Open-plan offices are fashionable. Walls are being torn down. Private spaces for retreat are being eliminated. This should enhance communication culture and make everything faster, better and more innovative. This thinking is misguided!
The truth is that open-plan offices accomplish one thing primarily: they disrupt and paralyse.
Open-plan offices typically emerge when a problem arises. Suddenly companies realize they lack the innovation and creativity to compete in the market. Or an employee survey shows internal communication is failing. The reasons, or rather justifications, for creating these spaces vary widely.
There are other solutions available
Yet the open-plan office is not the answer but rather entrepreneurial action. Often it is not the walls preventing internal communication, but the internal power dynamics at play. Removing a wall will not make employees treat each other better. They will continue competing with each other, simply now in the same room.
So what is the solution? Cultivate a corporate culture that minimizes internal power struggles and encourages collaboration. Train and sensitize your employees to how internal communication functions within projects.
For creativity, provide freedom, not open-plan offices!
An open-plan office will not foster creative and innovative thinking. Creativity and innovation emerge when employees have autonomy, are not constantly interrupted and can focus beyond just maximum profit motives.
An open-plan office disrupts employee peace and quiet, creating additional stress. To recover the needed calm, they put on headphones and withdraw from their surroundings. They communicate even less than before, not wanting to disturb others. The result is intensified power struggles. Real walls are simply replaced by invisible ones.
Therefore, entrepreneurs and managers, speak up and reject open-plan offices. Instead, address the real sources of these problems, as leaders should!
And yes, this is certainly just one perspective.
Here are several studies from recent years that may help dispel the open-plan office myth:
- Should Health Service Managers Embrace Open Plan Work Enviroments?, 2008
- Office design’s impact on sick leave rates, 2014
- Swiss survey in offices, 2010
Photo: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
