“You can’t get people to think better, or be smarter or more clever by offering them more money,” Iowa architects were told last month during the annual meeting of the Iowa Chapter of the American Institute of Architects.  

But knowledge workers can be motivated by their work environments, said Richard Benoit, a workplace consultant for Steelcase, the Grand Rapids, Mich., office equipment manufacturer. 

Productivity can be increased with simple solutions, he said, such as periodically standing up to increase blood flow to the brain or having a workstation near a window.

The larger issue, Benoit told the Iowa architects, is how to encourage productive work styles in the 21st century’s increasingly complicated workplaces. 

“Employers want to know, if they spend all of this money on expensive office furniture, is it really going to make people more productive?” he said. To find out, Steelcase commissioned studies of more than 14,000 white-collar workers at businesses with at least 100 employees in 20 countries. 

They found that 34 percent of the workers said they were satisfied or highly satisfied with their workplaces. 29 percent were neutral, while the remaining 37 percent said they were dissatisfied or highly dissatisfied with their workplaces.

Satisfied employees were more likely to describe themselves as “highly engaged” in their work, Benoit said, while the dissatisfied were more likely to say they were “highly disengaged.”  

One well-known company resolved the disparity by asking disengaged workers to raise their hands and receive a severance package, Benoit said. But that’s an expensive solution that’s not likely to be permanent. The studies found three things that motivate knowledge workers are autonomy, mastery and purpose. 

With knowledge workers, Benoit said, you don’t micromanage by telling the person how to do a job. Instead, tell the worker what you want accomplished and let him or her figure out how to do it. 

“Giving people control over how they get their work done is important,” Benoit said. “88 percent of highly engaged workers are able to choose where to work over the course of the day.”

“If noise or other distractions are occurring near my workstation, I need to be able to pick up and go someplace quiet,” he said. “If I can move, I’m not going to complain about the noise.”

Another finding was that younger and older workers have different cultural tolerances for distractions. 

“People coming out of universities now were taught since kindergarten to share the Play-Doh,” he said. They are also less likely to be willing to sit in their cubicle from 8 to 5. 

For many years, he said, office furniture manufacturers focused on ergonomics, designing adjustable chairs to accommodate a variety of spine curvatures and adjustable work surfaces to reduce strain on the wrists and necks of office workers. 

But now designers are learning that there are larger health issues and that it’s important to “move throughout the day,” he said.

“Sitting is the new smoking,” Benoit said. “Standing up increases the blood flow, which helps the brain.”

Also, daylight is a great motivator, he said. “People want access to windows, even if it is a crappy view.” 

There is even evidence that minor distractions may help, he said. A recent Harvard Business Review study found that people who took a 40-second break every 10 minutes performed better than others who did not.