Tag : open office design

How do office seating arrangements impact the day-to-day experience of office workers? Let’s have a look at how office layouts and workstations have changed over the past 100 years—and what this has meant for individual employee privacy.

At the dawn of the 20^th century, white collar clerical work and “knowledge work” was becoming a more and more important part of commerce. Businesses had moved to a centralized administrative structure that allowed them to house white collar staff together for easier management and oversight. This led to some interesting experimentation with office layouts. Putting a large number of people in the same room to work on different tasks was definitely not the same as designing a factory assembly line where everyone worked toward the same goal. Here are some of the ideas that have been tried over the years to make the office space efficient and productive.

The School of Work

In a 2009 Wired Magazine article, Cliff Kuang takes us through an interesting pictorial representation of office seating arrangements from the early 1900s through today. The first highly regimented layout with row upon row of desks was reminiscent of a school—only with no teacher at the front. Everyone worked with someone (literally) peering over their shoulder from a desk immediately behind them. There was little real privacy for anyone except the bosses who had private offices from which they could oversee work on the “production” floor.

Breaking up the Workforce

The early 1960s saw an uptick in more innovative seating arrangements, with different tasks being supported with varying layouts. Workers who needed to focus might sit in rows so they could more easily ignore one another. Those who were expected to collaborate might gather in clusters. Panel systems had not yet been developed, so there was nothing to dampen noise or create visual privacy. This was the time of the bull-pen office, with its hustle and bustle. While some people still look back on this era with fondness, it wasn’t a layout that was well-suited to very many industries.

Cubicles Create the First Mini-Office

Individual workstations with dividers (Action Offices) were introduced in the late sixties and have been arranged in a huge variety of ways ever since. They’ve gone from pods to rows and back again, changing shape from squares to honeycombs and other novel office seating arrangements. Dividers started out fairly low, but got higher over time to simulate office walls. The improvement in visual privacy was immediate, while the ability to dampen distracting noise improved with the development of acoustic materials.

Stay tuned: Next week, we’ll look at what happened after the cubicle began to fall from favor.

Last week, we reviewed a laundry list of opinions about open offices vs. closed offices. This time, let’s get more specific and list some issues that can crop up in the unfettered landscape of the entirely open office. Here are a number of valid complaints that office workers have about personality conflicts in open spaces:

• The lack of privacy in an open office actually restricts honest communication because of all the eavesdropping.
• Coworkers’ manners are a huge obstacle in open environments. They talk too loudly, don’t respect the privacy of others, and have conversations on speaker phone.
• Introverts pay a “social penalty” for not engaging on the same level as their coworkers. It’s unfair to expect all personality types to work in the same way.
• Theft is more likely to occur in an open office. It’s a hassle to have to lock your purse inside the desk if you get up to go to the copier.
• HR ends up with way more work to do in smoothing ruffled feathers when everyone is in everyone else’s business in an open office.

Collaboration and Creativity

What about the perception that open offices are the best bet for keeping people connected and getting all the bright ideas flowing? Not everyone is on board with that viewpoint either. In fact, they point to a number of alternatives:

• Small shared areas work better than completely open offices. People working on the same project can be clustered together in small teams to promote collaboration.
• Closed floor plans make teamwork more productive because meetings have to be scheduled for a real purpose.
• People who work inside their heads need private space. They don’t want to be pulled into conversations or make everything a “team project” in an open office.
• Open spaces are OK for “creatives” working together on the same project, but people in operations roles need less distraction.
• The workstation isn’t the place for socialization. It should be a place to concentrate get work done. Meetings are the right environment for communication and collaboration.

Can We All Just Get Along?

There is room for common ground in this ongoing debate. Most people do agree that the right solution is industry and job dependent. Confidentiality, privacy, and ethics are important considerations. There’s also widespread agreement that an ideal workspace makes room for both private areas and collaborative areas. OBEX panel extenders and desk panels offer a solution that’s easy to retrofit into any space to achieve just the right ratio.

Do you have opinions about open offices to share? Let loose in the comments!

A Swedish study published by the Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors indicates that open plan offices really do make workers sick. The retrospective survey of over 1,850 people found that those in open offices fared worst. The study found “A significant excess risk for sickness absence was found in terms of short sick leave spells in the three open-plan offices.” In other words, workers were more likely to call in sick for a day or two when they were in an open plan setting. Men seemed particularly stressed by flex plan offices (hot desking with no assigned workstations). Women took more lengthy sick leaves if they had to work in large open offices.

Too Much Noise, Too Little Control

The researchers suggest that environmental stressors inherent in open plan offices may be partially to blame. They point to the example of, “architectural features that lead to a lack of visual and acoustic privacy in combination with the functional features that are related to job characteristics such as lack of autonomy.” Sometimes, employees may become so stressed that they simply need to take time off to decompress. Or, they may have less ability to isolate themselves from other workers. That means the cold or flu going around is going to spread with ease. The more people crammed into the space, the bigger this problem is likely to get.

Keeping Workers Well = Treating Them Well

Interestingly, it’s apparently not sharing space that’s the issue. Employees in shared-room offices didn’t take a significantly different number of sick days compared to those in individual offices. Interestingly, one of the features the study used to define a shared office was this: Workstations are freely arranged in the room. For privacy reasons, sometimes screens or other divisional elements are added between workstations.

Few businesses are likely to address noise and privacy issues by putting workers back in offices—shared or otherwise. Instead, the focus is on reducing distractions and giving employees more control over workstation configuration. Our desktop panels and cubicle wall extenders can do both since we provide a range of heights and colors in materials that minimize noise and increase visual privacy.

Why should your office depend on a cubicle layout rather then the trendier “open office design”? Two words – workplace distractions.  Although open office layouts have dominated office design style for several years, studies reinforce the fact that having a private space to work in increases employee productivity and satisfaction!

The most common source of distraction in open office designs is background noise. Even an overall noise level of just 55-60 dBA can cause major deterioration in employees’ ability to concentrate.”  The four culprits most likely to cause strife are ringing telephones, conversations between co-workers or between a coworker and a party on the other end of a phone, keyboard clacking, printer or computer noise, and sounds from outside.

Many office managers are prompted to tell new employees “You’ll get used to it”, but the opposite is actually true – many employees become more annoyed and distracted by excessive background noise the longer it goes on.

Converting from an open office design to a cubicle layout by using panel extenders and cubicle height extensions can greatly increase employee’s sense of privacy and reduce the amount of noise from adjoining co-workers and common spaces.

In addition to using panel extenders and privacy panels to give each employee their own sound baffled workspace, creating quiet areas away from noisy equipment and other people allows for serious phone calls, focused programming tasks or writing work. Printers and copiers can be relegated to a separate area so the noise they make is less distracting, noise cancelling headphones can be provided to employees on request, and phones chosen that have adjustable ringtones that are less obnoxious than standard default.

The conversion from open office to cubicle format may not be instantly accepted by employees, but as long as open common areas and comfortable break rooms are maintained to get employees “out of the box” during breaks and lunchtimes there should be a short adjustment period followed by acceptance and embracing of the new layout.

Overall, cubicles cut down on distraction in the workplace and will improve overall efficiency and employee morale. Consider trading in your open office design for a more practical layout, and cut down on constant distractions throughout the day without making workers feel overly boxed in.

Steelcase correctly predicted the rise of the “collaborative” workspace. And we think they’re probably right about the pendulum swinging back in the other direction. No, we’re not going back to the era of private offices. Many businesses aren’t even going back to separate cubicles with higher walls. But they are realizing that a completely open office design hasn’t created an optimal work environment for most workers. In fact, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that employees need separation as much as they need togetherness. It’s a matter of finding the right balance.

According to an article published in CIRE magazine, Steelcase says that the idea of private enclaves is definitely catching on in the coming years. These tiny rooms are just large enough for a couple of pieces of lounge furniture and a table. It’s a cozy meeting space for a small team, a private phone booth for employees juggling work and personal life, or a “do not disturb” area for occasional bouts of intense focus.

Making Space for Concentration

Steelcase reports that one of their clients actually had an entire wall of these tiny enclaves with a sofa, desk, chair, and data/electricity ports installed. In other words, the private office is making a sneaky reappearance. But instead of being allocated to specific employees, these spaces are being allocated to certain activities. It’s an approach that makes sense if you have the cash to remodel your layout. Using architectural walls instead of drywall can cut costs, of course.

But the least expensive way to create this type of enclave is probably by converting some larger cubicles. A 12×12 “manager” cubicle would definitely be big enough to create a small getaway space. Even an 8 x 10 would be sufficient for two person team efforts. Simply add cubicle panel extenders to raise the walls above head height and create the sense of visual and acoustic privacy that employees still need. You could also add panels to a couple of tables in a corner, attach desk mounted privacy panels and put in some lounge seating to complete the space.

According to a “Science Tech” article on the DailyMail site, there are two major threats to productivity in the workplace:

• Open plan offices
• Uniformity in workstations

The article cites a number of studies demonstrating the effect of constant interruptions, high noise levels, and lack of privacy endemic in open offices. We’ve covered a lot of these studies before, but it never hurts to get a refresher course. A neuroscientist who helped conduct one study that actually measured a subject’s brainwaves in an open plan office said employees may not realize the disruption to their thought processes. “Even though you are not aware at the time, the brain responds to distractions.” He believes that these open offices don’t actually improve either creativity or problem solving. Having 50 people in a room doesn’t increase the available brain power if no one is actually able to think.

A psychologist interviewed for the same article revealed another finding from the study. Employee productivity goes up by 15% when workers are allowed to decorate their space with their own belongings. Instead of being a distraction, these familiar objects actually make workers feel more relaxed and focused. So, giving employees the option to have private workspaces with more personalization could really pay off.

This year, Gensler released findings based on half a decade of data collected from 90,000 employees using its Workplace Performance Index™ tool. A whitepaper based on these survey results came to the following conclusion:

“The WPI’s unexpected revelation is that the most significant factor in workplace effectiveness is not collaboration, it’s individual focus work. And we also found that focus is the workplace environment’s least effectively supported activity.”

The authors of the whitepaper blame the usual suspects for the dip in concentration: open office design, too much noise and lack of visual privacy. These findings may come as a surprise to Gensler, but at OBEX we already knew this. It’s the reason employers buy our cubicle extenders – and the reason we added the desk-mounted privacy panels to our product line this year.

Why You Should Focus on Focus

What we did find noteworthy is the fact that Gensler found the four “modes of work” (focus, collaboration, learning and socialization) are more interdependent than previously supposed. But they aren’t equally important. In fact, focus is the core value upon which all the other work modes depend. According to the whitepaper, “Workplace strategies that sacrifice individual focus in pursuit of collaboration will result in decreased effectiveness for both.”

They also point out that the office space doesn’t have to be extra-specially designed to promote collaboration. If people want to team up, they’ll be flexible and find a way to do it. “The most critical factor in collaboration is who you’re collaborating with, not where. Space plays a role, but a secondary one.” In contrast, the Gensler research shows that space must be carefully and deliberately designed to foster high levels of intense concentration.

Participants surveyed consistently said they spend most of their time (55%) doing focus work and that it was by far the most critical aspect of their job (88%). Obviously, employees want to do their jobs well and employers could see huge performance gains by making that possible. It’s time the workplace was redesigned to support what’s best for business and for people.

The evidence that open plan offices are bad for you keeps piling up. Anne Murphy Paul put together a great roundup of current research at Time.com. Her article is titled “Why the Open Office Is a Hotbed of Stress.” As you can imagine, she doesn’t paint a favorable picture of what it’s like to work in an environment where noise is at a maximum and privacy is at a minimum. She points out that every benefit employers thought they would reap by doing away with private offices or taking down the cubicle walls has actually backfired.

• Social interaction frequency increased…but conversations became shallower
• People could reach out to coworkers for help…but those being asked for help got less done
• Everyone could hear and see everyone else…but everyone could hear and see everyone else

According to Anne’s article, not only are open office designs associated with more stress, they can even sap your will to live – or at least the will to keep on trying to find solutions for problems. We hope that doesn’t mean that people will stop looking for solutions to the open office problem. We’re doing our part with desktop mounted privacy panels. They can close the “door” a little bit on all these problems.

Other structural and process changes that can make a difference include:

• Setting aside some enclosed areas for private conversations. This gives people a space to really communicate instead of just chatting about the weather and sports.
• Making sure the coverings on ceiling and walls are designed to absorb sound. This may involve some retrofitting, but it will be worth it.
• Have all workers turn off sound-generating devices. Have desktop phones light up instead of ringing. Put cell phones on vibrate. Turn off “pinging” email notification sounds on computers.
• Institute a two hour “period of silence” at the beginning or end of each work day. During this time, employees are to work by themselves with minimal interaction.
• Install privacy screens, doors or other barriers that can be rolled or pulled across the cube opening. This can be as simple as adding CubeGuard Cubicle Message Barriers that let frequent helpers notify “helpees” when they need to be left alone.

Here’s an interesting article by Kelly Eggers about how open offices are placing workers in a difficult position from a noise perspective. The trend of doing away with cubicle walls is still going strong. But the cost savings come at a high price where employee satisfaction is concerned. Kelly has compiled some recent statistics showing that workers who must cope in “open offices” in mid to large sized companies are really struggling. Their work environment is designed for collaboration, but this simply doesn’t mesh with the reality of their day to day job duties. The average white collar worker spends about 2/3 of their time on quiet, focused work that doesn’t involve others. So, why is the office set up to accommodate the type of activities they do the least?

While overall productivity may be negatively affected by this problem, one business owner Eggers interviewed is seeing a huge increase in profits from this trend. The head of Workscape Inc. talks about the opportunities that open office designs are offering to companies that specialize in retrofitting these modern “collaborative” workspaces for better noise control. His firm knows the minute they see an open office design that it’s just a matter of time before the client starts asking for sound-masking technology.

As suppliers in the workplace noise and privacy industry, we’ve experienced the same thing  Open offices may not be good for your business, but they certainly help keep us in business! If you’ve discovered that doing away with panels has created productivity and satisfaction problems, let us know. We’ve got the tools you need to retrofit your work environment in a way that’s fast and affordable.