Indoor environmental quality and employees’ workplace satisfaction: a case study of university buildings

Indoor environmental quality (IEQ) is an effective factor in evaluating the performance of employees in the workplace. This paper aims to investigate the IEQ of an office building of Imam Khomeini International University (IKIU), by evaluating the relationship between staffs' satisfaction and the orientation, window to wall ratio (WWR), and their gender. The results indicated that the size and landscape of the rooms, WWR, place of worktables, cooling and heating facilities and lighting systems, upgrading partitions and adding new spaces without increasing systems capacity, and the shared space usage by multi-users are the key factors that impact users’ satisfaction. Moreover, user comfort did not only depend on the features and equipment of the building and physical and physiological factors, but also on the habits, culture, and expectations of individuals. The results showed the same thermal satisfaction for both genders in the warm season and slightly higher dissatisfaction of females (4.62% higher compared to men) in the cold season. In addition, the main sources of noise were from the doors and the students passing the hallways. In conclusion, improving indoor air quality and thermal comfort were the most important ways to improve users' performance. This study is the first research concentrated on evaluating the current status of offices and presenting solutions to improve the IEQ factors in order to improve IKIU employees’ performance.