New Index rates the effectiveness of workplaces ?

01 July 2010

New Leesman Index launched this week offers the first independent Employee Workplace Satisfaction Rating to measure workplace productivity and effectiveness

Productive workplaces are difficult to define but the new independent Employee Workplace Satisfaction Rating launched this week promises to bring this goal closer.
Workplace environment business strategist, Tim Oldman and strategy consultant and researcher Annie Leeson, have joined forces to launch the first unified and truly independent workplace effectiveness employee survey. The Leesman Index will create significant value for all involved in the brief development, design, delivery and management of workspace environments by providing a systemized approach to the collection, analysis and benchmarking of “Workplace Satisfaction” data.
Seen as a tool for FMs, project managers, designers and other workplace professionals, the Leesman Index comprises an online survey of standard questions data across multiple areas, including physical aspects such as seating, desk facilities, meeting rooms, computer equipment, informal work areas and personal storage space and also more intangible factors such as noise levels, natural light and air quality. The survey can also include some client defined questions to enable the data to be refined – by department or location, for example. The analysis will look at the combined effectiveness of all attributes provided to support employee’s sense of productivity.
Tim Oldman told PFM that the data will provide useful comparative data before and after capital projects or provide an annual ‘dipstick’ for FMs to show whether improvements and changes made to the workplace have impacted on how employees perception of their productivity. It could, for example, reveals interesting differences in perceived productivity of workplaces across a portfolio of client properties.
Commenting on the launch, Annie Leesman said “This is the first time that FMs, designers, architects and others working in the workplace design and management industry will have access to quantifiable, solid statistical evidence on which they can base business proposals to create more effective workspace environments, thereby improving employee satisfaction and retention.”
Taking three years to conceptually cultivate and six months to build, the Leesman Index represents a direct response to an industry’s growing desire to move towards “evidence based design” providing workplace managers with an immediate snapshot of their employees satisfaction and engagement with the work settings provided for them. The analysis will provide detailed satisfaction Responses are kept completely anonymous and confidential.
Once completed, the survey provides an index rating – the Lmi - on a scale ranging from 1 to 100. The Leesman Index launches with an opening index rating of 50 as the median point and then every project submitted from then on will move the index up or down. This rating, allows the Leesman Index to offer clients and their consultants a benchmark tool, which no other online survey, data capture and audit service provider offers. This tool lets subscribing clients compare and analyse the Indexes across different companies. Data can be viewed by company type, size, sector etc to give a powerful indication of current employee workspace satisfaction across the board on an industry-wide scale.
Tim Oldman said, “The Leesman Index is a completely independent and unbiased tool. We simply collect and feed back the data without adding additional judgments, advice or consultancy to ‘fix’ the problems or issues that the survey may expose. This is unique, there are no other authorities in this sector that can offer a similar independent yet comparable, unbiased mirror on the effectiveness of a business workplace..”
The three main domains of the Leesman venture are:
Index - The core product provides an overall analysis of employees’ satisfaction and engagement with the workplace provided for them. Streamlined for maximum efficiency, the survey typically takes 10 minutes for each employee to complete. Beginning in late August, users of the ‘standard’ version of the survey will be able to review the responses to individual questions and make “slice’n’dice” comparisons across different parameters of their choosing.
Audit - A free Space Utilization tool will be launched later this year as the first in a number of audit tools. This Leesman Utilization Audit tool will be designed to assist workplace managers and designers to accurately audit how their workspaces are being utilized over a 5 or 10-day research period. In addition, a Leesman Storage Audit tool is being developed to provide a 360-degree review of the physical materials being stored in a workplace.
Review - The Leesman Review is a regular printed journal that reports on the latest findings and trends they are uncovering.
Plantronics EMEA will be one of the first to undertake the live version of the Leesman Index survey across 250 associates across six locations. “This is perhaps the first opportunity for business leaders like myself, to have clear and statistical evidence of how our employees are engaging productively in the work settings we provide for them and to have direct benchmark comparison to what our peers are achieving,” said Philip Vanhoutte, EMEA Managing Director for Plantronics. “Rolling out the Leesman Index will be like conducting an X-ray of our whole organization and for the first time we’ll see right the way through.”
Leesman will host its first deployment workshop on 8th July 2010. The 90-minute session will explore the benefits of “evidence based design”; highlight the value add to the commissioning client or design team and articulate how the survey results can be incorporated into the brief development. For information on when and how to attend, please visit www.leesman.co.uk

The Leesman Index Light is priced at £3,250 + VAT. This is perfectly suited to smaller projects or those where the level of cross analysis required is likely to be less.
The Leesman Index Standard is priced at £4,950 + VAT. This core product is designed for projects of more than 250 target respondents and includes access to online analysis of the captured data plus a post-project repeat survey at no extra cost.
For more information please visit www.leesman.co.uk