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This chapter examines the changing nature of frontline supervision in light of the supervisory training and development programme which was provided to shift-bosses in order to complement the workplace change processes that AfricaGold embarked on to improve operational efficiency, productivity and safety of its mining operations. Although the training course was an important workplace change initiative taken by top management to improve organisational, individual and team performance at the rock-face where it mattered most, lack of organisational and managerial support prevented frontline supervisors from effectively implementing what they learned on the training course. The chapter highlights the importance of not only providing organisational change-focused training, but also systematically and strategically involving frontline supervisors in the conceptualisation, design, execution and evaluation of workplace change initiatives. It is only when frontline supervisors are supported, managerially and organisationally, that they can be deal-makers rather than deal-breakers for a successful introduction and execution of change initiatives on the shop-floor.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the rationale for designing and implementing an action learning and research process to significantly transform the work behaviour of tradition‐bound bakers to embrace leading ideas of a new workplace culture in order to diversify the product range of the moon cake and generally improve the competitive performance of the company.

Emphasis was placed on action learning and action research as the main vehicles for managing the organizational change process.

The project demonstrates how an action learning and change management strategy was designed and implemented with a Chinese workforce that had no prior experience of modern ideas on production technology and other aspects of the new workplace culture.

The project was confined to a single case study approach in the bakery department of a major food company in Hong Kong.

The project demonstrates a close correspondence between organizational learning and change management theory and the actual process and outcomes of a practical change agenda.

The special value of the paper lies in its insights into the work behaviour of Chinese factory workers.

This paper aims to address the management of people and their working behaviour successfully during workplace change – from a traditional way of working towards new ways of working. The study was based on the observation that during workplace change, organisations often fail to see the importance of managing (working) behaviour during the process of workplace change. The focus is mostly on the design of the new working environment and the information technology in it. However, these do not seem to be the determining aspects of the success of workplace change, merely necessary boundary conditions. This paper will elucidate how internal communication can make the greatest impact on shifting people’s working behaviour and attitudes and thus manage it effectively.

A literature study has been conducted to investigate the relation between the topics of new ways of working, workplace change and internal communication. This study surfaced the importance of the aspect of (working) behaviour within workplace change. Subsequently, a field study was performed, during which several interviews were held with the project team of the R&D department of a chemical multinational, who is on the brink of implementing a new workplace concept. Also, focus group interviews were held with their employees to research personal views on expected working behaviour.

The outcomes of the research, literature review and field study clarify the critical success factors for internal communication to manage the workplace change, so it lives up to the expectations. These are: face-to-face communication, assigning the manager the role of workplace change leader and use internal communication to inform employees and inspire them.

In this paper, the behavioural aspect has been identified as a key determinant of perceived success of a new workplace concept. Managing workplace change successfully should therefore merely focus on managing the working behaviour of the people involved, instead of managing the building and interior design or the technology in it. Internal communication was identified as a pivotal tool to reach this success.

The purpose of the study to explain employees' “perception of change” from the socio‐psychological and behavioural point of view, and the consequences of this for the employee's ability to adopt new environments.

This study is implemented using a three phase‐longitudinal approach which was conducted over a one‐and‐a‐half‐year period in order to monitor the process of place attachment (and detachment), starting two months before the relocation and ending four months after relocation. Interpretative phenomenological analysis is used for analysis and interpretation of the qualitative data.

The relationship between physical environment and social and environmental psychology has been the central issue. In workplace change, while the attachments that no longer work for people are broken, there is a need to build new connections, which can support people through this transition.

There are pragmatic and strategic resource management implications arising from the study. Further study of affective relationships that all employees have with their workplace will aid in appropriately designing and managing facilities (services and programme).

The previous studies indicate that the existing literature lacks a unifying framework for understanding the relationship between people and places and the emotional significance of the physical environment for regulating the employees' work behaviours. Having exposed the inadequacy of workplace change management approaches in explaining and understanding the employees' resistance to change in their experience of the move process, considering place attachments in workplaces proposes a reappraisal of both employees' experience and evaluation of the move process. It provides a comprehensive framework for understanding the significance of employees' attachments to their workplace and offers guidance on managing workplace change from procurement, design to provision of workplaces.

The purpose of this case study is to investigate how the personnel in an organization experienced the process of change when moving from private offices to an activity-based office (ABO) and how their perceptions of change were associated with changes in their satisfaction with the work environment a year after relocation.

A comparative pre-post study design and mixed methods were used. Survey data was obtained from 154 employees before the relocation and 146 after the relocation. The data on the 105 employees who responded to both surveys were statistically analyzed. Representatives of different units were interviewed (n = 17) and documentary material was analyzed as complementary material.

The personnel’s criticisms concerned the reasons for the change, their opportunities to influence the office design and the extent to which their views were taken into account. Environmental satisfaction decreased after moving to the ABO. The personnel’s ratings of the workplace change process before the relocation were associated with the later change in environmental satisfaction. Based on logistic regression, the degree of agreement with management’s reasons for the change was the strongest predictor of the change in environmental satisfaction.

Organizations that move from private offices to an ABO should invest in high-quality change management and simultaneously develop both work and facilities. Special attention should be paid to clarifying the rationale for the change to the employees and to providing them with opportunities to influence during the change. Organizations should continue to monitor user experiences and evaluate the effects of the change after the office redesign and should take corrective action as needed.

This empirical case study is unique as it combined qualitative and quantitative methods and investigated the process of relocation and its outcomes in a one-year follow-up. This approach captured the importance of managing change and assessing the long-term effects of office redesign when moving from private offices to an ABO.

The purpose of this study is to describe the success story of a software company, Adobe, in redesigning the workplace environment from cubicles to a connected collaborative workplace, which helped the organization optimize workplace usage. The goals were to design an innovative work environment to optimize the usage of the office portfolio, improve workplace service quality and infrastructure facilities of the portfolio, increase employee productivity, reduce technology costs, engage employees in a better way to enhance employee satisfaction, align workplace design with the brand, mobilize technology and enable a globalized workforce to facilitate higher productivity.

An exploratory research design method was adopted using the purposive sampling technique to collect data through semi-structured interviews with a team of nine property professionals from the operations team responsible for workspace redesign at Adobe in India.

The main observations of the corporate real estate (CRE) manager were on what value parameters drive workplace redesign and how different software companies were creating strategies to manage workplace design or redesign change for optimal use of the organization portfolio. To discuss the CRE strategies of global software leaders, IBM and SAP were pointed out in this case.

The number of interviews were limited. The related parameters for workplace transformation are not necessarily complete. However, the parameters are regarded to include the most important aspects of workplace redesign.

This study provides useful insights into how benchmarking in the workplace transformation function of the CRE industry can be applied to address portfolio-related challenges, divergent employee needs and improve workspace usability following energy-efficient policies. Practitioners can use this study as a guide to develop more effective workspace designs.

This study may guide other firms on successful workspace design initiatives that may overcome many obstacles in the workplace transformation process to have their intended impact on workplace efficiency and employee satisfaction. The case can be used as an inspiration for developing specific user-focused innovative workspace design in practice.

Adopting the theoretical background of the person–environment fit theory, this study adds to the understanding of the operational model of a digitally connected workspace designed as per real estate needs and strategies to manage the CRE portfolio of the company.

This article presents a model of employees' rhetorical patterns, which take place during a workplace change.

The method of discourse analysis is used to investigate employees' perceptions of and dispositions to the change. In total, 21 semi‐structured interviews were conducted in two organizations before and after moving to open plan offices.

People tend to frame the change in space by either opposing or conforming ways of making sense. Opposing discourses include rhetorical strategies of social community versus own responsibility, believing in a hidden agenda of management, and distancing oneself. Conforming discourses include social community versus individual opinion, including oneself, and trusting the professionals. Additionally it was found that employees tend to be ambiguous with their messages when interviewed during a workplace change process.

Acknowledging the results of this paper can help workplace managers to make a difference between naturally occurring change resistance among employees and well justified disagreement with the content of the change. Also, the results help workplace managers to understand the rhetoric and behaviour of employees' during a workplace change.

The methodology of discourse analysis is rarely used in facilities management research and is thus a method to be considered in future studies of FM.

New ways of working challenge workplace management: increasing mobility and diminishing organizational boundaries require re-evaluation of both workplace design and service delivery. However, structures and processes of workplace management are still traditional, and managers, together with outsourced facility service providers, often do not succeed at fulfilling the needs of mobile employees. The aforementioned changes stimulate discussions in many areas in both industry and academy. Nevertheless, workplace literature from business perspective seems to be scarce. In this paper, the focus is on workplace service offering for mobile knowledge workers. This paper aims to study the current state of workplace servitization. To answer this, the authors identify value offering elements that are used in office business market to deliver workplace as a service.

This study follows multiple case study methodology including five case studies. Primary data were collected through interviews with workplace service providers. Secondary data included observations and publicly available data. The authors took business model design approach to study selected business offerings.

The results indicate that workplace business models include elements of servitization on various levels. Physical space is no longer the central offering in the office business; instead, it acts as a component on which the service portfolio is built. The highest value from workplace comes from experience-related service offerings.

Academically, research contributes to the workplace management studies by providing servitization perspective to a topic previously approached with a more technical and psychological point of view. This study can also support service providers and customer organizations in their quest to make service provision more flexible and experience-oriented.

The management of workplace change takes place in many industry contexts and micro‐settings using a variety of approaches, all of which are widely reported in the academic and professional literature. There is less known about workplace change management in the context of an international company employing large numbers of Mainland Chinese employees. The company needed to improve its delivery of service quality; in this case to the maintenance of elevators and escalators, especially where breakdowns occur and customers get frustrated. It was imperative to change the work behaviour of the Chinese workforce. Integral to the change management strategy was the dual application of action research and workplace learning, natural companions in the process of modifying work attitudes and behaviour. This case study reports the design, implementation and evaluation of a process improvement program “custom built” for the Chinese employees of the international company.

The changes now being experienced in the workplace, driven by market pressures, changing demographics and new technologies, are real and accelerating. Since change remains the one constant when it comes to workplace planning, further transformations within the workplace over the next 20 or 30 years can be expected. Hence, this paper aims to demonstrate how to use a scenario planning futures approach in a changing, complex and uncertain workplace environment. As well as provoke thought and discussion about its long‐term future.

At the Futures Academy in Dublin Institute of Technology, a systematic methodology for exploring and shaping the future has been developed, called the “Prospective through scenario” process. Each stage of the process is discussed in detail throughout this paper, as well as how the process is applied in the Johnson Controls workplace of the future study.

The creative “futures studies” approach can deal effectively with change, uncertainty and complexity in the workplace environment, by allowing those concerned to think, plan and act proactively rather than reactively as well as provide effective facilities management and real estate strategies.

Real estate organisations need to take the long view, for the greatest risk of our time is being overtaken by inevitable surprises that could have been foreseen and for which we could have been prepared.

Discussion and debate about the future of the workplace is inevitable and futures tools and techniques can facilitate this process.