IF YOU HAVEN’T already made it to the corner office, it’s probably too late. Workstation walls of any height are becoming relics as businesses from corporate giants to small startups embrace open plans in which employees of all statuses sit crammed side-by-side amid a sprawling sea of desks.
Employers tout the virtues of these space-saving layouts, arguing that the hustle, bustle and easy access helps spur collaboration and creativity. According to Tonya Smith-Jackson, chair of the industrial and systems engineering department at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, that’s true for certain offices where co-workers have to build “shared mental models”—say, architects developing condo designs or ad writers brainstorming ways to hype soda.
But given rising real-estate prices, many bosses also have ulterior motives. “If you’re company X, and company Y has reduced their real estate costs to 25 percent of yours, it puts you at a financial disadvantage,” said Barbara Mullenex, a principal at architecture firm Perkins Eastman in Washington, D.C.
The problem is, for many of us, open offices can make it challenging to get anything done; every passing hour brings as many unexpected sights, sounds and smells as a mid-sized circus.
Such chaos makes focusing a feat, said Gloria Mark, a professor in the informatics department at the University of California, Irvine. Her research shows that workers in open offices are interrupted much more frequently than at places where they can find peace behind shut doors.
Some companies have tweaked facilities to create areas for quiet computer work and small enclosures for phone calls and quick meetings. Other offices have installed sound-insulated phone booths where an employee can duck in for a client call or an afternoon chat with a logistics-obsessed spouse or a child’s teacher. (Soon apps like Facebook Spaces will even allow staffers to gather in virtual reality.)