Pitch Proposal

By Paul Latt

Introduction

Open office spaces have become increasingly common in the offices of modern tech companies due to their percieved benefits to employee collaboration, communication, and productivity. In reality, however, open office spaces have the exact opposite of the desired effect on those that work in them.

The Problem with Open Offices

Many companies have turned to removing physical barriers, like cubicles, from the floors of their offices in an attempt to get their employees to communicate directly with eachother more. The idea behind this is that removing physical barriers will encourage employees to communicate with eachother face to face more frequently. Ideally, this means employees will have a better idea of what their peers are working on, what their peers need from them, and how their own work fits into the larger whole.

Many studies have been conducted with the goal of assessing the tangible benefits of these open spaces. They frequently find, however, that open office spaces actually reduce face to face employee collaboration and producticity. Yet, despite this, many companies continue to switch over to this style of layout for their office spaces.

Advantages of Open Offices

The primary advantage of open office spaces is cost. By removing physical barriers, employees can be packed into a smaller space. This saves money in a number of ways. First, no cost is needed for purchasing and assembling those physical barriers. Second, and more importantly, this lessens the square footage required to accomodate employees, allowing employers to rent or purchase office spaces of smaller sizes at less cost than a full size office would cost for the same number of employees.

The Studies

One notable study of this organizational paradigm used a number of devices to track employee interaction in offices that were scheduled to shift into open office spaces in the near future (Bernstein). To collect the data needed to make an accurate assessment of how this change affected collaboration in this space they used a number of devices. In particular, they used a microphones, infrared cameras, accelerometers, and a bluetooth sensor, all worn in a singular badge hanging about each employee's neck on a laniard. These devices tracked a number of metrics including who spoke to who and for how Latt and where they were when they had the conversation. They used three criteria to determine when a communication was taking place. Two badges must be facing eachother, they must detect alternating speech indicative of a discussion, and they must be within ten meters of eachother. Comparing this data to email and instant messaging data yielded quantifiable data about the frequency of face to face interactions.

The first office space they examined showed approximately a 60% increase in both email and instant messaging communication after the shift to an open office space. Further, face to face communication dropped by over 70%. The second office showed a smaller increase in email and instant messaging communication but roughly the same reduction in face to face communication. Most importantly, this correlated with a similar decrease in productivity.

Another study attempts to examine the cause of this drop in collaberation, primarily via surveys, rather than attempting to gather data on whether or not collaberation is actually affected (Kim). This study identified two primary culprits for the decreased productivity and collaberation of these office spaces, noise and a lack of privacy. Some open office plans still use some limited forms of physical barriers. This study found that general dissatisfaction with noise levels was consistent among all open office spaces, regardless of the lack or presence of physical barriers. However, they did find that privacy concerns can be somewhat addressed through adding limited physical barriers to the space. Generally, this means that open offices decrease productivity by means of overstimulating the employees working in them.

Conclusion

Open office spaces impair communication and collaboration and, more importantly, noticeably reduce productivity. Despite this, many companies still push for and use open office spaces. The most likely reason for this is simply open office spaces are inexpensive compared to other alternatives. As a result, they are highly appealing to any company looking to cut costs. As a result, it is likely that many companies will continue to utilize them in their offices regardless.

Assuming that a company intends to switch to an open office space to cut costs, they should take several steps to mitigate the detrimental effects of these types of spaces on their employees. Limited physical barriers like low walls and clever floor layout to mitigate visual noise in their peripheral vision can help reduce issues with visual distraction and privacy. For reducing audio noise, solutions are fewer and farther between. Clever office layout can reduce errant noise to an extent, as can installation of acoustic, sound absorbing, wall panels. Further, providing dedicated quiet areas, if space is available, can allow employees to retreat to a quiet space to finish up a task that requires focus. Regardless, implementing solutions to these two issues is important for maintaining productivity in open office spaces.