BUSINESS CRITICAL

January 4, 2022

The open office floor plan: re-thinking an awful idea

Those big, wide-open offices don't work, either for employees or for the companies who think they improve collaboration among colleagues. Time to re-think what the office is.

That's especially true with Omicron dumping us right back into the Covid-19 work blues. Remember one of the supposed great virtues of the open office was that we could share ideas with co-workers sitting nearby. Innovation would flourish, friendships arise, and work wouldn't feel like work. That's not really true. As it turns out, the easiest thing to share in an open office are viruses.

Oops.

In a study from a few years ago of an open office, a harmless virus was placed on a single door. By the end of the day, almost the entire office — and bathrooms, doors, and breakroom — were contaminated. That was a generic virus. Omicron's reproduction number (R-value) is 3.47. That is, in a word, "Awful."

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No wonder, with a pandemic going on, no one wants to be packed into an open-air petri dish.

To be clear, my disdain for open offices pre-dates Covid-19; open offices have always been a bad idea. Open-office proponents promise that in them your workers will be better able to collaborate with each other and form close-knit teams. Indeed, one 1984 study found that open offices would engender a sense of shared mission and increase collaboration.

The reality is, as a Harvard Business Review study found, that "face-to-face interactions dropped by roughly 70% after the firms transitioned to open offices." Let that sink in. Open offices aren't neutral, they actively discourage people from working together.

And why wouldn't they? Any conversation becomes a public discussion. When you're trying to concentrate, you've got Joe and Anne yacking behind you and George doing an interpretative dance about his PowerPoint problem in front of you.

Another 2013 study found that nearly half of the surveyed workers in open offices said the noise and lack of sound privacy was a real problem for them. I found cubicles annoying enough back when I still worked in offices, the very idea of being in a hot-desking, open-space kindergarten tickles my nerves like fingernails on a chalkboard.

There are other reasons companies like the idea of an open office. First, it's cheaper. Period. That's it. It also lets bosses watch people more easily. And, as Lindsey Kaufman put it in The Washington Post, "Bosses love the ability to keep a closer eye on their employees, ensuring clandestine porn-watching, constant social media-browsing and unlimited personal cell phone use isn't occupying billing hours."

All that open air gives your workers another message: They don't matter. They're interchangeable, untrustworthy parts in a corporate machine, just like the cubicles in which they crouch. This is not what you want valued employees to think.

I'm a big believer in judging staffers by the quality of their work. I could care less about how they do it, if they're looking at TikTok part of the time, it's all about the results to me. Making them uncomfortable with an open office or spying on them, by literally overlooking them or with technology is a recipe for failure.

Give your people the space and privacy they need to do their best work. Whether that involves traditional offices, cubicles, or working from home is up to you. Any way you do it, you'll end up with more productive happier workers.

And happier workers generally make for more successful companies.

The truth about open offices

It's never been easier for workers to collaborate—or so it seems. Open offices, messaging, and virtual-meeting software in theory make people more visible and available. But as the physical and technological structures for omnichannel collaboration have spread, evidence suggests they are producing less interaction—or less meaningful interaction—not more. Read more.

Is an open office space good or bad for your business?

Open office spaces are a hotly debated topic in the realm of workplace modernization. Tearing down cubicle walls and moving people out of individual offices has become the fad many businesses credit for success. There's an emphasis on community, collaboration, and inclusion. The idea is that by tearing down walls and bringing people together, a business will run more efficiently and cohesively. Read more.

6 open office design tips that increase productivity

Furnishings and space layout play a vital role in the success or failure of open office design. But an intuitive layout and fun furniture alone won't ensure a productive open office workspace. Read more.

What are advantages & disadvantages of an open-plan office space?

Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that open-plan offices are all the rage in workplaces across the U.S. They bring up visions of aesthetically pleasing spaces with rows of desks stretching as far as the eye can see, coworkers collaborating over foosball, and small groups solving problems over coffee in beautifully decorated meeting nooks. But are they good for business? Read more.

How to make open-plan offices more productive

Open offices aim to spur collaboration and innovation but often have exactly the opposite effect. Here's how to harness their lost promise of productivity. Read more.

The advantages and disadvantages of open plan office layouts

As the name suggests, an open plan office is a type of office layout where all employees work on the same floor and in the same open space. Read more.

About the Author
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, aka sjvn, has been writing about the intersection of business and technology for over 30 years. He continues to scoop up awards for his valuable insights and practical guidance in highly technical publications, business & technology magazines, and mainstream newspapers.