Posted on 07/14/2018 4:58:09 PM PDT by BenLurkin
While the concept behind open office spaces is to drive informal interaction and collaboration among employees, the study found that for both groups of employees monitored (52 for one company and 100 for the other company) face-to-face interactions dropped, the number of emails sent increased between 20 and 50 percent and company executives reported a qualitative drop in productivity.
“[Organizations] transform their office architectures into open spaces with the intention of creating more [face-to-face] interaction and thus a more vibrant work environment,” the study’s authors, Ethan Bernstein and Stephen Turban, wrote. “[But] what they often get—as captured by a steady stream of news articles professing the death of the open office is an open expanse of proximal employees choosing to isolate themselves as best they can (e.g. by wearing large headphones) while appearing to be as busy as possible (since everyone can see them).”
While this study is far from the first to point fingers at open office space designs, the researchers claim this is the first study of its kind to collect qualitative data on this shift in working environment instead of relying primarily on employee surveys.
From their results, the researchers provide three cautionary tales:
Open office spaces don’t actually promote interaction. Instead, they cause employees to seek privacy wherever they can find it.
These open spaces might spell bad news for collective company intelligence or, in other words, an overstimulating office space creates a decrease in organizational productivity.
Not all channels of interaction will be effected equally in an open layout change. While the number of emails sent in the study did increase, the study found that the richness of this interaction was not equal to that lost in face-to-face interactions.
(Excerpt) Read more at techcrunch.com ...
IMHO, and based on my own experience as an employee and a manager, if you have staff that are paid to solve complex problems, pay attention to detail, or manage technical processes, then anything you can do to help them minimize distraction and interruption will pay off in accuracy and productivity. Individual offices would be the ideal, but headphones and partitions can accomplish much the same for a fraction of the cost.
Movies are probably a bridge too far, but for certain especially creative and productive individuals, especially if they were on a major project in progress and had some downtime waiting on something or monitoring something, I’d let it slide and even condone it.
Of course, I’m in IT, which is a field that is still largely merit-based and new enough to not have ossified as some others have. And we often work long hours at weird times and places in order to minimize adverse effects on the core business. Finding people who can and will do that, and are competent, often requires some flexibility other business functions can’t or won’t offer.
Dial the same number for the cog’s extension.
I already work there! LOL
Just applied for a gig in Afghanistan for a break.
Oh, can I get in on this?
I’m the lead software engineer at my company. I manage my team on 3 and of course, and contract team in India. Just last year, we went from cubicles to the wonderful “open space” - weird furniture and all.
I HATE IT.
And so does the team that sits by the hallowed “I.T. collaboration space”. Most of the I.T. meetings happen there. This means the people who sit near this area can’t be in a teleconference because of all the background conversations, and vice-versa. Earphones? Headphones? Yes! Why? because you can’t concentrate with 3 to 5 other conversations going on around you all the time.
Then there’s always the constant interruption when you’re on a call because someone thinks you’re just using your headphones.
So, yeah - many of us find ourselves having one-on-ones in a huge conference room, or outside, or yes - in the men’s room. I actually took my guys out to lunch once just to have a talk in my car on the way to the restaurant.
Oh and here’s more:
Since anyone can walk behind you and see what you’re doing, you always have those who like to comment on the web page you have open - even if work related, tell you what you should be looking at instead for better info.
The temperature is never right for someone. Neither is the lighting. At my place, there’s an ongoing war over the light switches, and we have to put the thermostat under lock and key (Nest thermostats; account passwords changed and removed from the network).
And yes, there are times during the day when I need to address financial, domestic, medical, or other concerns like everyone else during break periods that are really NONE OF ANYONE ELSE’S BUSINESS. But with the open-office concept, your life is an open book.
Fortunately, our company strives to be a ‘green company’, where working remotely (i.e. home) is allowed. This helps mitigate the chaos. Yes, they want you working and collaborating in open space. Problem is that when everyone really *IS* working, the place sounds like Grand Central.
One final note: They had to go back to cubicles in customer service because customers heard all the reps during the call. Ironic, isn’t it?
jimjohn - OUT.
Back in the 1970’s Broward county (yes, that Broward county) schools experimented with open classrooms. It was an expensive disaster. Stevie Wonder could have seen that coming.
I pity Cube Dwellers,
Poindexters with no clue except to
shirk responsibility to others.
These no Talent primadonnas
Try to brow beat their charges
and suckup to Their bosses.
We Should show mercy.
My boss hates talking on the phone at work. One of our sales managers sits in his car.
I have the pleasure of working from home
My gfx dept had 4 folks and they gave us a big room with no door. We did technical illustration for training manuals for oil refineries, various software. Anyway my desk was the first inside to screen people. We had two desk lamps per desk and created “light islands”, no cubes, no overhead lights. We were separated or not depending on our mood. Low background music. Worked well.
Worked for him.
*Enter through the door.
Heh, heh, heh. I got my private office with door. F N and his follow-the-latest-trend mentality.
How can you have sex on your desk if you don’t get a cubicle?
Has anyone seen Lowry?
I used to manage an office. We had satellites that worked very well for mental security and comfort of the employees. Imagine a square office area with smaller square enclosed offices at all four corners, a big hallway space on one side to connect with the rest of the office, and that leaves lots of cubbies in between the offices with cozy areas for 2-3 employees to have a desk. There was a lot of cameraderie. In the middles would be work stations, copy machines, filing areas, etc. It really worked.
We also remodeled each dept as soon as the leadership of that dept changed form. Like suddenly 2 co-dept heads or one doing trading, one doing banking, so we’d remake the interior office walls (they looked like real walls but were easy for construction guys to take down and put back up) to fix it.
The sociological / infrastructure part of managing people was kind of fun.
My building is about to be torn down to create space for a new building. During that process, my department is going into temporary office space that’s being styled as a cube farm/bullpen to reduce cost to create. The director and assistant director will have small private spaces but have already told the group that since it is mostly a customer contact group, they don’t expect to see much of us in the cube farm. They even got some of us new Chromebooks with a full copy of our CRM for remote work. Think I might like cubing...
There was an experiment in schools in early 80s of open classrooms, where three or four classes were going on in sight and hearing of others.... not good!
NC did that, it was confusing for students....
NC did that, it was confusing for students....
-PJ
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