The Effects of Physical Agents on Occupants' Satisfaction in Office Environment

Employees’ satisfaction based on their physical environment is an important factor that can improve employees’ performance, job satisfaction, and organizational productivity in office buildings. Occupants’ environmental satisfaction are related to 10 different characteristics, including thermal comfort, air quality, lighting, acoustic quality, office layout, workspace furnishing, cleanliness and maintenance, safety and security, connection with the outdoors, and location and planning of workflow. Therefore, this study aimed to identify the environmental characteristics that influence the occupants’ satisfaction. The aforementioned characteristics were comprehensively evaluated in 10 different municipal office buildings in Shiraz City, Iran, in 2013. Evaluating the results of questionnaire in this field, the study showed the occupants’ levels of satisfaction with physical environmental characteristics, while highlighting the relationship between physical environmental components and occupants' satisfaction. In addition, connection with the outdoors, acoustic quality, location, planning of workflow, safety, and thermal comfort are the factors that impose over half of the influence on occupants’ satisfaction.

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