Open Plan Desks?

DaDa

Hi,

In work, there is growing movement towards re-designing the current open plan desks areas, which are currently a decent height giving some privacy, made of soft furnishings and wrap around you on 3 sides. The colours are old fashioned, out-of-date and dull.

The proposal is to bring in much more open plan desks, with short (frosted glass) partitions, and only separating you from the person(s) facing you .. i.e. only 1 partition. Everything is white and really bright colours.

What I'm seeking is for web links to reputable and recent articles on the pros & cons of this new Google & Facebook style of very open plan spaces.

I understand that the movement towards this open-plan is strong, but it would be good to read the flip side too.

Links really appreciated.

Cheers!

L.Jenkins

Don't have any links, but I currently have a wrap around cube. I've had other work areas, which were more open plan and to be honest, I prefer my privacy and not so I can muck about for the evening, but because I don't like people breathing down my neck and having a peek over my shoulder on their way past, irregardless of what I'm doing.

Marion Morrison

Bright fresh colours do work best, regardless if it's completely open or semi open.

In my experience, both as an employee and a manager, semi open plan works best by far, and is best for morale and productivity.

Even a battery hen deserves a slight bit of privacy to get on with their work without distraction.

Very open plan makes any important and sensitive business phonecalls and discussions almost impossible, and it makes all office movement, coming and going, and other conversations very distracting. Chest height partions and a bright fresh environment work best.

I've always got much more work done by having semi open plan than complete open plan.

seablue

I work in a very open plan office, low level partition between my desk and the desk facing mine, open sides.

Its makes you very self conscious. I would never make a personal call at my desk - I go to the lunch area or outside.

In my last job each desk had high partitions on three sides until we expanded into a new building and we got rows of desks with low partitions (more desks per square metre).

I work in the Technology sector and it seems to be cool to have big bright open offices with bean bags. Its dehumanising in my opinion but this seems to be the trend....

Marion Morrison

seablue wrote: »

In my last job each desk had high partitions on three sides until we expanded into a new building and we got rows of desks with low partitions (more desks per square metre).

I work in the Technology sector and it seems to be cool to have big bright open offices with bean bags. Its dehumanising in my opinion but this seems to be the trend....

it's treating adult staff like teenagers and that's not good for morale in the long run. Its hard to take that type of workplace and job seriously.

Red Alert

Much has been written in the area of software development about developer productivity in this regard: put simply, the more open plan the less developers are productive. Joel Spolsky's blog in particular mentions that in the ideal case developers should have private offices.

L.Jenkins

Red Alert wrote: »

Much has been written in the area of software development about developer productivity in this regard: put simply, the more open plan the less developers are productive. Joel Spolsky's blog in particular mentions that in the ideal case developers should have private offices.

Not trying to make us Developers sound anti-social, but I'd prefer a lone single person office or box with a few poked holes for oxygen over an open plan office any day of the week. I find myself listening to too many phone conversations and looking out the window at rabbits far too often for my liking.

DainBramage

Previously worked in an open plan office in a south Dublin tech firm. Fellow employees on both sides and in front with low partitions about a foot high seperating you. My sound but loudly voiced Yorkshire co-worker phone calls made it difficult to focus at times. Directly behind me was a main walkway between conference rooms and office exit. So loads of foot traffic right behind my seat.

Hated the setup and found it counter productive- an office of course must be open to some degree to promote communication. But I think for certain industries like engineering a higher degree of privacy should be maintained.
Not sure why the facebook-y type work environment has been seen to be the way forward, almost all my colleagues in present/current job would opt for more privacy.

LadyBetty

I worked in the finance dept of a global telecoms company in south Co. Dublin, over 1,000 employees. The whole building went open plan with no partitions at all, plus it was hot-desking i.e. you had no fixed desk, so could be sitting anywhere alongside any team any day. We combined with HR dept and some I.T. so you could be sitting in middle of very different conversations at times. We had to use lockers for our laptops and folders etc.
The idea was that the only closed off office in the whole building was the CEO's and even that was completely glass so he could be seen at all times!

It was cr@p on lots of levels; zero privacy, getting an earful of loud colleagues' conversations, getting a rubbish desk right under air con vent if you were late getting in etc. There was a rule that you could no longer eat at your desk as the smell could offend neighbours, plus people might leave a crumby mess for the person sitting there the next day.

But I imagine it lead to greater productivity as every person's monitor was in sight from some direction so dossing was not an option, even on quiet Friday afternoons :rolleyes:

And it meant we all got to talk to people we wouldn't usually, that was quite nice sometimes (depending on the person)!

I think some level of partitioning is essential, just to block out some noise & distraction, it's very hard to concentrate at times in a totally open plan environment.

pauliebdub

LadyBetty wrote: »

There was a rule that you could no longer eat at your desk as the smell could offend neighbours, plus people might leave a crumby mess for the person sitting there the next day

This is a good thing. Nothing worse than stinky food smells or listening to someone eat while I'm doing my work.

Mrs OBumble

I'd always worked in open plan (low partitions) until I came to Ireland.

When I was first here, went into a 3.5 sided high walled cube farm and totally hated it: no one to talk to or see for most of the day. And I could still hear colleagues conversations over the walls. I got used to it eventually, though. But it was telling one day when one of the lads had some stuff on his desk fall off: we heard a crash, and him swear. Me and another foreigner popped our heads around the corner to check he was ok. But all the people acculturated into the weird environment heard but did absolutely nothing - he could have died for all they would have noticed. Very strange and horrible.

Have since moved to a different team, and in open plan again. Kinda missed the privacy and focus time, but it's thoroughly made up for by the increased productivity through easier team communications.

If I'm sitting at my desk I have a high partition behind my monitor and a low partition on each side. Tbh I try get a seat near the window so I've nobody on one side of me.

Gongoozler

I work in an office that I'd mostly open plan. I mean that the lower paid staff are in the completely open part, no partition at all, the slightly more senior staff are in semi cubicles, and there are a number of offices fitted around the office for management. I'm very much an introvert, and I find it hard to concentrate, especially when regularly interrupted, so while I like the my little group can swing around and have a chat here or there, I hate that the woman beside me talks, nearly all day long. She also talks to herself in the hopes that I will pick up on what she's saying and start a conversation.

Between people's mobiles going off, others conversations, people going in and out of the offices all around, my team members popping over, and the incessant and inane chat from the woman beside me I've just realised how much I hate the set up we have.

Now, I wouldn't want to be away from people all day either, I like to have a chat and a laugh here and there, but maybe a semi cubicle would do.

Plus I like that I hear everybody's conversations because I know an awful lot about what's going on around me. And that has been helpful, though not necessary.

Thinking about the layout now has made me realise that it's been done like this on purpose. I think space was a factor but I've a feeling that being able to see everybody's screens was a big part of it too.

Clauric

I might recommend this interesting article:


http://blog.circleci.com/silence-is-for-the-weak/

cloudatlas

The Rise of the new groupthink

It depends what kind of work you are doing. I worked in an open plan office on a project that required a lot of attention to detail and analysis and the sales team were a couple of feet away making calls. It was horrendous. Google also have small offices where employees can get away from the general hubbub of public areas they have a choice.

Kinet1c

While I agree it depends on the work you're doing, it also depends on how your direct manager wants to manage/run their team. In a previous role there was a lot of dev teams, some of whom preferred the open plan desks as it assisted in their agile methodology while there was some who just preferred to be holed up in cubicles (finance, IT).

Elessar

I recently switched from finance into IT and the new role is in an open plan office, with no partitions anywhere. In finance I had 3 large partitions around me - the back and two sides. It gave me privacy while still being able to speak to other people, a great setup now that I think of it.

The new job is all open plan and I can't say I like it. There is zero privacy for anyone (except of course, management) and I just feel this style is far too open. Everyone deserves some privacy at work. I used to be concerned about checking my personal mail or the news every so often (as the manager and a few other people have a direct line of sight to my screen) but nobody should have to work like that. I just do what I've always done now and if there is a problem, they can speak to me. I like the open plan idea, but not in the extreme we have it.

It should be open plan but nobody should see anyone else screen, at the very least.

Hrududu

We switched last year from partitions about 3/3.5 feet high to the small frosted glass ones mentioned in the OP. Nobody was happy about it. The decision came from people sitting in their own private offices who want everyone to be 'collaborating' all day. Which makes no sense because the nature of our work means that you aren't working with the people sitting next to you.

It meant a loss of privacy. And for me the worst is how distracting it is. Now everyone that walks past catches your eye and your instinct is to look up. You hear everything been said from much further away than before. And to top it off they frown on people using earphones. So its very difficult to block all the noise and movement out when you're trying to concentrate.

thesimpsons

its the constant noise from open plan that gets to me. whether its the click of keyboards, people walking around behind me, phones ringing or the constant chatter. I worked with one guy who literally talked all day long - wheres my pen, oh ya here it is, now where's my file, I can't find my file, oh look there it is ............ this went on for 12 months until I could't stand it anymore. I just find it all too distracting I need my privacy and peace and quiet to work.

Aglomerado

thesimpsons wrote: »

its the constant noise from open plan that gets to me. whether its the click of keyboards, people walking around behind me, phones ringing or the constant chatter. I worked with one guy who literally talked all day long - wheres my pen, oh ya here it is, now where's my file, I can't find my file, oh look there it is ............ this went on for 12 months until I could't stand it anymore. I just find it all too distracting I need my privacy and peace and quiet to work.

+1. I am lucky enough to have a window and to be able to listen to music on my headphones during the day otherwise I would have gone off my head years ago.

My annoyances are: people eating loudly in the office, bad personal hygiene of some colleagues, far too many personal calls (which I sometimes have to pick up if my colleague is away from their desk) and people appearing suddenly in my peripheral field of vision. I need two promotions to get my own office...

Mrs OBumble

I've been finding the lack of links in this thread a bit interesting - given that the OP asked for research links.

So I Googled, and got a surprising lack of results.

Wikipedia is a bit sparse, too, and only links to "anti" research: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_plan

I've been told that when open plan for white collar workers was first tried, the concept was to keep the same amount of space between desks, but remove the walls - and that worked well, until they started squishing the desks together. But I don't have links.

It seems to me that one issue people are missing is the nature of the work that people are doing. Open plan typing pools worked just fine, as I remember. Open plan works well on lots of assembly lines, because people keep each other's morale up while doing boring tasks, And it works in support teams where lots of collaboration is helpful to solve problems quickly. Extreme programme pretty much requires at least office-sharing.

Even in some more knowledge-intensive work, I've seen open plan work well, when people have the self-discipline to focus and not get distracted. People who've been boxed into cube farms for years generally find this difficult at first - so IMHO research is only meaningful once people have had a chance to acclimatise: asking for self-reports a few weeks after moving to open plan is silly.

Research also needs to factor in the cost-benefit to the company, and affect on number of jobs. Giving people individual offices takes a lot more space, which costs a lot to rent. Trading off the disadvantages of open plan vs the disadvantages of being unemployed and broke, I know which most people would prefer.

L.Jenkins

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

I've been finding the lack of links in this thread a bit interesting - given that the OP asked for research links.

So I Googled, and got a surprising lack of results.

Wikipedia is a bit sparse, too, and only links to "anti" research: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_plan....

I suppose it's a bit contentious and open to Research at the moment. Given what I'm doing at the moment, I need and what the privacy I have. If I were in a Support role, then a more open Office may be conducive to better productivity and communication. Different stroke for different folks and roles I'd say, until proper research has been applied.

Colonel Panic

I think open plan can work but it can also be awful. Putting sales next to development and customer service team for example? Bad idea.

I think you can have several teams share a large space, but only if each team has it's own larger partition.

JustAThought

I worked in this kind of total open plan environment about 10 years ago & it was a disaster. Most hated it & mid way the company ( big telecoms, 1,000+ on site employees) had had to amend the open plan to give back allocated spaces to departments & allow for lockable lockers in each departments area allocated to an employee. It ended up looking like a gym locker or boarding school.

We had a hot desk policy & what happened was managers pulled rank to " choose" the " best" desks each day ( window , away from draughts/lifts, coffee stations etc) & that created lots more underlying tension. There was no accommodation for meetings so when a female headed off she felt obliged to take handbag with her ( no lockable desk originally ) & if perple went to a meeting or lunch /bathroom there was a high risk of their nice desk being taken & them evicted... It brought out the beast in people and made for lots of old scores to be settled.
With no files or people struggling to find pens, staplers & files it really ended up in Total disarray, with lots of antagonism, lots of disruption to work. People who ate oranges or were messy became social pariahs. We could never book a meeting room as there was always people pretending to be having meetings in them as an excuse to actually focus & get some work done. Eventually after 3 months of total chaos and passive aggression & temper flares , eventually at much cost the old cubicle/semi cubicle system was brought back to much joy.

Re colours - I recall somewhere reading an article that said loud bright colours such as yellow were most proven to drive up stress levels and so are never used in asylums .... Makes you think. I can imagine the glare from sun/lights onto glass from different angles in an office could be quite annoying - like driving your car into the sun & trying to look into a computer screen at the same time - might sound clever on paper could imagine how this could become a nightmare environment.

On an aside, in my last role as a manager I had an office area without walls in a huge open plan barn close to both HR and finance managers & it was embarassing both for them & me when they tried to have confidential calls - it was like being back at school with the coded sentences & whispering & we can discuss that properly later ... Mortifying all round.

_Kaiser_

Yea I wouldn't be a fan of the open plan idea either. One of our sites moved to this last year and it's a mess - no privacy, multiple teams on top of each other, pain in the ass taking calls etc

In the building I'm in now we have lots of dull grey cubes but they're broken into 4 desk segments, but at least there's also meeting/conference rooms and offices for the mid-senior managers for smaller meetings and calls. They did convert an area upstairs to open plan and it's just rows of bright white desks/tables that are smaller than what they replaced but they can pack more people in.

Mrs OBumble

Itzy wrote: »

I suppose it's a bit contentious and open to Research at the moment.

It's hardly new. Open plan started being used for a wider range of offices in the 1950s - and when I started work in the 1990s there were research papers being quoted about the effectiveness or otherwise of using open plan in semi-professional areas (in our case, government administration).

As in some other fields, Google doesn't seem to do well with finding full-text of research papers from pre WWW days. (An effect of copyright law I think: it's legal to copy and load very old papers, but not moderately old ones as yet.). But I know they exist.

Personally I don't get this thing about privacy at work. Clients are (sometimes) entitled to privacy. But workers? What you do on company time is subject to company scrutiny - and ownership, too.

Confidentiality I do understand, eg if you work in Finance and are assessing a deal which would have HR implications for your colleagues, or are preparing results that have stock-market implications. But that's what meeting rooms, lockable cabinets and clear desk policies are for.

_Kaiser_

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

Personally I don't get this thing about privacy at work. Clients are (sometimes) entitled to privacy. But workers? What you do on company time is subject to company scrutiny - and ownership, too.

I guarantee if I stood looking over your shoulder for the day you'd get pretty annoyed/paranoid about it, even though you may be just working away

Confidentiality I do understand, eg if you work in Finance and are assessing a deal which would have HR implications for your colleagues, or are preparing results that have stock-market implications. But that's what meeting rooms, lockable cabinets and clear desk policies are for.

It's not always possible to find an available meeting room (particularly in an environment like that where most people are open plan and thus any rooms would be in demand) nor is it always appropriate or necessary.

As for clean desk.. I've worked in IT companies now for years and have yet to see one where this is properly implemented.

Open Plan is just one of these "new age" ideas that supposedly benefit an office but in reality just cause practicality headaches for all involved (as others have described) - but as I said, it does allow staff to be packed into a smaller space which is the real intent.

thesimpsons

_Kaiser_ wrote: »

I guarantee if I stood looking over your shoulder for the day you'd get pretty annoyed/paranoid about it, even though you may be just working away

definitely.

L.Jenkins

_Kaiser_ wrote: »

I guarantee if I stood looking over your shoulder for the day you'd get pretty annoyed/paranoid about it, even though you may be just working away

Hence, why I like my corner 2 high walls, one large window allowing to contemplate life's mysteries, when I need the inspiration.

_Kaiser_

Itzy wrote: »

Hence, why I like my corner 2 high walls, one large window allowing to contemplate life's mysteries, when I need the inspiration.

Same as.. corner office with window and more importantly a door that's usually open but closes when needed too.

L.Jenkins

_Kaiser_ wrote: »

Same as.. corner office with window and more importantly a door that's usually open but closes when needed too.

That and the actual team/people I work with are spread out around the office area. So I don't always have someone in need of a chat or intent on discussing current work every so often, as was the case in a previous role I held with another Multinational, who just loved open plan offices for their support teams and associated managers.

Eoin

I work in IT, and it's always been open plan - though in one place, line managers used to have their own cubicle (not an office). As we work in a collaborative type environment, personally I don't think that individual cubicles for everyone would work as well.

Unfortunately people don't take the cue that headphones on and hammering away at a keyboard means "don't disturb". If people did, then I'd be able to work without distraction no problems in an open plan office.

At the moment, the partitions extend to the top of our monitors, but they're trialling removing them altogether, which I'm not happy about.

_Kaiser_ wrote:

Open Plan is just one of these "new age" ideas that supposedly benefit an office but in reality just cause practicality headaches for all involved (as others have described) - but as I said, it does allow staff to be packed into a smaller space which is the real intent.

I'd also like to see if there are studies on it that are more fact based than opinion, but unless you're talking about people having their own full offices rather than cubicles, then the space argument doesn't really stack up. You can have floor to ceiling partitions or none at all in the same size space.

Phantasos

I was reading up about Zomato (who announced jobs for Ireland this week). They have a huge thing about instilling company culture, but in a very extreme fashion. I read on one article online where they expect employees to have the company logos on their social media profiles because "you have to show you believe in the product". Other stories indicate that employees were asked to add the company on social media sites and like/share/retweet everything about the company or face consequences.

Anyway. Back to the open plan topic. While browsing Zomato's careers page, I clicked on their company 'culture' page. One part lists the qualities that 'define' Zomans (the name for Zomato employees), and one of them was being Deskless. They said:

Deskless: This signifies that nothing and nobody is permanent at Zomato. We must always improve to stay.

Now call me paranoid, but that feels like a threat from the get-go. I'm all for hard work, but they seem to be using the 'deskless' method of working in order to send a clear signal to employees that "you are easily replaced". It's almost like the open plan/deskless environment is an underlying threat to prevent you becoming complacent. Sounds scary.

_Kaiser_

Phantasos wrote: »

Anyway. Back to the open plan topic. While browsing Zomato's careers page, I clicked on their company 'culture' page. One part lists the qualities that 'define' Zomans (the name for Zomato employees), and one of them was being Deskless.

Now call me paranoid, but that feels like a threat from the get-go. I'm all for hard work, but they seem to be using the 'deskless' method of working in order to send a clear signal to employees that "you are easily replaced". It's almost like the open plan/deskless environment is an underlying threat to prevent you becoming complacent. Sounds scary.

Yea, can't say I'd be too rushed to apply to a company like that myself.

I wonder how much of that "company culture" thing (going so far as having nicknames for themselves - Zomans, IBMers etc) really works outside of the States? I've yet to meet anyone I've worked with that was so committed to the company they worked for that they'd go to the extremes described above, or would consider it as anything more than a job/career rather than an "obsession" or "passion"

That's not to say that people don't work hard and put in extra hours etc, but that's generally because they want to get ahead or are responsible for getting it done either way - not out of any sort of overriding loyalty.

Mrs OBumble

_Kaiser_ wrote: »

I wonder how much of that "company culture" thing (going so far as having nicknames for themselves - Zomans, IBMers etc) really works outside of the States? I've yet to meet anyone I've worked with that was so committed to the company they worked for that they'd go to the extremes described above, or would consider it as anything more than a job/career rather than an "obsession" or "passion"

That's not to say that people don't work hard and put in extra hours etc, but that's generally because they want to get ahead or are responsible for getting it done either way - not out of any sort of overriding loyalty.

You've never worked with special education teachers, then.

Some of them are incredibly committed to their schools and the kids they teach, to the point where it really is obsession. They're the only people I've ever met who probably would say on their deathbed "I wish I'd spent more time at work".

And you know what? Some of them don't even have desks.

_Kaiser_

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

You've never worked with special education teachers, then.

Some of them are incredibly committed to their schools and the kids they teach, to the point where it really is obsession. They're the only people I've ever met who probably would say on their deathbed "I wish I'd spent more time at work".

And you know what? Some of them don't even have desks.

That's a bit different to be fair.. they're actually committed to the kids they're helping and I don't think it's a job you could do properly if you weren't that dedicated. Nurses, fire brigade personnel would be the same.

I'm talking about big (usually US) corporate multinationals. Classrooms may be getting more full but I don't think they've resorted to cube farms yet

Phantasos

While I think semi-open-plan is probably the right way to go in many cases (some privacy, but room for collective chats and interactions across the office), I do think the deskless/open plan is part of a wider trend towards instilling company culture.

With many of the new tech companies, there's a clear trend towards 'creating a family' at work. Perks like snack bars, mini-gyms, chill-out zones, weekly social events... they aren't really perks. It's a way to breed conformance, to make employees' lives all about their work. I'm in favour of a comfortable working environment, but it makes me uneasy to see company cultures that are essentially making peoples' lives all about their workplace. I imagine it would be very hard for a (for example) Google employee to move across the country to a new job, as it involves breaking ties with a lifestyle as well as a job.

JustAThought

Its a return to the company man & life model - only instead of being rewarded & looked after for life & ensuring a gold watch and pension, you loose your friends and social life if You move - based on exclusion not a good philosophy - and of course you stay longer at work each day - cos that's where your assets are & life is

Dial Hard

Tbh, I've only ever worked in open plan offices. Doesn't bother me a jot. Actually, when I started in my current job three years ago I had my own office and it nearly drove me demented, I felt so isolated. And that was with a completely glass front and the door open all the time.

Martin567

Dial Hard wrote: »

Tbh, I've only ever worked in open plan offices. Doesn't bother me a jot. Actually, when I started in my current job three years ago I had my own office and it nearly drove me demented, I felt so isolated. And that was with a completely glass front and the door open all the time.

Surely that just shows that no single work environment will suit everyone. The open plan setup would drive a lot of people demented and I'm one of them. I like shutting my office door and focusing properly on my work. The fewer interruptions, the more productive I will be.

WoollyRedHat

thesimpsons wrote: »

its the constant noise from open plan that gets to me. whether its the click of keyboards, people walking around behind me, phones ringing or the constant chatter. I worked with one guy who literally talked all day long - wheres my pen, oh ya here it is, now where's my file, I can't find my file, oh look there it is ............ this went on for 12 months until I could't stand it anymore. I just find it all too distracting I need my privacy and peace and quiet to work.

You killed him with the pen didn't you?

Dial Hard

Yis'd all love my office today - there's a crew in cleaning all the keyboards.

I just tune it out but I've already seen two mails to my boss complaining about it.

Vojera

When I was working in a lab the work, naturally, was all open plan. I loved that, being able to talk to people and get the work done, and then our office, which we didn't spend much time in, was semi-private - some half-assed partitions that gave more an illusion of privacy than anything else.

Now that I'm doing office work full time, I greatly appreciate my private office. It's not like I do be doing stuff I'm not allowed (apart from the odd break to look at Boards :P), but because I also manage the phones it would be too hectic trying to block out all that noise, plus I get to listen to my own music! But there's a printer in here so I also get regular visitors, so I'm never lonely.