Over the years this system has been mitigated, but looking at the style of management in many companies and at training programmes offered to managers, we can see that control is still a vital part of managers’ work.

Technological development has rendered the old methods of work supervision obsolete. Certainly, we can boost control by introducing certain rules: keeping personal phones in lockers, blocking certain websites on the company’s net, or monitoring the number of mouse clicks per hour. But we should also ask ourselves: will it really improve the intrinsic motivation of the employees and, eventually, our financial outcome?

Such actions will not serve to create a sense of responsibility and commitment among people, and those two are key to business efficacy these days. Today’s companies need proactive employees, who are not afraid to put forward new solutions and take the responsibility for their implementation. In the context of research outcome, organisations and their leaders should focus primarily on how to create conditions enhancing self-motivation among employees, a working environment which will fulfill the three needs – autonomy, competence and relatedness.

If we look at office design as one of the key elements of work environment, we will notice that it is often created on the basis of the old-style management rules. Open spaces, where teams carry out their task under the watchful eye of managers, reflect the once-popular way of thinking – If I see my employees, I can control their actions. Work revolves around the desk; other types of space, which would allow employees to cooperate and work more flexibly, are limited to the necessary minimum.

Contrary to popular belief, the best contemporary workspaces are not those filled with swings and slides, but those which enhance the need for autonomy, relatedness and competence among employees. Such workspaces are functional, adapted to employees’ individual styles of operation and aim to foster their efficacy. These are not offices filled with long rows of desks which leave little room for choice or effective work. So what are the main characteristics of such workspace?

A workspace which fosters building relationships:

• provides space for casual talks and joint actions, without disrupting the work of others,
• allows people to meet, both in formal and informal situations,
• facilitates and generates meetings with people from different parts of the organisation,
• helps employees create an internal networking system.

A workspace which fosters autonomy:

• does not restrict employees,
• gives you the freedom to choose the place and time of work,
• allows you to personally define the most efficient place to work.

A workspace which fosters competence:

• facilitates the implementation of tasks by matching the style of work of individual teams,
• enables you to work efficiently, regardless of its nature of the task,
• supports learning processes and the information exchange,
• allows you to take full advantage of the knowledge and skills, providing space for work which requires focus and for work in a team.

Not only do people affect the space they function in but also vice versa. A well-designed office can effectively foster the management style focused on creating the sense of commitment and shared responsibility. Naturally, some employees will require constant monitoring, e.g. due to their short employment history. Still, one of the greatest advantages of the most competitive companies are committed employees – those who need support in the performance of their tasks rather than monitoring. With them in mind, we should create workspaces that will assist them in their work rather than ones which will give us a false of control over those who require it.