Layout mechanisms that stimulate innovative behaviour of employees

If an organisation aims at stimulating organisational learning and innovation, FM should align by stimulating innovative behaviour like knowledge sharing. Encouraging employee innovation is the most important FM strategy focusing more on effectiveness of the organisation, besides the general focus on efficiency through reducing costs. But the added value of the workplace for innovation remains hard to be proven empirically. To be able to show added value it is necessary to have suitable quantitative metrics, and discover the underlying mechanisms for evaluating office design, like stressed in Realistic Evaluation theory. This paper describes statistical tests on an R&D based organisation of three different layout mechanisms. We used eight quantitative layout metrics and several knowledge sharing behaviour metrics (obtained with logbooks from 138 employees) to show how added value is achieved. The strong influence of context on the working of the mechanisms makes it hard to generalise results to other organisations. But the findings did prove that different layout mechanisms exist, and that realistic evaluation and the quantitative layout metrics that were distinguished are a valid way to study them inside an organisation. They help FM prove how it is adding value to the organisation. Projecting the results from the case-study on the new layout gave insight in the knowledge sharing that should take place after a planned renovation program would be implemented. This helped the FM to discuss his plans with general management and other stakeholders in his organisation.