The open office - Part 2

I don’t know the architectural history of workspace design. My guess is that once, the norm for workplace professionals was offices, with doors. And windows. And then, someone came up with the concept of cubicles, the butt of jokes about workspaces in the 20th century. They were modular and could be reconfigured, they were smaller and cheaper than full offices, and the ¾ height walls provided a modicum of visual privacy and some slight buffering of sound,

The open office space became more popular in the late 20th century, aligned with startup cultures. A cluster of people launching a new service or product concept worked in whatever space they could rassle up, the proverbial garage. There were no barriers between sitting areas. There was no need for barriers, the start-up founding team were all developing the same concept. Any work-related discussion of one member was probably of interest to all, so nothing was a distraction; or, more likely, all distractions had some relevance.

Fast forward to 2015. Startups that survived are now all grown up, and in many cases are the leading companies of our times. And the open office origins have persisted.

As a strategic design decision, I don’t get it. I do get it as a financial decision, if companies in Silicon Valley or NYC can’t afford the costs associated with building full offices in prime real estate markets. But I don’t think that companies view this as an unfortunate financial compromise; they see this as creatively advantageous.

Let’s walk through a work day in a high tech environment. Most employees split their day with the following: Coding or technical work, creating documents or reports, talking to co-workers at their worksite, talking to co-workers or others at remote sites.

Is the open office preferable for any of these scenarios? I would opine that it is not.

People that are coding or doing technical work generally prefer to concentrate, and distractions are….distracting. Employees in these spaces block out the audio distractions with noise-canceling headphones, creating a cone of silence. This serves another purpose...it notifies others nearby that the person is in “do not disturb” mode, and “please don’t talk to me unless it’s important.” The person in deep concentration also needs to resist the visual distractions of people moving around in front of him/her. I’m not sure what the solution would be for that...horse blinders? Some “tent” around the coder’s head to block out all but the screen and keyboard?

Conversations or meetings with others not on site are managed through conference calls or videoconferences. In a closed office setting, a teleconference or videoconference can be part of the flow of your workday, right from your own desk. In an open office setting, the worker needs to find a room, for any 15 minute call with an external party. If this is happening spontaneously and you haven’t reserved a conference room a priori, the search scramble begins, and the room that gets scheduled might be some distance away. Loss of time and productivity.

Then, there is talking to co-workers on site. This is probably the optimistic intention of the open workspace; the idea that there will be creative and spontaneous interchanges. And there are. The problem is, once a company has some mass, not everyone is working on the same project anymore, and the creative exchange of co-workers A and B might be irrelevant and distracting to co-workers C and D. So again, the search scramble for space in a quiet room begins. Which sort of spoils what should have been the spontaneity of the conversation.

Finally, there is what I consider the social ab-norm of open office space. In a closed office environment, people will greet each other in hallways, ask how their weekend was, share some anecdotes. People might step into each other’s offices for a 5 minute catch-up chat with a close colleague. In an open office setting, where people work in very close proximity, there is (ironically) even less chatting and catch up. Think of the NYC subway - - you are standing so near to other people, that you develop a “zone out” mindset; other people are breathing on your face in very close proximity, but you don’t engage in eye contact that acknowledges their presence. Plus, from an efficiency point of view, if every person that entered the open space broached a conversation about what everyone did on their weekend, it would be a significant time drain. And, when someone enters the space, others might be in their quiet coding zone. So even saying “hello” to everyone can be seen as a distraction.

Curious to see what the workspaces of the future will look like. I anticipate that this will not be the final solution.