I work for a Fortune 100 company. We used to all have private offices. Now most of us work in open office with 6 foot cubicles. I hated working in a private office. I much prefer the energy of working in an open office.
I grew up in a small house with 5 people, so I’ve learned to tune out background noise. And when I need to really think, I slip on headphones and listen to music.
They are large-ish ‘banks’ of desks, currently 20-30 desks in a bank. So you can be sitting with people who really have completely unrelated positions. Collaboration is a lovely concept but unless you’re sitting with people in support of the same projects, what’s the point?
Also, I am the one who’s going to be on the phone all day. I spend probably 30%-50% of any given day on conference calls. They are proposing phone banks where you can go if you need to make a ‘private’ call, but then I’d be at a random phone half of every day!? I feel like they haven’t given this a lot of thought.
I think people generally collaborate just fine without being forced to in artificial ways by management. It all depends on what your job is. Some people have jobs where they need to be heads-down, others need to talk a lot. There’s no one size fits all.
One silly management-fiasco I saw at a previous company, was with a very large federal contractor. You know, the kind of company that’s so big it had “sectors”, then divisions, then organizations, then departments, etc? Well, one time they got the fancy idea that we workers should all collaborate more, so they rearranged our cubicle assignments as we moved into a new building. They mixed us all up so that we weren’t sitting next to our team mates, but people from other teams. I worked for a group that did state/local software and no government clearances were required. The group they mixed us with did defense contracting, and required clearances. So yeah… a lot of collaboration occurred there. :rolleyes:
If it were only dreadful, it would be about six steps towards the positive.
I worked in a place that went to 100% “hoteling” - with the exception of the floor’s receptionist, no one had assigned seats. Not the big bosses, not even the admins. It’s always fun when you don’t know where to look for someone, especially if they were in a private room or bathroom & not some random desk when you went looking because now you don’t know if they’re even in the office today. If you were leading a conf call, or expected to have a significant speaking role, you had to go to one of the quiet rooms or conf rooms. At least at the desks we had docking stations with multiple monitors, a full-sized keyboard, & a separate mouse, but since you just took your laptop into the private room, you were already handicapped. In the old building, when leading a call, I would screenshare my second monitor & use my primary one to take notes, look stuff up, etc. that no one else could see. Can’t do that with just one screen.
It may have saved some on floor space as you didn’t need assigned desks for those who weren’t in on a given day; however, there was significant lost productivity every day. Come in in the morning, wipe down the desk because you didn’t know who was sitting there the previous day. Then go to your locker & get out some of your stuff. Then run to your locker multiple times during the day because your stuff isn’t in your desk drawers*. Then pack everything up at the end of the day, cram it back into the locker & wipe down the desk.
My company is moving from cubicles (which sucked ass) to open space. It’s horrendous. Banks of pods (at least we’re assigned a slot). The stated goal of spending over 9 figures for this re-modelling project? To become more attractive to workers and up retention rates.
Look - putting everyone below VP in open space is NOT going to improve retention rates. How the ever-living fuck are you supposed to get anything done? On the other hand we’re getting closer and closer to that “squad room” feeling that you see on cop shows on TV. FWIW.
I’m going to be the odd one out here, and say I really like open plan offices. There’s stuff going on around you, which I find rather soothing - if you’ve really been thinking hard and need a breather you can have a quick chat with a deskmate without really interrupting anyone, and then get back into it. I don’t have a problem with getting distracted because if I’m really concentrating on something then basically the background noise might as well not exist - though I do understand not everyone’s like me in that way.
Also, I’m a terrible awful goofer-off whenever I can get away with it. I really NEED to know that anyone could come up and see what I’m up to at any point, otherwise I’d never get a thing done all day. I was in a private office my first job out of Uni, and I was incredibly unproductive. Never again.
Not having your own desk, on the other hand, now THAT would drive me mental.
We have an open plan in our office. We work at a helpdesk, and it’s pretty convenient to overhear what issues people are experiencing and to tell people about problems and solutions. I can put my phone on hold and say, “Hey Jim, have you heard about this problem?”
This. I’ve worked in both and I prefer the open floor plan. There’s more energy and more of a team feel. People are very respectful about interrupting their coworkers, and most people put on headphones when they really need to focus on something.
And I’m a total introvert, so it’s not just extroverts who like the open floorplan. Maybe as an introvert I even do better because I can tune things out more easily.
I spend a lot of time on the phone for work. I don’t like being in the open. I don’t like having to talk to my wife or my doctor or anyone else in front of people.
I want to be able to change my shirt or my socks or trim my nose hairs or just out my head on my desk in exhaustion without being seen.
If i have a bout of lactose intolerance or congestion, I want to be able to be flatulent or snotty in private.
I really don’t care about “energy.” I’m at work for more than half my waking hours. I have a difficult job that takes creativity and serious thought. I expect the dignity of privacy.
That’s not an open office, that’s a psychological experiment.
I’ve worked in offices where the desks were set up like that (because it was a startup and the company couldn’t afford real desks and cubicles at the time, but you still had your assigned space). And also at companies where we have really low cubicle walls.
You get used to it.
It can be very good for collaboration. But it’s awful when many of your co-workers are all on the phone to different people at the same time. And it kills privacy - I know far too much about many of my former co-workers’ lives as they were on the phone in their cubes. I’d want to know the details of a study that said that open plan was overall more productive than offices. Cheaper than offices, I can believe, but more productive?
My current open office experience isn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be.
There are some breakout rooms, not enough, but almost enough. And when there aren’t, people go for walks and have walking meetings or coffee shop meetings in the next building.
When you need to concentrate, you put in headphones. If you want to signal you are busy, you put in headphones or your headset.
I hate, hate, hate, hate…
cubicles.
They combine triggering my claustrophobia with making it uncomfortable to talk with my coworkers with not providing any protection from the asshole with the loud laugh. If I’m going to be hearing someone talk anyway, I’d rather see them.
Open plan with breakout rooms and with teams sitting together is by far my preferred design. And headphones should be handed to people as they walk in the door, too.
Now, hoteling? That’s a bitch. It can make some sense in companies where the default is for people to not be at the office and therefore the office doesn’t have enough desks for everybody, but if you are going to be there for more than a few hours you should be able to camp on a desk.
When I was part of an SAP implementation team it made sense. I believe that’s your line of work, right?
My line of work requires very little collaboration with others. I like my privacy.
Yep, I implement SAP. Previous jobs have been research, where the ability for casual collaboration was important, or lab work, where anyway you’re not supposed to sit down a lot.
I still would hate cubicles, though. It’s either open space or an office with Real Walls ™.
What sort of cubicles are you folks working in that afford audio privacy?
At my place I can hear Ethel from accounting snorting eight cubes down.
mmm
Totally open areas are a horror for me. Our office (many years ago) went to a plan with 28 people distributed throughout one large room. The people were in three different departments, so collaboration was not a real big incentive. This was everyone from managers to peons. My main problem - I can not stand to have an open walkway behind me. By the end of the day I was shaking from being so tense waiting for someone to go behind my desk. My boss allowed me to put a bookcase behind me to help, but management decided it blocked the view of the room. When they told me I was losing the bookcase, I didn’t know what to do. I thought about quitting, getting a doctors note, anything to keep folks from walking behind me. Thankfully my boss negotiated moving me to the entry area where I agreed to do both reception (no phones - just directing people) and my regular job. I had a wall at my back and was saved. I HATE open office plans.
Quick update: I am in the same seat that I was yesterday. A first for my brief open space existence.
As of 9 a.m., I am the only person from my group here. It may remain that way for the rest of the day. Yes, this will definitely help with collaboration.
I was OK with cubicles.
I hated open office. Visual and auditory privacy was non existent. We were told headphones signaled “standoffishness” and were therefore not allowed.
The breakout rooms and conference rooms would be booked for standing days/times for various committees, task forces and work groups, so they became off limits most of the time for any impromptu meetings or for making or taking private calls.
My favorite, though, were the folks who would arrive at work, place their cell phones on their desks and leave for a meeting or breakfast. The rest of us were treated to loud medleys of ringtones, songs and rap lyrics. Requests by management to turn off cell phones or at least mute them were not very effective and were only issued when someone complained. The managers didn’t hear the morning cacophony because they had offices with doors.
Yet another reason I’m happy to be retired!
This is me, but I’m in the opposite opinion of you on open floor plans. I don’t like them BECAUSE I’m a goofer-offer. If you give me a deadline I will get the job done by (or before) that deadline literally 100% of the time. I’ve always prided myself on that, but in between when you give me my assignment, and when it’s due, I don’t like the idea of people looking over my shoulder and judging me based on whats on my computer screen.
I’ll get it done, I promise, and it’ll be done well…but don’t spy on me in between.
Your company supplies cocaine? That should help with employee retention, up until they OD anyway.
Our workload, and therefore our staffing level, rises and falls dramatically depending on the general economy. This building has fluctuated between 800 and 1,100 people during my 8 year tenure. That level of change requires a setup that is easy to revamp (I hate the word “restack”). Cubicles are the most cost effective way to go. Even the few offices we do have all have temporary walls that can be quickly reconfigured as necessary.