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Open-plan offices decrease face-to-face collaboration: study

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Re: Open-plan offices decrease face-to-face collaboration: study

#31

Post by ergothus »

nkrisc wrote: post #20
joegahona wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just recently went from a personal office to an open plan and find the new situation devoid of merit. Noise-canceling over-the-ear headphones are a must, and phone calls are impossible. Since meeting rooms are minimal, that's an issue too. I've done a handful of meetings in my car.

> phone calls are impossible And woe to those who need to take a conference call with multiple of their desk neighbors but no conference rooms are available. Nothing like a bunch of people all sitting next to each other talking on the same phone call. Why companies would implement an open office without a plethora of private meeting spaces is beyond me.

3/3 of my last companies have moved to new offices while I was there, proudly touting the open floor plan and increased number of meeting rooms.

3/3 found that the meeting rooms were inadequate before they even filled the open floor plan seating.

Open floor plans mean meeting rooms become mandatory for just about every interaction. The promised ease of interaction doesnt happen when everyone is in headphones and the polite people dont want to talk while in close quarters with others NOT in the conversation.

Re: Open-plan offices decrease face-to-face collaboration: study

#32

Post by neogodless »

monkeynotes wrote: post #7

I am not sure why employees would message and email more if they can just turn their chair around to chat about something they are working on. Does anyone have experience of this? I have worked in open plan offices since 1999 and I've never experienced productivity problems. If anything I'd expect working in a cube would lead to more time wasted cruising websites since your screen is more obscured. I dunno, I've only…

I'm working in an open office now. With few exceptions, every single person wears headphones (presumably noise-canceling) most of the day. Some people (especially me) have video conferences from our desks.

For a "hey there" conversation, most teammates have to get up and walk over to someone else... tap them to shake them out of their focus and get them to take their headphones off.

Don't think any of us resort to email, but then again I'm only on one of many teams. We do use Slack but again I don't know how many private Slack conversations occur. (Most of my team is not located here, so everything is Slack, and most of it is in a team channel.)

I'm not sure I have a solid takeaway, but I can say that I'm much, much more engaged with my remote teammates than my local ones.

Re: Open-plan offices decrease face-to-face collaboration: study

#33

Post by MisterOctober »

montagg wrote: post #16
Mikeb85 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much. Real estate is expensive.

I’d be really curious how much of a hit to people’s salary they would be willing to take, or the reduced capabilities of their business, to get an open office environment. I worked with an internal team that created a brand new office for a decently-sized tech company. We had this exact debate: open or closed. We explored closed, or versions of it (see Spotify’s team rooms as a great example of a compromise), but the…

I've worked in both open and closed office environments -- currently have my own office, and it is _much_ easier for me to be productive without distractions in this arrangement. Huge improvement in quality of work and quality of life. It's possible that I could be persuaded to go back to an open-office environment, but it would require a _lot_ of additional compensation -- like maybe 50+%.

Re: Open-plan offices decrease face-to-face collaboration: study

#34

Post by jackfoxy »

35+ years in the IT workforce here.

Yep, dumbest idea ever.

The vast majority of my office time was in cubicles, which are pretty good. Usually enough privacy to get things done. I did have a glassed-in private office for about a year at one company. That was productivity heaven. In retrospect I was dumb to leave that company when I did, but they started demolishing offices for cubicles about 2 years later. It is all about efficient use of real estate.

I've been at a millennial run company for the last 6 years, first 4 in open space. What a productivity fuck, for all the often repeated reasons. And I really consider them de-humanizing. I gave up on trying to explain this to management years ago.

Working from home the last 2 years. Whenever I do visit the home office nothing gets done. Looking at what my colleagues do, I think they only ever get much done on work form home days.

Re: Open-plan offices decrease face-to-face collaboration: study

#35

Post by ryandrake »

agentultra wrote: post #21

More than Agile? Snark aside, I have a personal office and I love it. I don't like to listen to constant noise/music to cancel out the other noise/music. I like being able to have private calls without all of the noise in the background. If I'm working on something particularly difficult I like closing my door and having peace and quiet. I also enjoy the sense of ownership and prestige. It's nice feeling like I matte…

Just to get the alternate view out there too: I had an office once with a door that closed. As an extrovert it was awful. I felt lonely all day. The only way to get any human contact besides email and text was to leave and go walk the halls or find some common area. I ended up pretty much never using it and instead worked from the break room. From time to time they’d give me an officemate to share the office, but they were all extroverts too, so of course were never around.

Different strokes for different folks. I love open offices and wouldn’t go back to closed ones if given the choice. I also have difficulty WFH for the same reasons.

More employers should offer more choices, as everyone is different and what suits one worker might be awful for another.

Re: Open-plan offices decrease face-to-face collaboration: study

#36

Post by CivBase »

> They start using email and messaging with much greater frequency than before.

Couldn't the same focus that drove the open-office transition also be responsible for driving more effective communication tools? Or just more collaboration in general, which naturally results in an increased use in communications tools?

Or maybe the tools have just been improving over time, which results in an entirely unrelated increase in use?

There are so many potential explanations here. This seems like a non-point.

Re: Open-plan offices decrease face-to-face collaboration: study

#37

Post by achow »

> The Harvard study, by contrast, undercuts the entire premise that justifies the fad. And that leaves companies with only one justification for moving to an open plan office: less floor space, and therefore a lower rent.

From beginning this was the reason - because when planning for the office the cost difference between open/close office would show up in the Excel files - loss of productivity no Excel or Project Mgmt software can capture (it is hand-wavy stuff for CFO office).

Apart from rent, the cost of HVAC (heating, cooling) is drastically reduced - installation, operation and maintenance - open office has more efficient distribution due to no obstructing walls, lesser duct outlets - in closed office plan, each office needs to have at least one outlet, most of the time more than one.

Then ofcourse saving on drywalls, doors, locks, etc.

Re: Open-plan offices decrease face-to-face collaboration: study

#38

Post by ergothus »

LeSaucy wrote: post #30
cagenut wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not just density, but "easier" for the decision makers. Its easier to rent a big open room than to figure out an office plan and seating plan and construction schedule. Its easier to move desks around like musical chairs than to have to mutate rooms and halls. People will almost always take the near-term cheaper and easier option, even when its worse and more expensive in the long run. Incidentally, this was the one…

Coincidentally I am sure that the decision makers would love to hear about your concerns, in their closed offices.

Another trend I've seen is "our CEO/VP sits in the same open floor plan"

...except they are actually in meetings 90% of the time, and may even have a dedicated meeting room (which is just an office by another name).

Actually hours at their open floor plan desk are easily in the single digits per week, of not per month.

Re: Open-plan offices decrease face-to-face collaboration: study

#39

Post by amluto »

ryandrake wrote: post #35
agentultra wrote: post #21

More than Agile? Snark aside, I have a personal office and I love it. I don't like to listen to constant noise/music to cancel out the other noise/music. I like being able to have private calls without all of the noise in the background. If I'm working on something particularly difficult I like closing my door and having peace and quiet. I also enjoy the sense of ownership and prestige. It's nice feeling like I matte…

Just to get the alternate view out there too: I had an office once with a door that closed. As an extrovert it was awful. I felt lonely all day. The only way to get any human contact besides email and text was to leave and go walk the halls or find some common area. I ended up pretty much never using it and instead worked from the break room. From time to time they’d give me an officemate to share the office, but the…

At one point I had an office that I shared with a couple other people. I had shelves, blackboards, and a couple people to talk to. Outside the office was common space. It was great!

Downside: the arrangement was likely quite expensive.

Re: Open-plan offices decrease face-to-face collaboration: study

#40

Post by nkrisc »

ergothus wrote: post #31
nkrisc wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> phone calls are impossible And woe to those who need to take a conference call with multiple of their desk neighbors but no conference rooms are available. Nothing like a bunch of people all sitting next to each other talking on the same phone call. Why companies would implement an open office without a plethora of private meeting spaces is beyond me.

3/3 of my last companies have moved to new offices while I was there, proudly touting the open floor plan and increased number of meeting rooms. 3/3 found that the meeting rooms were inadequate before they even filled the open floor plan seating. Open floor plans mean meeting rooms become mandatory for just about every interaction. The promised ease of interaction doesnt happen when everyone is in headphones and the…

I can't tell you how many times I walked past the 12 person conference room with just two people sitting in there, because, where else are they going to have a private discussion when every other room is booked?

As you said, when everyone has an office, only meetings of more than a handful of people need a separate conference room.

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