Recently, there has been a lot of useful discussion of the workplace “home bases” people make for themselves and the psychological value of those nests.
In his “p.s.” column at the back of the May issue of Interior Design, Murray Moss asks, “Doesn’t everyone, consciously or not, sanctioned or not, attempt to turn his work environment into a ‘home office,’ whether or not the office is actually in a home? An office needs to be serviceable to its occupant’s trade, certainly, but I believe that for most of us more is required. An office is not only the stage on which we act out our professional lives but also the place where we act out our personal ambitions, where we bare our more aggressive, competitive sides, where we earn our livelihoods and live out the most number of days. It is, by any account, extremely personal space [italics in original].”
As Moss indicates, we invest a lot of psychic energy in the care and management of the places where we work, even temporary worksites. We customize them to our professional needs and personalize them with objects that send silent messages to others and ourselves about our goals and strengths.
Jeremy Myerson, in his Workplace and Wellbeing chapter, “Wellbeing: A Complete Reference Guide” (edited by Cooper, Burton and Cooper in 2014), reports that “Office décor and design can be thought of as the visible part of the culture of an organization, just as anthropologists point to objects as the visible manifestation of culture.
“Interaction with objects is part of what creates our sense of self. Over time, people develop emotional bonds with the objects that make up their workplaces. Office design and décor can therefore be considered to create ‘something like an emotional home’ for the people who work there. This use of design to promote this kind of ‘place attachment’ can make workers more satisfied with their office environment by generating emotional bonds to their workspace over time. Place attachment is an integral component of psychological comfort, which provides a platform for improving job satisfaction, commitment to the employer, performance and wellbeing.”
Myerson is echoing Moss’s comments, in a macro context.
Providing people with a home that doesn’t align with how they see themselves or feel they add most value to an organization, or one that changes capriciously – or making them homeless altogether – clearly has serious ramifications that designers and managers need to be wary of.
Sally Augustin, PhD, a cognitive scientist, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com), a monthly subscription newsletter and free daily blog, where recent and classic research in the social, design, and physical sciences that can inform designers’ work are presented in straightforward language. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.