impact of participation measures. The results from an interview study with 30 employees and managers show that well-planned employee involvement that considers both the radius and the levels of participation can improve communication and feedback processes and increase decision acceptance. Furthermore, aspects of fairness and the expectations of employees and managers have emerged as important success factors for employee involvement.