Close to colleagues: the benefits of sitting next to team members

People want to work near their teammates and studies show that having the opportunity to do so may motivate people to come into the office voluntarily. That is the verdict from recent research, which also suggests that employees perform best when they have their own assigned seat.

According to a new study from Deniz Tuzcuoglu and colleagues (2025), which analysed data collected from Dutch government employees, commuting time and having teammates nearby at the office are the most influential factors shaping decisions on where to work. The researchers advise that ‘Organisations should foster an environment where employees can work alongside their direct colleagues to enhance workplace appeal and encourage office attendance.’

Presence of colleagues

Earlier research confirms the appeal of being able to work near colleagues. For example, Tuzcuoglu, Appel-Meulenbroek, Borgers, Arentze and Sungur (2024) reported that ‘the presence of direct colleagues at the office and the absence of others at home are found as the most influential factors favouring each workplace alternative.’

The same research team (2025) studied factors that drew people into the office on days that they were not required to be there – this study determined that ‘when employees are granted autonomy over their work location…their preferences for attributes related to social connections (relatedness) seem to increase.’

Van Houweilingen, van Dijke, and De Cremer (2017) determined that the closer colleagues sat to each other, the tighter the bonds between them. But regardless of where they are working, space users don’t flourish when they need to share desks with colleagues; their moods and performance are best when they have an assigned seat. For instance, Kim, Candido, Thomas, and de Dear (2016) report that it seems that productivity falls when workers do not have the ability to easily interact with colleagues, especially when they do not have an assigned seat.

Sense of possession

Tann and Ayoko (2020) found that having a territory (such as an assigned seat) ‘is connected with employees’ creativity, performance, and wellbeing’. Also, ‘the sense of possession’ is key to work-related attitudes such as commitment and satisfaction as well as behaviours such as organisational citizenship.

Monero-Flores (2020) studied people working in activity-based workplaces and found that being ’close to team or project partners’ was one of the most important criteria in describing their preferred work location. Employees also highly valued the possibility to have an assigned workstation for a day.

Khazanchi and colleagues (2018) reported that ‘Proximity [greater physical access] will increase the likelihood of instrumental ties with coworkers.’ And a study by Oseland and Raw (2024) determined that a ‘higher proportion of respondents who have assigned/allocated desks prefer working in the office compared to those with unassigned desks.’

Best practice in design

There are research-based best practices for the number of teammates in view and their locations.  Research led by Kerstin Sailer (2021) which determined that ‘staff are less likely to rate their workplace environment favourably when they have higher numbers of desks within their own field of vision; and when they are facing away from the room with a relatively larger area behind their back compared to the area surrounding them. Aspects of teamwork that are negatively affected include sharing information with others, as well as team identity and cohesion.’

The key takeouts from this research? ‘Having fewer people in sight and feeling more in control of the environment by facing the room resulted in significantly higher odds for positive ratings of focused work and perceived productivity. . . designing smaller and more intimate areas might be advisable as an immediate workplace design choice.’

Brunia, de Been, and van der Voordt (2016) quantified aspects of the effect noted by Sailer’s team: ‘Large open workspaces, accommodating more than approximately 15 people, should be avoided due to concentration and privacy issues. . . large open spaces can be visually and acoustically subdivided in smaller areas.’

Reeping the positive benefits of having people work beside teammates may result in some technical inefficiencies in office design – as not all workers will be present at any one time some desks will likely not be in use at any moment.  As Gehl (2010) determined, however, in any shared space, users’ moods are best when only 70% of available seats are occupied.

Weighing available evidence indicates that the financial cost of providing workplaces that allow colleagues to work beside a comfortable number of teammates seems to be more than compensated for by the increases in performance and wellbeing when they do.

Read more of the latest research insights from Sally Augustin in Research Roundup, her regular column in the Innovation Zone for WORKTECH Academy members and partners here.

Research sources

Rianne Appel-Meulenbroek, Aloys Borgers, Theo Arentze, Asli Sungur, and Deniz Tuzcuoglu. 2025. ‘Differences in Preferences for Office Attributes in Hybrid Working: Office Versus Flexible Workdays.’ Journal of Environmental Psychology, vol. 104, 102587.

Sandra Brunia, Iris de Been, and Theo van der Voordt. 2016. ‘Accommodating New Ways of Working:  Lessons from Best Practices and Worst Cases.’ Journal of Corporate Real Estate, vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 30-47.

Jan Gehl. 2010. Cities for People. Island Press: Washington, DC.

Shalini Khazanchi, Therese Sprinkle, Suzanne Masterson, and Nathan Tong. 2018. ‘A Spatial Model of Work Relationships:  The Relationship-Building and Relationship-Straining Effects of Workspace Design.’ Academy of Management Review, vol. 43, no. 4, pp. 590-609.

Jungsoo Kim, Christina Candido, Leena Thomas, and Richard de Dear. 2016. ‘Desk Ownership in the Workplace:  The Effect of Non-Territorial Working on Employee Workplace Satisfaction, Perceived Productivity and Health.’ Building and Environment, vol. 103, pp. 203-214.

Virna Monero-Flores. 2020. ‘The Spatial Dimension of the Flexible Workplace. Exploring the Relationship Between Utilization Practices and Architectural Space Quality.’ Proceedings, The Transdisciplinary Workplace Research Network Conference, September 16-19, Frankfurt Germany.

Nigel Oseland and Gary Raw. 2024. ‘The Enticing Workplace: Attracting People Back to the Office.’ In Andrew Smith, Alasdair Reid, Mina Jowkar, and Suha Jaradat (eds.), Proceedings of the 4th Transdisciplinary Workplace Research (TWR) Conference, 4th-7th September 2024, Edinburgh, UK, pp. 486- 503.

Kerstin Sailer, Petros Koutsolampros, and Rosica Pachilova. 2021. ‘Differential Perceptions of Teamwork, Focused Work and Perceived Productivity as an Effect of Desk Characteristics Within a Workplace Layout.’  PLoS ONE, vol. 16, no. 4, e2500058.

Ken Tann and Oluremi Ayoko. 2020. ‘A Social Semiotic Approach to the Physical Work Environment.’ In Oluremi Ayoko and Neal Ashkanasy (eds.) Organizational Behaviour and the Physical Environment, Routledge: New York, pp. 214-231.

Deniz Tuzcuoglu, Rianne Appel-Meulenbroek, Aloys Borgers, Theo Arentze, and Asli Sungur. 2024. ‘How Do Workplace Features at the Office and at Home Determine Workplace Choice During a Flexible Workday?’  In Andrew Smith, Alasdair Reid, Mina Jowkar, and Suha Jaradat (eds.) Proceedings of the 4th Transdisciplinary Workplace Research (TWR) Conference, 4th-7th September 2024, Edinburgh, UK, pp. 71-84.

Deniz Tuzcuoglu, Rianne Appel-Meulenbroek, Aloys Borgers, Theo Arentze, and Asli Sungur. 2025. ‘Home or Office? The Impact of Home and Office Attributes on Workplace Decisions in Hybrid Working.’ Building and Environment, vol. 282, 113254.

Gijs van Houweilingen, Marius van Dijke and David De Cremer. 2017. ‘Fairness Enactment as Response to Higher Level Unfairness: The Roles of Self-Construal and Spatial Distance.’ Journal of Management, vol. 43, o. 2, pp. 319-347.