There are several thought factors at play with open floor plans. They
may or may not be fully valid, but they are why some people like them.
Open floor plans increase interpersonal interaction. The ability for
anyone to be able to provide input into anything is "good".
Collaboration, crowd sourcing, open source development, DevOps all
benefit when more people are involved. If you throw everyone into a
room where they can see and hear everything, you get the best ideas from
everyone and quality or productivity must improve.
Open floor plans improve observation; if you don't trust your employees,
open floor plans make it easier to monitor them. Open floor plans mean
everyone can see everyone else to make sure they aren't {insert bad
thing here} (stealing secrets, playing the stock market, spending too
much time on Facebook, watching porn, etc).
Open floor plans have been around forever. Secretarial/typing pools
(although not so much since the '60s), stock/commodity traders,
accountants/bookkeepers, call centers, help desks, newsrooms, and myriad
other places. If it works there, it should work everywhere.
Increasing the value per square foot of your facilities. Individual
offices are expensive, cubes are less expensive, rows of desks are even
less expensive. Taking the next step (some companies already have), you
will always have some percentage of people out (sick/vacation, training,
remote meetings, etc), so you need less than 100% work space. Instead
of assigning cubes/desks, you give them a rolling filing cabinet, which
can all be lined up under a set of desks. You can also have lockers
(half height ones make good standing collaboration spaces or plant
shelves). When people come in, they get their cabinet and take it to a
desk. As more people come in, more cabinets move from under the storage
desks, allowing them to be used for people. As long as you have a clean
desk policy and virtual desktops (or everyone has their own laptop),
there's nothing that drives people to stay in a particular spot. You
also get the added benefit that people who want a window seat will
arrive to work early.
Of course, there's all the negatives... noise, lack of any privacy,
stress, sanitation (do you really want to sit at the desk that Typhoid
Mary sat at yesterday, or the guy that constantly eats at his desk and
leaves crumbs and spills everywhere).
You are correct, most recent research has suggested that open floor plan
offices are on the whole horrible, but they are still the buzz at
certain types of companies (particularly start ups). Since those types
of companies tend to be seen as hip, hot, and growing at phenomenal
rates, less sexy and slower growth companies will continue to try to
emulate them in hopes they will suddenly become high growth.
-spp
On 6/30/2015 11:11 AM, Matt Lawrence 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?
_______________________________________________
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/
