Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick
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Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick
#2This topic is discussed at length in Peopleware:
http://www.librarything.com/work/17188
"If your organization is anything like those studied in our last three annual surveys, the environmental trend is toward less privacy, less dedicated space and more noise. Of course the obvious reason for this is cost. A penny saved on the workspace is a penny earned on the bottom line, or so the logic goes. Those who make such a judgement are guilty of performing a cost/benefit study without the benefit of studying the benefit."
The book was first published in 1987 and apparently has not been very influential.
Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick
#3I can definitely see how this could make people more sick, though I work in an open office and I rarely get sick, could be genetics or it could be that I eat food grown locally, work out and run every day and generally have alot of fun outside of work.
The human body NEEDS to get sick to build anti-bodies - without these then you will get sick more often. The American way of "Take antibiotics or medicine as soon as you get sick!" is one of the worst habits of my beloved American people (and fast food).
Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick
#4Someone upvote this past middle management!
Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick
#5This topic is discussed at length in Peopleware: http://www.librarything.com/work/17188 "If your organization is anything like those studied in our last three annual surveys, the environmental trend is toward less privacy, less dedicated space and more noise. Of course the obvious reason for this is cost. A penny saved on the workspace is a penny earned on the bottom line, or so the logic goes. Those who make such a…
> "Those who make such a judgement are guilty of performing a cost/benefit study without the benefit of studying the benefit."
Sounds like the last forty years of mainstream corporate policy in a nutshell.
Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick
#6As an interesting example, the people in charge at Facebook seem to be well aware of the downsides of open plan offices. They however consciously choose to lower engineer productivity in exchange for higher openness and visibility. It's actually refreshing how they don't try to pass it as "much better for the developer". It's better for the company as a whole, not so much for the individual: http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=3119 (starts around 11:35)
Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick
#7I've always felt that space preference varies by person and task. Given that nearly all knowledge can or do use laptops, it seems curious everyone has an assigned daily seat.
Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick
#8As an interesting example, the people in charge at Facebook seem to be well aware of the downsides of open plan offices. They however consciously choose to lower engineer productivity in exchange for higher openness and visibility. It's actually refreshing how they don't try to pass it as "much better for the developer". It's better for the company as a whole, not so much for the individual: http://ecorner.stanford.e…
The open plan is something I don't miss about working at Facebook. You look up over your monitor and see nothing but rows of harsh fluorescent lights. Opinion was definitely mixed, but I was in the camp that found the lack of quiet tiring after a while.
Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick
#9Personally I will never work in an open plan office again if I can avoid it .. when I was interviewing for a new position a year or so ago I had to turndown two offers from interesting companies due to their seating arrangements.
I do not want to spend the majority of my working day five feet from someone else with no barrier having to deal with the distraction, noise, invasion of personal space that comes with that
to me it shows a lack of respect towards your employees
Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick
#10The noise would drive me crazy. Earplugs would not even work with so many phones so close together. How can people program in that environment?