How Effective is the Open Office?

By Kelson Anderson

In a world where teamwork and communication are key, businesses must find a way to incorporate the privacy of the cubicle with the desired interaction of the open office if they hope to succeed. 

The Open Office 

Over the summer I had the opportunity to see the "changing world of business" while working for Marsh and McLennan, a global professional services firm. While there I found that they had recently switched to an open office floor plan, and that most didn't like it. Many complained about how there was less privacy and the office felt much noisier. This really interested me, as I had thought of the cubicle as just another form of a prison cell. I began to wonder how effective companies actually were at utilizing office design to provide places where people can work productively with others. What I have found paints a complicated picture of contradictions.

Although current practice claims that open floor plans are the best way to facilitate communication, there has been little to no research done to quantify this and empirical evidence shows that people actually suffer more from the negatives of the system. In reality we should strive for hybrid offices that combine privacy with communal areas of work that are both easily accessible to suit people according to their needs. Why is this better than cubicles or open offices? To better understand, we need to examine the past before we can move forward.


The origins of the modern office can be traced as far back as 1729. At that time, one of the most powerful companies in the world, The East India Trading Company needed hundreds of workers to sift through the mountain of paperwork created by the company. To accommodate their growing needs, they commissioned one of London's first ever "purpose-built" offices. Charles Lamb, who worked there in 1792, provides an inside look into what it was like to work there. His descriptions may sound familiar to corporate employees today. "On Friday I was at office from 10 in the morning (two hours dinner except) to 11 at night - last night till 9." In addition to long hours, workers also lived in an environment where benefits weren't ever guaranteed. According to his report, "the Committee have formally abolish'd all holydays whatsoever - for which may the Devil, who keeps no holydays, have them in his eternal burning workshop." (How the Office Was Invented)

Drawing of the East India Trading Company Office

From these early days until the 20th century, the design of the workplace had minor changes, but its design rarely varied. Offices continued to reflect the industrial values, creating a factory-like environment where people did repetitive and relatively simply tasks all day. In the 1950's, two German brothers, Wolfgang and Eberhard Schnell, tried to push against this cramped and rigid model by creating the first open-office floor plan, called "Bürolandschaft." However, this new design still gave employees little to no personal space or privacy.

Action Office Plan as it was originally envisioned 

In an attempt to liberate employees by giving them their own areas and the autonomy to change postures throughout the day, Robert Propst introduced the idea of the Action Office, as an antidote. However, his creation was never used as intended and slowly morphed into what we know today as the cubicle. By the time cubicles became widely used across the country, Propst's original dream was gone. Later he would say,

"The dark side of this is that not all organizations are intelligent and progressive...Lots are run by crass people who can take the same kind of equipment and create hellholes" (Saval). 

By the time the 90's were over, employees wanted out of these drab monstrosities. To this day many offices still use cubicles, but beginning in the 90's some offices, specifically tech startups, began to return to the open office concept.

Despite our current attraction to open office plans, research has shown that it too has problems. From a study done by Jungsoo Kim and Richard de Dear on workplace satisfaction, they found that personal contentment was the highest for for those with private offices. Employees with open offices were more distracted by noise and felt a loss of privacy. Unsurprisingly, visual privacy and noise were higher priorities for those in open offices while private office workers prioritized light, ease of interaction, and comfort of furnishings. Perhaps the most fascinating part was that workers in private offices actually showed greater satisfaction with their ease of, and management of their  communications than those in an open-office plan.

Today, with the ubiquity of devices that can access the internet wherever we are, people are more "connected" to each other than any other time in history. That is, we are more aware of more people today than even 20 years ago. We are able to communicate instantaneously all over the world and can keep track of a wider group of friends through platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. At the same time, communicating face-to-face is becoming a lost art that is still vital in both our personal lives and for effective work. How does this translate at the office? I decided to ask my father, who has had his own office for much of his career, but now has two years experience working in an open office plan. He shared some observations that help highlight the difficulties of the open office.

1) Distractions and the Difficulty Locating Coworkers

He noticed in the open office design is that people are often interrupted by others. Many struggle to remain focused because of these frequent distractions. Many leave their desks in search of a conference room or other space, in order to work in peace. This creates problems because when something important needs to be discussed it's almost impossible to find the person you need to talk with. Just as important as effective communication is the need for privacy and a place to work without interruption - a difficult task in an open office.

2) Hesitation to discuss important issues or ask questions

He found that people struggle to talk to each other because everyone can overhear each other's conversations. It used to be that people could just walk down to his office and talk to him privately or ask a question without fear of embarrassment in front of all their coworkers. Now, even those he works closest with will message him back and forth on an issue for 15-20 minutes until he goes over and initiates a face-to-face conversation that takes only 5 minutes.

Technology is an incredibly useful tool that is changing the way we interact, live, and work. However we need to also appreciate the power of human interactions. We can do this in the workplace by constructing offices that facilitate these kinds of interactions while also giving people the space and privacy they need. If businesses really want their employees to be creative, effective, happy, and engaged in their work, there must be a mixture of both. Granted, this may be more expensive than a simpler model, and managers rightly try to maximize the space while minimizing costs, but there are hidden economic and personal costs that come from the isolation of the cubicle and the disruptions of the open office.

Sources

1. Workspace satisfaction: the privacy communication trade off in open plan offices by Jungsoo Kim and Richard de Dear
2. The Open Office Concept is Dead  by Laura Entis 
3. How the Office was Invented by BBC news
4. The Cubicle you call Hell was originally designed to set you Free by Saval
5. Outside the Box: How the Office Opened Up by Bruce Wells

Image Credits:

1. "Reconfiguring the Open Office" by Jennie Morton
2. Sale Room of East India House by Thomas Rowlandson & Augustus Charles Pugin is public domain
3. Robert Propst's "action office." by Herman Miller
4. Person looking at computer screen: MIT News