Measuring what matters: A benchmarking system for occupant satisfaction with workspace environments

Abstract

Occupant satisfaction with the physical environment of the workplace is a key metric of office building performance. To date, no clear consensus exists on how to fairly compare satisfaction levels between buildings or benchmark workspace designs. This study analyses 93,153 Post-Occupancy Evaluation (POE) survey responses from the United States, Australia, Japan, and Singapore to identify systematic differences between countries and establish empirical benchmarks across key aspects of office workspaces. Results show that Singaporean offices achieve the highest overall workspace satisfaction (79%), followed by the United States (68%), Australia (65%) and Japan (39%). The United States and Australian databases display broadly comparable patterns across workspace aspects, with only minor differences in temperature, acoustics, and privacy. In contrast, significant differences are observed in the Japanese and Singaporean datasets compared with Western counterparts. Rather than applying a fixed performance target, such as the widely used 80% satisfaction rate, we propose empirically derived benchmarks based on the distribution of satisfaction rates observed in each survey. Performance levels are then categorized into a 3-star ranking, where 3 stars denotes the highest performance (above the 80th percentile) and 1 star the lowest (below the 30th percentile). This approach enables building rating schemes to assign credits more equitably and helps managers benchmark performance more effectively. The study also provides a method for determining the minimum sample size needed for representative POE survey results.