“The reality of open-plan offices is quite different to how they were intended to function” - Bruce Daisley

For years we’ve been told how open plan offices were good for reducing silos, creating collaborative cultures, increasing productivity and so on.

Yet, a significant number of those using the spaces haven’t particularly liked them due to the level of noise and interruptions that destroy productivity or how hard it is to have private conversations.

Sceptics believe the real drivers for knocking down the office walls have been more about cost savings from fitting more people into a space….

One recent study from Harvard University found open plan offices reduced face to face communication by 70% while increasing interaction by email by as much as 50%.

How’s this possible?

A study by the Workspace Futures Team of Steelcase identified 90 minutes a day is lost due to distractions. As a coping method, employees might work from home on particular days or wear headphones in the office as a way to reduce the noise and interruptions.

Layer in how employees often find it easier and more private to communicate by email or instant message.“

Rather than have an F2F interaction in front of a large audience of peers, an employee might look around, see that a particular person is at his or her desk, and send an email,” explain Harvard professors Ethan S. Bernstein and Stephen Turban in their study, “The impact of the ‘open’ workspace on human collaboration”.

Don’t expect the office walls to be built immediately as it’s likely to be cost prohibitive but some companies are organising more private spaces.

What can you do?

Regardless if your open plan office is good or bad, I’m guessing your sort of stuck with your office environment. The name of the game for to manage your situation as best you can.

To get the best of both worlds that means balancing time designated to:

✔️ Your success – do this by planning and prioritising your tasks that make the biggest impact

✔️ Team success – do this by planning the team proactive tasks while making an allowance for the important reactive collaboration that rule of thumb occurs with the team

No-one said maximising productivity and collaboration was easy….

I’d love to hear what works well or not so well for you.