The open-office trap

[summer]

I know. Another "left-leaning article."  I'm so awful.  *sarcasm*


www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-open-office-trap?intcid=mod-most-popular

In 1973, my high school, Acton-Boxborough Regional, in Acton, Massachusetts, moved to a sprawling brick building at the foot of a hill. Inspired by architectural trends of the preceding decade, the classrooms in one of its wings didn’t have doors. The rooms opened up directly onto the hallway, and tidbits about the French Revolution, say, or Benjamin Franklin’s breakfast, would drift from one classroom to another. Distracting at best and frustrating at worst, wide-open classrooms went, for the most part, the way of other ill-considered architectural fads of the time, like concrete domes. (Following an eighty-million-dollar renovation and expansion, in 2005, none of the new wings at A.B.R.H.S. have open classrooms.) Yet the workplace counterpart of the open classroom, the open office, flourishes: some seventy per cent of all offices now have an open floor plan.







The open office was originally conceived by a team from Hamburg, Germany, in the nineteen-fifties, to facilitate communication and idea flow. But a growing body of evidence suggests that the open office undermines the very things that it was designed to achieve. In June, 1997, a large oil and gas company in western Canada asked a group of psychologists at the University of Calgary to monitor workers as they transitioned from a traditional office arrangement to an open one. The psychologists assessed the employees’ satisfaction with their surroundings, as well as their stress level, job performance, and interpersonal relationships before the transition, four weeks after the transition, and, finally, six months afterward. The employees suffered according to every measure: the new space was disruptive, stressful, and cumbersome, and, instead of feeling closer, coworkers felt distant, dissatisfied, and resentful. Productivity fell.



In 2011, the organizational psychologist Matthew Davis reviewed more than a hundred studies about office environments. He found that, though open offices often fostered a symbolic sense of organizational mission, making employees feel like part of a more laid-back, innovative enterprise, they were damaging to the workers’ attention spans, productivity, creative thinking, and satisfaction. Compared with standard offices, employees experienced more uncontrolled interactions, higher levels of stress, and lower levels of concentration and motivation. When David Craig surveyed some thirty-eight thousand workers, he found that interruptions by colleagues were detrimental to productivity, and that the more senior the employee, the worse she fared.



Psychologically, the repercussions of open offices are relatively straightforward. Physical barriers have been closely linked to psychological privacy, and a sense of privacy boosts job performance. Open offices also remove an element of control, which can lead to feelings of helplessness. In a 2005 study that looked at organizations ranging from a Midwest auto supplier to a Southwest telecom firm, researchers found that the ability to control the environment had a significant effect on team cohesion and satisfaction. When workers couldn’t change the way that things looked, adjust the lighting and temperature, or choose how to conduct meetings, spirits plummeted.



An open environment may even have a negative impact on our health. In a recent study of more than twenty-four hundred employees in Denmark, Jan Pejtersen and his colleagues found that as the number of people working in a single room went up, the number of employees who took sick leave increased apace. Workers in two-person offices took an average of fifty per cent more sick leave than those in single offices, while those who worked in fully open offices were out an average of sixty-two per cent more.



But the most problematic aspect of the open office may be physical rather than psychological: simple noise. In laboratory settings, noise has been repeatedly tied to reduced cognitive performance. The psychologist Nick Perham, who studies the effect of sound on how we think, has found that office commotion impairs workers’ ability to recall information, and even to do basic arithmetic. Listening to music to block out the office intrusion doesn’t help: even that, Perham found, impairs our mental acuity. Exposure to noise in an office may also take a toll on the health of employees. In a study by the Cornell University psychologists Gary Evans and Dana Johnson, clerical workers who were exposed to open-office noise for three hours had increased levels of epinephrine—a hormone that we often call adrenaline, associated with the so-called fight-or-flight response. What’s more, Evans and Johnson discovered that people in noisy environments made fewer ergonomic adjustments than they would in private, causing increased physical strain. The subjects subsequently attempted to solve fewer puzzles than they had after working in a quiet environment; in other words, they became less motivated and less creative.



Open offices may seem better suited to younger workers, many of whom have been multitasking for the majority of their short careers. When, in 2012, Heidi Rasila and Peggie Rothe looked at how employees of a Finnish telecommunications company born after 1982 reacted to the negative effects of open-office plans, they noted that young employees found certain types of noises, such as conversations and laughter, just as distracting as their older counterparts did. The younger workers also disparaged their lack of privacy and an inability to control their environment. But they believed that the trade-offs were ultimately worth it, because the open space resulted in a sense of camaraderie; they valued the time spent socializing with coworkers, whom they often saw as friends.





That increased satisfaction, however, may merely mask the fact that younger workers also suffer in open offices. In a 2005 study, the psychologists Alena Maher and Courtney von Hippel found that the better you are at screening out distractions, the more effectively you work in an open office. Unfortunately, it seems that the more frantically you multitask, the worse you become at blocking out distractions. Moreover, according to the Stanford University cognitive neuroscientist Anthony Wagner, heavy multitaskers are not only “more susceptible to interference from irrelevant environmental stimuli” but also worse at switching between unrelated tasks. In other words, if habitual multitaskers are interrupted by a colleague, it takes them longer to settle back into what they were doing. Regardless of age, when we’re exposed to too many inputs at once—a computer screen, music, a colleague’s conversation, the ping of an instant message—our senses become overloaded, and it requires more work to achieve a given result.



Though multitasking millennials seem to be more open to distraction as a workplace norm, the wholehearted embrace of open offices may be ingraining a cycle of underperformance in their generation: they enjoy, build, and proselytize for open offices, but may also suffer the most from them in the long run.

[pt716]

Lol, I went to the high school mentioned in the beginning. The Classrooms open to the hallways were completely ridiculous, you hear everything your neighbors are saying.

More related to open offices, I find them incredibly distracting. Sure it's nice to be able to turn to the side and ask someone something, but then everyone else has to deal with your conversation as well.

[meshaliuknits]

I hate the new open office model that they're putting in all the newly renovated spaces here. Everything is tiny and low to the ground. There's almost no storage because they have a mistaken belief that we don't deal in paper any more. Less, maybe, but there is still a ton of paperwork that gets done by hand. TON. And there aren't enough huddle rooms so you can sit together and talk without disturbing other people. Since only half of the building is like that we get a lot of people walking out of that wing and talking in the hallway. And they shoved WAY too many people into the space.

There's no additional commradire AFAI can tell due to the shared suffering. Everyone who sits back there thinks they blow. The folks in our ceiling free offices are suddenly very grateful for the walls they do have.

[summer]

My H had to expense noise-cancelling headphones for his whole team. smh.

[Deleted]

They are cheaper and take less space and materials to build. I'm pretty sure most companies have no delusions they are actually helpful.

[penguingrrl]

We had open air classrooms in my elementary school and my HS. It was horrible and made it really hard to pay attention, especially during tests. We had one full wing that contained all the 1st and 2nd grades and most of my memories of those days involve my teachers going to extraordinary lengths to get and keep our attention.

[blink]

My grade school was open concept and it sucked.big time.

I like privacy and would hate open concept.at work. My work.is transitioning.to a more.open.concept environment and it is so.off-putting to walk into those sections and just be in the middle of everything.

I want walls, even if it is just cube walls because what if some gross person is next.to me clipping.their nails. I want something.to help block that grossness.

[meshaliuknits]

Dec 5, 2014 16:16:52 GMT -5 blink said:

My grade school was open concept and it sucked.big time.

I like privacy and would hate open concept.at work. My work.is transitioning.to a more.open.concept environment and it is so.off-putting to walk into those sections and just be in the middle of everything.

I want walls, even if it is just cube walls because what if some gross person is next.to me clipping.their nails. I want something.to help block that grossness.

Then they fly over your cube wall.  ASK ME HOW I KNOW!

[hopecounts]

good fences make good neighbors and closed offices make good co-workers.
people like boundaries and having the ability to close your door at work to focus or to avoid a co-worker who is bugging you makes things much better.

[noeliav]

I've been very fortunate in always having an office with a door in my career. This sounds like my nightmare. As it is, I close my door a couple times a week because of a chatty coworker who likes to ask "quick questions" that are anything but.

[ChillyMcFreeze]

My HS was semi-open concept, and it was terrible. I share an office with one person and that's distracting enough. I couldn't deal with a cube/desk farm environment.

[ttt]

I have never known anyone who didn't hate open offices.

If they were really that awesome, the CEO would be working in one. Spoiler: he's not.

[lilibet]

Dec 5, 2014 16:18:59 GMT -5 meshaliuknits said:

Dec 5, 2014 16:16:52 GMT -5 blink said:

My grade school was open concept and it sucked.big time.

I like privacy and would hate open concept.at work. My work.is transitioning.to a more.open.concept environment and it is so.off-putting to walk into those sections and just be in the middle of everything.

I want walls, even if it is just cube walls because what if some gross person is next.to me clipping.their nails. I want something.to help block that grossness.

Then they fly over your cube wall.  ASK ME HOW I KNOW!

We have people who clip their toe nails at their desks. And our cube walls barely even go to shoulder height when I'm sitting. If I get hit with someone else's toenail I think I'd puke.

The one reason I love boot season is because the toenail clipping (usually) stops.

Being able to hear everything going on in the room sucks so bad, it's super distracting. Especially this time of year when everyone is sniffling and hacking. And I agree that I think it plays a part in how quickly illness can spread through the office.

[janetplanet20]

I work in an open office. I'm a teacher coach in my school district; there are 10 of us who work in one big room, no cube walls or anything. In fact, we sit in pods of 3 and 4, desks pushed up against each other so we're all facing each othe in our pods.

It's not horrible, especially since it's pretty rare for all 10 of us to be there at the same time. But it can get distracting with different conversations going on.

I cannot imagine teaching in an open classroom though! That sounds like a classroom management nightmare, trying to keep kids focused on the lesson in their class.

[origami]

LOL that a bunch of people on a message board despise open layouts. I do too. They're awful. I had an office at my last job and still got annoyed when people interrupted me. IM LOOKING FOR GDP TRENDS RIGHT NOW. GET OUT.

[janetplanet20]

Dec 5, 2014 21:20:52 GMT -5 ttt said:

I have never known anyone who didn't hate open offices.

If they were really that awesome, the CEO would be working in one. Spoiler: he's not.

This is so true. As I said in my other post, I work in an open office. But all of the directors have their own private offices with doors.

[mrspez07]

Maybe that's why I'm randomly feeling restless and unfocused at work!
I worked in a med sized design office with concrete floors and fairly tall cube walls, though you had a "cube mate" they were 8+ feet away. It could get loud more than anything, especially when the common spaces were being used, but I also liked eavesdropping and keeping up with projects by overhearing things, but could use headphones when necessary. Now I'm in a small office with carpet and 3 other people that I can see at all times. I miss the semi-privacy of the partial walls to put on deodorant or use a tissue,, but I do like the ability to collaborate minute by minute, especially when crunching on a deadline.

[josieposy]

Almost every job I've had has been an open office for the staff and only the attorneys, managers, etc. got offices with doors.

I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to get next month but I'm guessing it will be a cube at least initially. At least I'm used to it I guess.

[EllieArroway]

Our building is entirely open concept--no offices at all, even for upper management. We have "cubes" with walls that are 12 inches above desk level. It's awful. Almost everyone wears noise-cancelling headphones, but even with them it's so distracting sometimes. I am one of those people who needs peace & quiet in order to focus, especially when I'm stressed. I am so much more productive when I work from home.

[bugandbibs]

My work keeps talking about moving my office into a bigger, nicer one but I keep shutting it down. The "better" office puts me right in the middle of everything. I'll keep my tiny office at the end of the hall. It's so quiet!

[AAM2012]

Dec 5, 2014 16:18:59 GMT -5 meshaliuknits said:

Dec 5, 2014 16:16:52 GMT -5 blink said:

My grade school was open concept and it sucked.big time.

I like privacy and would hate open concept.at work. My work.is transitioning.to a more.open.concept environment and it is so.off-putting to walk into those sections and just be in the middle of everything.

I want walls, even if it is just cube walls because what if some gross person is next.to me clipping.their nails. I want something.to help block that grossness.

Then they fly over your cube wall.  ASK ME HOW I KNOW!

I wear my headphones (like old school ones..not the earbuds that are hard to see in your ears) at work or my headset even when I'm not listening to anything hopefully to distract anyone who might be coming up to talk to me. It usually works about 50-50 of the time otherwise I hear a "are you on the phone...?" and I turn around and someone is there.

It's hard to have any privacy even when you're on the computer and looking at something about an employee or something personal. I've tried the privacy screens but they make my eyes strain too much so I just try to keep my screens smaller.

[irishbride2]

I'm surprised people consider open officers a conservative thing. IME it's a hippy company thing.


I hate them.

[LoveTrains]

I hate open offices. I don't know anyone who likes them. I think companies try to suggest that they are moving to them for unity when its truly a cost saving measure.

[noodleoo]

Dec 5, 2014 15:53:40 GMT -5 meshaliuknits said:

I hate the new open office model that they're putting in all the newly renovated spaces here. Everything is tiny and low to the ground. There's almost no storage because they have a mistaken belief that we don't deal in paper any more. Less, maybe, but there is still a ton of paperwork that gets done by hand. TON. And there aren't enough huddle rooms so you can sit together and talk without disturbing other people. Since only half of the building is like that we get a lot of people walking out of that wing and talking in the hallway. And they shoved WAY too many people into the space.

There's no additional commradire AFAI can tell due to the shared suffering. Everyone who sits back there thinks they blow. The folks in our ceiling free offices are suddenly very grateful for the walls they do have.

This is my office exactly. We just switched to tiny desks all mashed up next to each other.  They almos doubled the number of people in our area.  IT SUCKS!!!  I particularly hate it because the noise drives me nuts.  And so many people run calls with clients, and I feel so bad for them when others are laughing and shooting the shit loudly near by.  There is no private space to take a phone call. I hate it and I really wish I could just work from home.  

We we also have stupid IM which means no one ever gets up to talk to each other anyway, so I don't think it even fosters camaraderie either. Man, I hate the IM too. People IM you even when you are busy or in meetings and expect an answer. I'm so old.