The open-office trend is destroying the workplace.

[Aristotle]

Google got it wrong. The open-office trend is destroying the workplace.

Now, about 70 percent of U.S. offices have no or low partitions, according to the International Facility Management Association. Silicon Valley has been the leader in bringing down the dividers. Google, Yahoo, eBay, Goldman Sachs and American Express are all adherents. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg enlisted famed architect Frank Gehry to design the largest open floor plan in the world, housing nearly 3,000 engineers.

These new floor plans are ideal for maximizing a company’s space while minimizing costs. Bosses love the ability to keep a closer eye on their employees, ensuring clandestine porn-watching, constant social media-browsing and unlimited personal cellphone use isn’t occupying billing hours.

But employers are getting a false sense of improved productivity. A 2013 study found that many workers in open offices are frustrated by distractions that lead to poorer work performance. Nearly half of the surveyed workers in open offices said the lack of sound privacy was a significant problem for them and more than 30 percent complained about the lack of visual privacy. Meanwhile, “ease of interaction” with colleagues — the problem that open offices profess to fix — was cited as a problem by fewer than 10 percent of workers in any type of office setting. In fact, those with private offices were least likely to identify their ability to communicate with colleagues as an issue. In a previous study, researchers concluded that “the loss of productivity due to noise distraction … was doubled in open-plan offices compared to private offices.”

Facebook Unveils New Campus: Will Workers Be Sick, Stressed and Dissatisfied?

Open work environments are supposed to foster greater communication and chance meetings, which in turn would lead to more creativity, teamwork and the breakdown of silos. However, many people who work in open environments point out:

• The increased noise from phone calls and casual conversations impedes their ability to concentrate and focus
• Germs spread more readily and workers are more likely to get sick
• The lack of privacy (whether to take a call or to scratch an itch) increases stress and reduces morale

Indeed, many researchers are beginning to agree:

• Dr Vinesh Oommen completed a literature review and concluded, “In 90 per cent of the research, the outcome of working in an open-plan office was seen as negative, with open-plan offices causing high levels of stress, conflict, high blood pressure, and a high staff turnover.” He goes on to note that research shows that influenza virus is more quickly passed as well.
• Dr. Craig Knight suggests that traditional office environments may increase individual wellbeing by 32% and office productivity by 15% (The Secret Life of Buildings)
• Professors Anne-Laure Fayard and John Weeks point out in their article, “Who Moved My Cube” (Harvard Business Review, July 2011), “Some studies show that employees in open-plan spaces, knowing that they may be overheard or interrupted, have shorter and more-superficial discussions than they otherwise would.”

[Rosuav]

Capitalization is the difference between "The open office trend is destroying the workplace" and "The Open Office trend is destroying the workplace".

Both are true. Open Office and open-plan offices are trends that aren't going to help us much. I can't find the link back now, but someone figured out how much you save by being able to just casually ask someone a question (roughly fifteen to thirty seconds per question, if it involves one person), and how much you cost that person by asking even a single question that you could have figured out yourself (more like fifteen to thirty *minutes*). Multiply that by the number of other people you disturb, and the hidden cost starts looking pretty huge. Yes, there are benefits, but the trouble with trends is that everyone copies them without actually working out whether it'll benefit _their specific workplace_.

From what I've read, it seems that an open-plan office works really well for "The Pit", a section of Magic: The Gathering R&D where fundamentally everyone's working on the same problem. It's a creative/artistic problem solving job, so it's probably roughly comparable to having a half-dozen programmers working on the exact same monolithic codebase. WotC simply *cannot* split that job into modules (not any further than they already have), because of the nature of the game; when you have a group of programmers working on the same project, you usually figure out ways for them to work separately, which gives a much bigger advantage to productivity than the open-plan office ever will.

What really helps? One thing I heard was that programmers, artists, etc, etc, work most efficiently when they're free to do their own thing - when they're independently wealthy. Does someone want to try that with me? I'd love to be a guinea pig for that one...

[Frobozz]

A major law firm (top 10 worldwide) , with its HQ in Cleveland, recently tested this open plan bullshit here. Attorneys/paralegals not only had the whole open concept but they went further and no one had an assigned desk/work area. It was basically an ala carte, come as you get it.

Half their mid level associates quit, three major partners defected.

[Gromgor]

This extends into all workplaces though. Everybody would prefer to be left alone to do their jobs. I've always held that if I have to micro-manage an employee, I might as well just do their job for them. If I'm doing their job for them, why am I going to pay them? Training is one thing, constant oversight is another.

I think the allure of these open floor plans isn't about efficiency in communication. It's about removal of blind spots so your observant overlords can keep an eye on you. Give your employees their offices/cubicles/ability to take a breath without being question about why they're not working on Report A or claim B, but maintain standards of productivity.

[Blog]

If you know how to work efficiently and focus an open office is not bad and in situations it can be somewhat helpful. I've overheard conversations where people were about to waste weeks of time doing something and was able to fix it before it started. However, if you're easily distracted and have poor work habits an open office is just going to make it worse. If you're one of those people who absolutely must stop what they're doing and click on a new email 5 seconds when it arrives, then an open office will probably destroy you. I'm thinking if you can't focus enough to work with other things going on around you, you're probably a C level worker anyway.

[Aristotle]

Half their mid level associates quit, three major partners defected.

Oops.

[Rosuav]

If you know how to work efficiently and focus an open office is not bad and in situations it can be somewhat helpful. I've overheard conversations where people were about to waste weeks of time doing something and was able to fix it before it started. However, if you're easily distracted and have poor work habits an open office is just going to make it worse. If you're one of those people who absolutely must stop what they're doing and click on a new email 5 seconds when it arrives, then an open office will probably destroy you. I'm thinking if you can't focus enough to work with other things going on around you, you're probably a C level worker anyway.

A good worker can manage in any situation, same as a competent programmer can write viable PHP code. If the open-plan office were an unavoidable consequence of some other restriction/decision, then sure; tell people they have to work like this, and the good ones will. But the question is whether or not the open office is worth deliberately *choosing*, which means it has to be overall *better* than its alternatives. Those conversations where you saved people weeks of wasted effort are to be weighed against the loss of concentration to a large number of conversations where your overhearing didn't help anything (because the people involved were already planning to do the right thing). How many minutes a day do you lose to those?

[Frobozz]

If you know how to work efficiently and focus an open office is not bad and in situations it can be somewhat helpful. I've overheard conversations where people were about to waste weeks of time doing something and was able to fix it before it started. However, if you're easily distracted and have poor work habits an open office is just going to make it worse. If you're one of those people who absolutely must stop what they're doing and click on a new email 5 seconds when it arrives, then an open office will probably destroy you. I'm thinking if you can't focus enough to work with other things going on around you, you're probably a C level worker anyway.

I do not believe it is necessarily a good worker vs bad worker. I think it is also the pressure of being in the open, in front of everyone, can be overwhelming for people. Not everyone is a trial attorney that thrives on being in the "center" of it all. Some of my best employees are people that close their door and churn out massive/high quality work product but need privacy.

[Reshad]

I do not believe it is necessarily a good worker vs bad worker. I think it is also the pressure of being in the open, in front of everyone, can be overwhelming for people.

For me the problem wasn't even about privacy, it was about distraction. People doing things around me or talking about things that *might* have something to do with me and/or what I'm working on keeps me from being able to focus.

In the military, when I got moved from my department's open office area to a different department's open office area (but remained on the same team I was on) I was far more productive because I knew the stuff going on around me had nothing to do with what I was doing and I could tune it out no problem.

[Aristotle]

For me the problem wasn't even about privacy, it was about distraction. People doing things around me or talking about things that *might* have something to do with me and/or what I'm working on keeps me from being able to focus.

In the military, when I got moved from my department's open office area to a different department's open office area (but remained on the same team I was on) I was far more productive because I knew the stuff going on around me had nothing to do with what I was doing and I could tune it out no problem.

That's a really interesting point that makes a lot of sense.