The impact of workspace design and fit-out features on meeting employees needs to enable within-team and between-team collaboration

Collaboration is a feature of many organisations’ strategic objectives. The perceived benefits of collaboration include productivity gains and diversity in expertise to develop new ideas and resolve issues faster. However, creating the social-spatial conditions to enable employee collaboration can be challenging for organisations. The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into employees’ perceptions and experiences of collaboration in their workplace in the context of within-team and between-team collaboration. The study is based on a single case study of two business units within one organisation that relocated from a traditional office environment to an open-plan workspace. In total, 38 employees were interviewed and the researcher embedded herself within the organisation for a four week period to enable participant observation. The results indicate that the location of business units and different spatial configurations have a significant impact on employees’ perceptions of their space and how it may detract from, or enhance collaboration between different business units. Some teams were found to have nuanced needs which were not met by generic workspace design. The findings also show that the structural characteristics and the role of the team within the business may influence collaboration behaviours. For some teams, collaborating within their team and being located together within their own space is perceived as more important than collaborating with other teams within the organisation.The findings have the potential to inform organisations when designing the layout of their offices and implementing work practices to encourage collaboration within specific teams and across the business.