I read recently (LinkedIn article?) that open floor plans are much denser than cubicles so the cost savings of the higher density out-weighs the productivity loss due to distraction. There is other research that shows employees who spend more time chatting with each other at lunch are more productive (research out of Facebook, IIR).
Considering all the other productivity affecting distractions that exist I find that easy to believe. I would recommend to your friend some noise-cancelling headphones. I'm two weeks into my first job with an open floor plan and I've pretty much always worked in offices with too many people crammed into them. I don't find any distraction at all but I leaned to tune-out background noise a long time ago. On Tue, Jun 30, 2015 at 8:11 AM, Matt Lawrence <[email protected]> wrote: > I have a friend who loves everything about his current job except the fact > that it is an open floorplan office. When everything I read (going back to > "Peopleware" by DeMarco") agrees that an open floorplan is so full of > distractions that productivity is severely impacted that I have trouble > understanding how this makes business sense. Is there something so > fundamentally different about Millenials that such an environment is > effective? Or, is this some sort of fad that really is a bad idea? What am > I missing? > > -- Matt > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss > This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators > http://lopsa.org/ -- Perfection is just a word I use occasionally with mustard. --Atom Powers-- _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
