Is the office that important? : An investigation on how companies use their office to attract stakeholders

Abstract: Today, in a world after COVID-19 the office needs to have a different meaning for employees, the office has to compete with the comfort and flexibility of working from home. Therefore this thesis paper researched the topic of how the interior of an office can be used to signal different things to employees. Signals are something that we humans both use and receive all day to communicate something without using words to do this. They are also used by companies to attract and share different things with both existing and potential employees. The theory that explains how signals are used is called the signaling theory and the signaling timeline model is the specific framework used. When a person goes on a job interview they will show (signal) how right they are for this job, this in regards to the way they dress, act, and how the resume looks. In regards to the timeline model, it is a way to explain how a signal ”travels” from the signaler to the receiver and then feedback returns to the signaler. For this thesis, and the signing timeline, the concept of design has been used as the signal and employer brand and brand credibility in the form of the feedback. The signaler has been the company and the receiver the employees. With this in mind two research questions were developed, how do companies work with signals when designing their offices? and are the signals sent by a company as those received by employees? To answer the questions, semi-structured interviews and observations were conducted with two different companies in different countries. In order to cover both questions interviews were held with both facility managers (or equivalent) and employees. The interviews and observations gave us a result proving that there are many signals that a company sends out to employees, some intentional and some unintentional. Companies signal more with a holistic view while an employee sees more in the details. There were five signals found, team, calm and environmentally friendly that the company tried to send. Employees did not perceive the environmentally friendly but found considerate to private matters and utility to be two other important ones. Another interesting finding was that one of the companies interviewed had decided to have their new office small in order to come back to their roots and to work with their brand image.