Slashdot Mirror
Open Offices Make You Less Open (calnewport.com)
Why do companies deploy open office layouts? A major justification is the idea that removing spatial boundaries between colleagues will generate increased collaboration and smarter collective intelligence. Cal Newport: As I learned in a fascinating new study, published earlier this week in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, there was good reason to believe that this might be true. As the study's authors, Ethan Bernstein and Stephen Turban, note" [T]he notion that propinquity, or proximity, predicts social interaction -- driving the formation of social ties and therefore information exchange and collaboration -- is one of the most robust findings in sociology."
But when researchers turned their attention to the specific impact of open offices on interaction, the results were mixed. Perhaps troubled by this inconsistency, Bernstein and Turban decided to get to the bottom of this issue. Prior studies of open offices had relied on imprecise measures such as self-reported activity logs to quantify interactions before and after a shift to an open office plan. Bernstein and Turban tried something more accurate: they had subjects wear devices around their neck that directly measured every face-to-face encounter. They also used email and IM server logs to determine exactly how much the volume of electronic interactions changed.
Here's a summary of what they found: Contrary to what's predicted by the sociological literature, the 52 participants studied spent 72% less time interacting face-to-face after the shift to an open office layout. To make these numbers concrete: In the 15 days before the office redesign, participants accumulated an average of around 5.8 hours of face-to-face interaction per person per day. After the switch to the open layout, the same participants dropped to around 1.7 hours of face-to-face interaction per day. At the same time, the shift to an open office significantly increased digital communication. After the redesign, participants sent 56% more emails (and were cc'd 41% more times), and the number of IM messages sent increased by 67%.
But when researchers turned their attention to the specific impact of open offices on interaction, the results were mixed. Perhaps troubled by this inconsistency, Bernstein and Turban decided to get to the bottom of this issue. Prior studies of open offices had relied on imprecise measures such as self-reported activity logs to quantify interactions before and after a shift to an open office plan. Bernstein and Turban tried something more accurate: they had subjects wear devices around their neck that directly measured every face-to-face encounter. They also used email and IM server logs to determine exactly how much the volume of electronic interactions changed.
Here's a summary of what they found: Contrary to what's predicted by the sociological literature, the 52 participants studied spent 72% less time interacting face-to-face after the shift to an open office layout. To make these numbers concrete: In the 15 days before the office redesign, participants accumulated an average of around 5.8 hours of face-to-face interaction per person per day. After the switch to the open layout, the same participants dropped to around 1.7 hours of face-to-face interaction per day. At the same time, the shift to an open office significantly increased digital communication. After the redesign, participants sent 56% more emails (and were cc'd 41% more times), and the number of IM messages sent increased by 67%.
Fucking duh - every conversation had in the open air adds to the background noise. Not to mention everyone else listening in.
I'm happy these guys studied this. Hopefully the MBAs that climbed up their own asses to strip away our offices will read a copy and choke on it.
Management often operates on perception.
If they aren't predisposed to give you the benefit of the doubt, they'll see chatting as goofing off.
That happened to me in an open office layout. Management saw most of my conversations as distracting others and was a key reason why I was let go.
Then it turned out that I knew a lot about what each group was doing and could discuss issues, direction, etc. with all of them.
Oh well.
we should just lock workers heads into mesh cages, with the other worker at the other end of the cage, forcing them to interact, just like they did in Room 101 in 1984, with torture victims and, say, rats. maybe put marionette rods on their arms to force them to make hand gestures to each other. i do so love how we are trying to engineer the workplace to maximize all desired outcomes. after all, humans are just profit nodules, to have value extracted from and then toss the empty husks on the dustbin of history.
Why are you walking around talking to people anyway? Stay at your desks and work! That was sarcasm... mostly sarcasm.
And I am a waged post office employee. I am ripe for going postal. I define postal employee. I am YOU!
I work in an open office. A major consideration is noise - you have lots of people in a large room,
all trying to get work done. They need some modicum of silence. IMs and e-mails are quieter than
face-to-face communication - and trying to keep things quiet is something you learn quickly.
Electronic communications also do not require that you get up from your desk and find a meeting room - that's a (small) time suck and use of a scarce resource.
There may also be an element of satisfying our need for socialization by simple proximity, reducing the need for F2F meetings whose sole (unstated) purpose is to socialize. Get what you want more quickly via IM than via (much slower) personal contact.
There may be an assumption here that more face to face interaction is good, but I think that assumption is actually false. *Some* F2F interaction is helpful either to communicate complex ideas or to develop a sense of teamwork, but *more* F2F interaction just means spending all day in meetings and accomplishing nothing.
The obvious solution is to switch to Libre Offices. ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
I have worked in both environments. In a closed office environment, many face-to-face conversations are of a personal nature. Furthermore, when you have privacy, you are more likely to share criticisms of policies, managers, and co-workers. This is one reason managers like open office environments. Open offices make it harder for employees be candid in their interactions with other employees.
There is a pretext, and there is a reason. The reason is that they're cheaper.
Open Offices Make You Less Open
That's why I switched to Libre Offices.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Why would you want a work environment to be like that? Constant distractions. No way to focus.
I'm pretty sure the "typing pool" concept died in the 50s. Why is it we have to re-discover what we already knew less than a generation ago?
Also, security goes out the windows. Our IT office had it's walls taken for this great open office plan, management did not give a fuck out our IT concerns and then wondered why so much IT equipment suddenly got stolen etc. Once they found we had lost $25000 worth of gear in a month, the walls soon went back up.
that's the reason to have it. Period. I hate living in a world were we're constantly pretending bad things aren't bad things. Like how not having guaranteed access to medical care is somehow freedom. Or how a 90 minute commute brutal traffic is 'me time'.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
And maybe in an open layout, it's just easier to yell things back and forth, rather than moving into a "face-to-face" position to talk? It seems like that could skew the measurement of whether people had more face-to-face meetings.
This is an office I'd like to work in, from a company owner who gets it. I'm sure the amount he put into getting this office has more than paid out in increased productivity.
Too bad other companies won't read anything other than the 4-color glossies from the Gartner Report, peddling the "synergy" produced from a open office.
Isn't this obvious? Anyone talking to someone face-to-face in an open office is being rude to everyone in the room. So no longer do you pop into someone's office and chat, but are instead formed to setup a meeting or distract a dozen other people.
Agreed on the distractions.
My preferred arrangement is 2-4 person spaces in which the office-mates have a shared project interest and a shared interest in concentration.
.
With open offices, you don't even have the sound-absorbing walls of a cubicle to help reduce the noise of co-workers, so everyone tends to wear [noise-cancelling] headphones, isolating themselves from their co-workers.
Open office layouts make you feel like you're under the eye all the time.
Because you are.
It means that you're not trusted to manage your own time and space, that you're not worth your own space (much less a damned window), that you're subject to all manner of extraneous noise, that your security is definitely more of an issue to the point of what you are willing to leave on your desk changes...
Only fucking idiots running on ivory tower thinking and nothing else at all would want to build an open office environment.
Companies are full of those.
Sorry, my bad.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Having been moved to an open office environment in April, along with 5 floors of other varying degreed of mixed introverts, the disdain for this type layout and design is palpable.
The primary complaint, isn't so much the design, or concept itself, but the lack of 'isolated' space one has. I can hear people 50-70 ft away, depending on what is going on in the office, and likely further, if we're dealing with a loud talker. Recall there are varying types of people, who function, in different work environments. I'm highly visual. But I'm placed at a major intersection of traffic, right next to the floors kitchen. This, forces conscious ignoring of the visual background movement, which was otherwise absent prior to my move and not what I see as an active distraction.
Another coworker, is audibly sensitive, much the same way I am visually sensitive. With the open concept, and his need for either 'isolate' rhythm, or quiet, it's virtually impossible now in this environment. Queue the purchase of noise canceling head-phones at $300...
I think the biggest irony here, is that due to the way of the office layout, Managers and even Sr. Managers, don't have their own offices. They have a cubicle, just like the rest of their employees, albeit an additional small round table.
It's a pretty damning scenario for people who have been in the industry, or at this company for that matter, 20+ years and have 'title', only to be shuffled back to a cubicle.
As for productivity, I can't say if it's honestly better or worse. The project load has always been out of balance, and seems to be accelerating all the time. There is no stopping it, so if anything falls through the cracks, we move on. The 'train' does not stop, if someone, or something falls off. That, was always irrespective of where we worked.
Software engineering at the level I do it requires continuous concentration. For that I need privacy and as few distractions as possible.
Maybe there are software engineers and other creative producers who can do quality work on their laptop at Starbucks with the music and everyone shouting out orders and stuff. Not me.
I wonder how many people here remember Pirsig and his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. In it he explains clearly why those motorcycle shops where they have music blasting away while they are supposed to be working on the product. If you understand that you would understand fully why open offices won't work.
Has the office become a status symbol like the old Mahogany Row and executive restroom? Is there an active desire to put lower level workers in unpleasant conditions to make management feel better about themselves?
There are lots of reasons to think that open offices are less efficient. Often the workers are highly paid so the loss in efficiency clearly outweighs the cost of extra offices. Maybe its an incorrect money optimization but it seems obviously wrong. It doesn't take a lot of loss of efficiency in an employee who is costing $150/hour to balance the extra cost of a small office.
Another, equally damning explanation is that open offices "look" nice and modern. It seems likely that the insanely expensive Apple headquarters building (clearly not cost optimized!) is mostly open offices for improved visual appeal, with no regard to efficiency.
The real reasons for OPEN OFFICES ARE AS FOLLOWS
-Cheapness of outfitting the business funiture wise
-Cheapness of cleaning/maintenance
-Ease of Security/Surveillance
-VERY EASY TO RESALE PROPERTY FOR ANY OTHER BUSINESS/RELIGION/OTHER USAGE
LIQUIDITY OF ASSETS AT A DROP OF A HAT
I am surprised anyone would find this a surprise. I thought it was clearly established that people in crowded urban areas become less overtly friendly as a reaction to the crowded conditions. Sort of like keeping a mental distance since you cannot keep a physical distance. Meanwhile people in rural and less crowded areas are more openly friendly since there is plenty of physical space.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
As far as I am concerned, any job offer that involves working in an open space environment is a no-no.
F2F complaining about the upcoming change to the open office may be what was measured, and after the switch workers were/are less likely to complain about the switch when the entire office and managers/tattletales can hear those complaints.
Office workers in the 19th and most of the 20th century sat in a large room at a desk without walls. And it was managers who got their own office. If you were senior but not a manager you would share an office. Even then employees complains when coworkers chatted near their desk too frequently.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Or maybe introverts communicate differently, as well as socially interact differently, than extroverts?
A major justification is the idea that removing spatial boundaries between colleagues will generate increased collaboration and smarter collective intelligence
Nonsense.
You can just pack more people in a given space and it's easier for supervisors to check if people are goofing around, sleeping on the job or just plain AWOL.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Telecommuting* has the same advantages without all the disadvantages. And yet here we are still debating office design.
*Combine with augmented reality for additional advantages.
Once someone invents telepathy*, this problem will go away.
*Or The Matrix.
I am a veteran embedded software engineer and at my current pay grade I was given an office. My current project currently has 10 engineers. We also have a large lab where we were only using about half the space. We got management to outfit that unused space with desks, laptop docks, and 3 monitors on each desk. Every engineer has a cube or office outside that lab. Probably more of a team room than open office, but none of us have sat at our desks outside the lab for well over 2 years. Keep in mind this is voluntary by all engineers involved.
If you see everybody all the time you're more likely to immediately know when you are "missing out" and when you are not. Hence proactive social interaction isn't required as much.
Herds grazing on an open field are more chill. The noise starts when species live in environments where they usually don't see each other. Hence the noise birds or howler monkeys make in the morning.
This finding send super obvious to me.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
disturbing others, of course you talk less.
More disturbing is that Microsoft is now remodeling buildings to make them more open. Their software is going to get even worse. I have three friends that are probably going to move to their Dublin location, and the pictures I saw of their workspace was completely open tables with no dividers. I don't know if they're going to add dividers later, but it looks bad. But at least it has an LED waterfall and a wold-class bakery.
If you read, the study measured before and after the change.
i want to subscribe to your alternate reality.
that or I want to know when your comedy show swings by my town.
It's cheaper to throw up a cube farm than build real offices with doors.
I'm glad I have an old fashioned office with a door that closes and locks. Most of the time it's open but it's nice to know the option is there when I need it. This suits my introverted nature just fine and lets me focus and concentrate when needed. In the past I've worked in cube farms; they sucked.
Personal space is a real thing.
I was not paid to do this, But I did promise him to give him testimony on as many pages as possible. It was absolutely amazing when my neighbor Stephen helped me hire a trusted hacker Mr Enrique Best spy [ENRIQUEHACKDEMON11@GMAIL COM] or whats-app: +1(628)203-7005,who helped me gain access to my Husband Facebook account, IG, viber, text messages,call logs, whats-app and so on when i suspected some strange behavior from him, you can also count on him with any form of hacking job he really makes me happy, you can contact the best.
15 days before and after a move? It's pretty easy to think up alternative reasons for their results. People needing to organise before and being tired or unhappy afterwards. A different time of business. A more proper test would be the same office 1 year apart with the move happening 6 months after the first 15 day test.
Because its cheap.
Our company had several smaller open offices. Each one was departmental. One for accounting, one for scheduling, one for customer service, etc. Since everyone in the room had the same concerns and responsibilities, it did improve working together. When it might interfere with someone's work, we had a large conference room and several small meeting rooms for 2 to 4 people to use for short periods or short discussions. It seemed to work well.
One point is that employer promotes openspace to get more interaction and collective intelligence, but all the time one spent not working on its own job is considered as a distraction during evaluation by managers.
I've already turned down one because it was open office. I also have a no-budge rule regarding standing desks and chairs without arms. I don't have to have my own office, but you aren't dumping me in a zoo full of annoying asspies without a real desk/table and a real chair with arms. No more than 4 people/desks in a 10'x12' room. I did have one place I temporarily "put up with" the open office since I needed to kill 2 months until moving countries. You know how I put up with it? I walked in, got the day's game plan, made sure they had my cell number, and then sat in my car all day.
Answer me one question: Why do managers sit in their own office instead of the open office floor when it was in any way beneficial to the one subjected to it?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Everyone likes a period of seclusion to focus. Being in a open office setting means your exposed all the time to what is around you. Unable to tune out the noise so to speak. Its really just a terrible ideal to place everyone in a big box and make them feel even more like just another body in a cage. Where not cattle, we like to have walls and feel like we have boundaries.
We didn't need a study to tell us that. Anyone who listens to their conclusions instead of the engineers deserves whatever calamity befalls them.
for being forced into an open office environment would simply be a nice set of headphones with music to last me the entire work day.
When folks realize they can't bug me verbally with incessant questions I've answered a dozen times already ( fucking take notes already, I'm not Google ) they eventually switch over to instant messaging. I can then simply turn it off, ( which is boring ), or let an automated script take over and answer every single incoming message with " I LIKE TURTLES ".
Bottom line: You want your employees / co-workers to be productive, leave them the fuck alone and LET them be productive.
You might be surprised at the results.
An upside-down 5-gallon bucket & a clipboard. Best office I ever had, & it was portable.
Of 8 hours work time. What was they job again? Maybe reducing all this chatter improved their productivity indeed.
5.8hrs per day doing face to face interactions.... do they do any real work???!!!
So basically they hang around each other's cubicles doing non work gossiping in a non open office....
When they move to open office they can't continue that shit because the other colleagues can hear them gossiping....
So basically Open offices are not conducive for gossiping and can get you lardass employees to get back to real work.
Yeah.. I've seen this and cringed. Manager's think they are fostering better morale and higher productivity by making employees feel pressured to act enthusiastic and highly collaborative yet they are actually just feeling as if they have to pretend... And wish it would stop.
It's also the raw, raw, raw, stand up meetings and such. I remember a meeting at Groove Shark one Friday afternoon (I didn't work there but I was there at the time). I saw the looks at the faces of those employees. They were responding to their leadership in enthusiastic fashion, talking about how they improved the products but, in there faces, you knew they just wanted to go home.
It looked like a high pressure environment like say... maybe North Korea.. where you know you are being watched and you have to behave enthusiastically.. A large part of your job is acting.
Obviously, these managers are trying to capture the enthusiasm and morale for productivity that exists in work places where the workers feel challenged, appreciated, and are given ownership of their work. But these managers are missing the mark. They clearly have the "E" on their foreheads draw the wrong direction.
By constraining employees to about 30 square feet of table space, if that much. Plus minimal furniture of table and chair.
They move from the crowded hovels od dorm spaces to open office. Its only older generations who complain about lack of privacy and elbow room.
This must be an american thing, I've been an office worker (in IT) since '98 in London and have always worked in an open office as has everyone else I know. I would hate to work in a cubicle. We all talk to one another, if someone emails or IM's if its more than a one word reply we tend to get up an wander over and have a chat, you solve problems much quicker that way. and there's a pretty standard unwritten rule, headphones on means do not disturb. I don't see the issue
Managers don’t wish to collaborate because they don't work in an open environment.
It's not about glasnost. It's about saving money. And the bean counters don't do real cost accounting or everybody worth keeping would have his own office.
Damn MBAs and punk CTOs and CEOs are all about this quarter. Your grand vision didn't pan out? Fire a few thousand employees and pump up the vileume on your bottom line.
I remember when things used to be ok. Now they're not.