Will There Be A Backlash Against The Open Office?
August 04, 2014
In recent months, I’ve written about the trend away from the office cubicle and toward more open plan office space. While many companies have found that such arrangements create the desired outcome of higher productivity and employee satisfaction, others report mixed results.
One of the factors that reduces productivity in the open office environment is the required effort on behalf of employees to improvise solutions that allow them to focus. In addition to sound that distracts, workers struggle with visual distraction, too. When people had offices and those offices had doors, shutting the door was a simple, readily available response. However, with an open plan, finding needed quite and solitude is harder.
There are many accommodations that can be made for all of these needs in the open plan environment. One response is to reintroduce cubicles and defined offices that can be used for meetings and private phone conversations while preserving the desirable elements of the open plan.
Another key to the successfully transitioning to open office spaces involves creating a company culture that includes awareness of how your behavior might affect others in the space. For example, modulating conversations, wearing headphones when listening to music and refraining from making distracting noises are ways consideration can improve everyone’s productivity.
In deciding how to best implement the new space planning models, a realistic assessment of the company culture is a critical factor. Some of the notable failures I’ve seen with the open plan model have resulted from a process that is driven by the imagined cost savings and ignores practical requirements in the daily functioning of the work space.
A careful, in depth evaluation of all workplace needs and elements is the starting point for a successful transition in space utilization. If your company is considering a change, we at Bayshore Partners would appreciate the opportunity to be of service.
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