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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

#111

Post by greenyoda »

crazygringo wrote: post #30

Is there any conclusive evidence of causation, as opposed to just correlation? Could it be, for example, that companies with worse management practices tend to adopt open-plan offices, but that it's actually the bad management practices causing stress, sickness, less productivity -- and that the open-plan offices have very little to do with it? In environments as incredibly complex as office settings, it is particula…

You make a good point; an office is a complex system with many factors affecting workers. However, I do think the findings about increased sickness in open plan offices are very plausible. Communicable diseases, like colds or flu, would be a whole lot easier to spread when there's someone coughing or sneezing in your immediate vicinity over an extended period of time.

Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick

#112

Post by greenyoda »

keithpeter wrote: post #96
jstalin wrote: post #28

Like so many things, it seems as though people are looking for "the one" best way of doing things. Obviously some people like cubicles. Some like offices. Some like open space. How about letting people choose?

And possibly change their choice from day to day depending on task. Could be expensive?

If it increases the productivity of a $100,000 per year employee by 10% (i.e., you could get the equivalent of an additional $100,000 employee for free for every ten employees you had), it could actually be very cost effective.

Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick

#113

Post by onemorepassword »

I'm tired of these kind of generalizations. Our open plan office is geared towards developers and quiet and peaceful 95% of the time. Standing rule is, you wanna talk, you take it outside into the kitchen or the meeting room. Simple.

Also, people can work from home whenever they want. Most prefer to be in the office because it's nice and quiet.

The problem isn't open spaces, the problem is the people in it.

Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick

#115

Post by ax »

endianswap wrote: post #73
rohansingh wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're listening to music through those headphones, it is definitely having an effort on your creativity that you might net appreciate. The Cornell study about this is referenced in Peopleware . I summarized it a few years ago if you don't have a copy handy: http://rohanradio.com/blog/2010/08/12/one-song-on-repeat/

I don't actually need anything playing on the headphones to effectively block out voices, even nearby ones. I compared my HD280s agains active noise-cancelling headphones and the Sennheisers blocked talking much more effectively, because there's that much more material between your ears and the outside world.

I could be wrong, but at one point I calculated that the HD280s meet OSHA requirements for hearing protection for certain noise levels.

Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick

#117

Post by pudquick »

reeses wrote: post #105
kabdib wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve has desks on wheels. Want to move? Just move; unplug your computer, roll your desk to your new spot, plug back in. The IT folks have it set up so that your location is automatically updated so people can find you. This makes it incredibly easy to put yourself next to the people you're actually working with. It tends to cut down on interruptions (you're not stuck in a room working on feature X while there are ot…

Interesting. How do they track it? Is it based on physical network drop or another method? Or is it just "Go into this room. If you can't find them, call out their name and admit you're a moron?"

In a well-designed building, that's not hard.

All of your network drops would all be connected to the switches in advance (if network security was a concern, you could do 802.1X controlled VLAN / port-based authentication). In this type of setup, you've now made it "port on a switch = physical location in the building" (within the length of an ethernet cable - say 6-9 feet).

With the right automation tools, when a port goes active, it would be possible to poll the client workstation information connected to it and automatically update directory information with the physical location based on the port that user is connected to (assuming a 1-to-1 user to computer assignment).

Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick

#118

Post by rhizome »

davesims wrote: post #63
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #43

I've worked in every possible configuration, and I've watched teams work in every possible configuration. I don't like open-plan, but it tentatively appears to be most effective for organizations as a whole. Some initial conclusions: - We'd be wise to distinguish what we'd all like to have as an office from what actually functions best in a larger system. It is erroneous to think that simply because you like somethin…

Couldn't agree more. What people complain about is not necessarily an indication of what's not working . My last two gigs have been open-plan, and I prefer it much more than closed-cube spaces. If your team is working as it should, and is in close proximity to project/product management, with a good process and a healthy level of trust between the stakeholders and between the various engineers, then in my experience…

Step 1: Get your team working "as it should."

Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick

#119

Post by ChuckMcM »

One of the challenges I face is on temperature. The HVAC unit on our building was not really designed to do even temperature control of an open 60 x 100' space. So we get warm and cold spots, and adjusting one can screw up the others. I've done a bit of research on it and their are two challenges for our particular system, one the number of mixers in the ceiling which can change air temperature and the way in which thermostats feed back into the system.

I suspect if you sat down with Lennox or Crane and said "we want to design an HVAC system that will work in this environment." they would come up with something very different than what we currently have. Sadly its going to take a bit to convince the landlord to rip out the old system and put in a new one.

Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick

#120

Post by rhizome »

mcphilip wrote: post #14

I really struggle to get in the 'zone' where I can do the creative aspects of software engineering (e.g. researching graph databases like neo4j and determining if our startup can benefit from it) when I'm in an open environment. I have been diagnosed with ADD for the past 8 years, but am working towards a medication free approach to dealing with it. Open spaces really hurt my productivity because my mind naturally tr…

Pretty much my worst working experience was in an open plan office (the boss had their own office, natch), where the boss would walk into the room, "Hey guys...", everybody takes their headphones off and looks up, and he starts talking about something that is relevant to two, maybe two and a half, people. This would happen about once per hour.

Policy against headphones, is that a thing? Shudder.

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