New Study Shows Who Sits Where at Work Can Impact Employee Performance and Company Profits - Seite 2

Rooting Out Toxic Behavior

The research also reveals that Spillover effects can extend to negative performance through misconduct and unethical behavior Spillovers. In measuring the extent to which a toxic worker (i.e., a worker that harms an organization’s people and/or property) influences others, the study finds that the negative performance of these workers spills over to fellow workers in a process similar to positive Spillover. This suggests that employee engagement surveys that capture how employees feel about their work environment and their managers can be an important first line of defense in rooting out toxicity by providing an early warning to intervene in such a team.

Comments on the News

“Until now, not much has been explored on how the physical location of an employee and proximity to others can impact their productivity and performance,” said Dylan Minor, visiting assistant professor for Harvard Business School. “These results suggest that companies can develop a framework to maximize organizational performance simply through the physical placement of workers. Physical space is something organizations can manage relatively inexpensively, and it should be viewed as an important resource in increasing the returns to human capital.”

“With modern organizations shifting to open floor plans and flexible workspaces, this study shows that there is actually a science behind employee seating charts,” said Jason Corsello, senior vice president of strategy and corporate development for Cornerstone OnDemand. “This is a great example of the business value of people analytics and how an organization’s data can help them to operate smarter and more efficient, even when it comes to deciding who sits where at work.”

Additional Resources

• To access the “Planning Strategic Seating to Maximize Employee Performance” white paper and infographic, visit www.cornerstoneondemand.com/strategicseating.
• Read additional commentary about this research on Cornerstone’s blog, ReWork, at www.cornerstoneondemand.com/rework/rearrange-desks-increase-revenue-study-finds-seating-charts-impact-performance.

About the Study

“Planning Strategic Seating to Maximize Employee Performance” was developed as a collaboration between Cornerstone OnDemand and researchers at Harvard Business School. The research included an analysis of data from more than 2,000 employees over a two-year period provided by a large technology company with locations in the U.S. and Europe. For every performance measure examined, a metric was defined for each employee called “Spillover,” which provides an aggregate measure of the performance of the employee’s surrounding peers. To measure Spillover, a weighting of workers was developed to measure the potential impact on a focal worker as a function of how close he/she is in terms of physical distance. This “distance weighting” was then used to obtain a measure for the overall Spillover that a focal worker receives on a given performance dimension. For each of the performance measures, an employee’s “Spillover” was calculated as an aggregate value of all of the employee’s neighbors, weighted by distance. The farther an employee from a focal worker, the less his/her performance contributes to the Spillover faced by that focal worker.