Appendix

About this Study

This study was conducted from January – April 2018 by Ricoh UK & Ireland and Oxford Economics.

The survey portion of the study incorporated two critical components. First, a questionnaire was fielded to 200 executives and 200employees across the United Kingdom and Ireland. Following the completion of the questionnaire, Oxford Economics conducted in-depth phone interviews with each respondent to con rm and contextualise each answer.Insights from the survey were then used as the basis of a bespoke economic model created by Oxford Economics to calculate the potential impact the optimal office could make on the Irish and United Kingdom’s economy.

The model began by developing an optimal office performance benchmark through two surveys and in-depth interviews with 400 executives and employees across the country to understand expected growth delivered by the optimal office across five industrial sectors.
The model then used a standard definition of labour productivity, namely, gross value added per person employed.
The performance benchmark from the survey was applied to the to the estimate of labour productivity in the corresponding industrial sector to calculate gross value added per worker.
The resulting growth in gross value added for the average worker (in £s and €s) is then multiplied by the total number of people employed in that sector.
Finally, the model found the sum across all five industries to get the additional gross value-added contribution to GDP that the move to optimal offices would deliver.