By Leidy Klotz

The search for the ideal office design has produced a rotating cast of answers -- open floors for collaboration, private rooms for focus, hot desks for flexibility.

But the search often misses something fundamental: The real driver of productivity isn't the layout. It is how much control -- or agency -- people have over their own space.

This shouldn't come as a surprise: The ability to shape how you work -- what you do, how you do it, where you do it -- is central to both satisfaction and performance. Take that away and the message is clear: You're a cog. Office space is no exception. Tell employees they are empowered while assigning seats and locking down the furniture, and the space undermines the message.

It is the difference between a hotel room and something closer to a jail cell.

It is hard to understate what's at stake. Decades of research confirm that agency boosts both employee well-being and company performance. Less agency means less engagement, retention and trust.

So how do we move the needle? How do we rethink office space in a way that makes people both happier and more productive?

Find the obstacles

Before adding things that move you toward a goal, leaders should first find out what's frustrating employees. The easy thing to do is for them to walk the workplace and ask, "What's limiting people?"

You'll be surprised at how many are space issues. Rooms that are off-limits and furniture that can't be moved. Quiet areas that are always taken, leaving people to wander whenever they need to take a call. A clean-desk policy that tells employees that even their most intimate workspace isn't their own.

Companies should get rid of as many of these frustrations as possible.

What's that space for?

To feel agency in a space, people need to understand how it works and how they can use it. When new hires don't know whether the room down the hall is up for grabs or silently reserved for executives, they won't risk it. They'll go back to their desks, the room sits empty, and the helplessness deepens.

The space itself can do some of this work. If that room down the hall has glass walls and an open door, then it looks like shared space. Chairs and whiteboards on wheels say "move me."

But the design only goes so far. Have the bosses told people which spaces are available and what they are for? "This conference room is now fair game for solo work and small group calls" costs nothing to say and immediately amplifies agency. They can also lead by example -- for instance, by holding a team meeting in the atrium everyone walks past but never enters.

Do-it-yourself

We feel more at home in an apartment once we've set it up -- less because we like how it looks than because we chose where things go and moved them ourselves. When we put effort into something, we value it more.

With that in mind, bosses should ask people to shape their workspace.

Before a meeting, organizers should arrange the room, setting up the chairs in whatever way makes the most sense for that particular meeting. All employees should also know how to adjust the lighting and temperature. Once someone knows they can dim the lights or crack a window, they feel better about the space even on the days they don't touch a thing.

Similarly, leaders can assign teams a conference room or group of cubicles for the duration of a project, letting them reconfigure, put things on the walls, make it theirs. When it's time for bigger renovations, employees should be involved in the big decisions -- not just paint colors and furniture, but layout, configuration and function.

The same principle applies to individual workspaces. Make adjustable desks standard issue, with a corner of each workspace left intentionally bare for beanbags, shelving, a foot hammock -- whatever people actually want. Undesigned space is permission.

Match location to goal

Spaces can feel permanent. But our relationship with them shouldn't be.

Encouraging employees to change where they work, even within the same building, changes how they work. A noisy cafeteria may be where ideas start. A quiet corner serves the focused work that follows. Where you hold a conversation can determine how it goes: A difficult negotiation in the big boss's office feels different from the same conversation on a walk, or around a small table somewhere neutral.

Employees should be encouraged, in other words, to choose locations to match their goals. When they can do that, when they aren't confined to one desk or one room that may not match the moment, they lose that sense of control.

Similarly, when bosses rearrange, renovate or reorganize a space, they should explain the connection to what the business is trying to do: "We cleared out this floor because we're moving into a phase that needs more collaboration and less time working alone."

Beware of too many choices

All of the above comes with a caveat: Unbridled choice often backfires. In a study of this phenomenon, people who picked a chocolate from 30 options enjoyed it less than those who chose from a subset of just six. Comparing 30 options is harder, and there is more regret about the paths not taken. If too many choices ruins a simple decision about chocolate, imagine what it does to something as complex as where you work.

Architects don't hand clients a blank canvas; they present three well-considered options and get better decisions for it. The same is true for giving employees workplace options: Perhaps three configurations for the retrofit, each with a clear rationale, gets employees input without turning it into a second job. The goal is a workplace people feel ownership in, not one they spend time second-guessing.

And these "choices" shouldn't be like the elevator close-door button: You press it, it lights up, and then the doors close exactly when they would have anyway. The button exists to make you feel in control. You aren't. That's a small thing. The workplace equivalent isn't. If working from home isn't going to be approved, bosses shouldn't ask for input on it. When people discover a choice was never real, they become apathetic about the ones that are.

Take agency yourself

Some companies simply don't want their employees to have control. It is like in the movie "Office Space," where the boss makes Milton move his workspace (and iconic red stapler) several times throughout the movie, always without consultation, always to somewhere worse, eventually to a basement space that looks to have no entrance or exit. From identical assigned cubicles to domineering executive suites to vast entrance lobbies apparently designed to remind you that you aren't insignificant, the message is clear.

But even within these companies, employees can take back at least some control. Can't open the window? Rearrange your chair to face it. Required back in the office? Choose your commute time, your lunch spot, the orientation of your desk. Even small acts of intentional shaping count. And this agency may then spread to other spaces, to other decisions, and to everything else. Your office can be where it starts.

Leidy Klotz is an engineering professor and behavioral scientist at the University of Virginia, and the author of "In a Good Place: How the Spaces Where We Live, Work, and Play Can Help Us Thrive." He can be reached at reports@wsj.com.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 14, 2026 11:00 ET (15:00 GMT)

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