There is a witch hunt on in the workplace. “Open plan” has become a dirty word and the national press are leading the mob in vilifying this so-called scourge. The Guardian, The Independent, The Telegraph, The Daily Mail and Business Week have all reported that “we can’t get anything done in an open-plan office” as it affects our concentration, our performance and our health. These news items are all damning, but perhaps not as damming as the Wikipedia entry on open plan which states: “A systematic survey of research upon the effects of open plan offices found frequent negative effects in some traditional workplaces: high levels of noise, stress, conflict, high blood pressure and a high staff turnover… Most people prefer closed offices… there is a dearth of studies confirming positive impacts on productivity from open plan office designs”.
The latest attack on open plan appears to be the consequence of three recent(ish) reports:
A Danish study by Jan Pejtersen et al (2011) which found that the average reported sickness absence of 2,403 Danish workers was higher in open-plan working environments (8.1 days) compared to private single offices (4.9 days).
Gensler’s U.S. Workplace Survey (2013) of 2,035 randomly sampled knowledge workers found that “only one in four U.S. workers are in optimal workplace environments. The rest are struggling to work effectively, resulting in lost productivity, innovation, and worker engagement”.
Jungsoo Kim and Richard de Dear’s (2013) re-analysis of a U.S. survey of 42,764 respondents concluded “our results categorically contradict the industry-accepted wisdom that open-plan layout enhances communication between colleagues… This study showed that occupants’ satisfaction on the interaction issue was actually higher for occupants of private offices”.
A fresh look at the facts
So, assuming we are not all going to be given a luxurious corner office suite, we might as well pack up and go home now. Or we could take a deep breath and look at the facts presented in a little more detail than the sensation-seeking hacks at the national press.
In detailed studies like the Danish report I always look for the confounding variables; like a statistical sleuth I seek what they may have missed. The Danish study is pretty thorough and they do control for variables such as obesity and smoking, however I did spot that significantly more of those in private offices are “higher white collar” workers compared to those in open plan. I presume this difference in socio-economic status is reflected in salary, reward, respect, trust, freedom etc. I can’t help but feel the background and role of the people in offices will have more impact than their location, especially as the absenteeism rates in the report are based on self-reporting and recall. The line in the Danish report that I least understood was “as sickness absence is a rare event, Poisson regression was used to model the number of self-reported sickness absence days”. So despite me being about to dis the report for using self-reported absenteeism which is highly subjective, it seems the absenteeism rate was a prediction, an estimation, and not actually reported.