58% of High-Performance Employees Say They Need More Quiet Work Spaces (cnbc.com)

An anonymous reader shares a CNBC article: Behold the open industrial office space. At one moment, it feels like such a hip environment, bustling with easy communication and collaboration, innovation and headphones just behind every monitor. At another moment, the open office is the loudest, most annoying, distracting and unproductive environment one can imagine. What if the open industrial office is just part of a larger misguided fantasy? What if this office style is hurting our employees working on the hardest problems -- our high-performance employees (HPEs)? What if the open office is causing retention problems, and affecting the quality of our end products? As I outlined in my HPE article, executives and high-performance employees tend to optimize against completely different trade and life principles -- they generally have very different views of the world. This disconnect shows itself very clearly in the environmental conditions of our creative and technical offices. My latest anonymous survey shows that 58% of HPEs need more private spaces for problem solving, and 54% of HPEs find their office environment "too distracting."

Comments

Re:Bias from personal preference

[Dayze!Confused]

It's funny how scared Americans are of restrooms and genders. I spent a decade in Taiwan where it isn't uncommon for the female janitors to walk in and clean the men's restroom. You know what happens? Everybody just goes about their business. If I'm taking a shit I keep the door closed, if I'm using a urinal I point my dick at the urinal, shake it off, and put it back in my pants without flashing them, offering them the same level of respect that I do the other male occupants. It's really not a big deal and it's funny how much Americans get their briefs tied up in a knot over it.