Noisy, distracting, toxic and disastrous. These are just a few words that have been used to describe open plan office layouts. Though the open office layout model was originally conceived to promote collaboration, innovation and stronger workplace relationship, if recent press is to be believed, it’s had the opposite effect at many companies.
In fact, the Journal of Environmental Psychology recently studied over 40,000 workers in 300 U.S. office buildings and found that “enclosed private offices clearly outperformed open-plan layouts in most aspects of IEQ (Indoor Environmental Quality), particularly in acoustics, privacy and the proxemicsissues. Benefits of enhanced ‘ease of interaction’ were smaller than the penalties of increased noise level and decreased privacy resulting from open-plan office configuration.”
In another 2018 study conducted at Harvard Business School, researchers ascertained that workers in open-plan offices spent 73 percent less time engaged in face-to-face interactions while their email and IM use rose by 63 percent and 75 percent respectively.
Though we can’t necessarily dispute the data, we should still pose the question: are there instances where open offices can work? Furthermore, what separates open-office layout successes from failures? In an effort to learn more, I sat down with a few office design and management experts from Simple Finance, Robin and Chapman University to discuss the pros and cons of the open office layout.
The open plan can work
As Sam Dunn, CEO & Co-Founder of Robin puts it, “despite the hue and cry about open offices, the design can work — but it has to be executed flawlessly.”
Sarah Drew, Director – Workplace Experience at Simple elaborates, “I am pro openness…..If it works for your company. You can not just design an open office because you feel it is the next trend or cool thing to do. Most open offices fail because they are poorly designed and the employees, culture, and function of business are not taken into consideration. The blanket term “open office” has been misconstrued over the years and now is slapped onto any office that takes away ceilings and cubicle panels. There is so much more to it than that and I fully believe you can have a successful, talent-attracting (and retaining) open environment without the both assumed and real negatives that come with a poorly designed open office.“