Open Office Spaces: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Depending upon the location of your lookout perch on the nation’s workforce tree, you may or may not be aware of a rapidly growing trend in workspace design—the trend toward open office spaces. Popularized by an explosion in the European market, open offices are now catching on in the States, even though the precise definition of “open” is itself still very much open to interpretation. In some settings, the traditional “four walls and a door” office is being replaced by various forms of less compartmentalized partitioning where employees are still somewhat separate while working more closely together.

In the more extreme cases, every kind of wall is undergoing the same fate as the Berlin Wall—tumbling down completely—and the result is an environment where employees sit together with no barriers between them in a large central workspace. The common denominator here is the evolution from an isolated and insulated atmosphere to a more unlocked, uncovered, and unplugged one. But is this trend a good thing? This is the subject of a very spirited and ongoing debate.

Interestingly, both the proponents and detractors of open space offices tend to relate their arguments to a very similar, and nearly identical, set of metrics. Supporters often cite the positive effect of open space on employee morale, workforce productivity, environmental concerns, and individual worker performance. But detractors will point out how openness impacts these same criteria—only in a negative way. Let’s take a closer look at the pros and cons and maybe we can learn something:

Employee Morale

• Why open space is good: Even animals in the zoo don’t like being cooped up in cages, right? This is why you see many of them roaming around modern zoos in open-looking areas that somewhat resemble their natural habitats. Well, common sense tells us that if it works for animals it should work just as well for people. Open offices afford the ideal conditions for humans to roam around and in the process make friends, collaborate with co-workers, communicate more, and achieve a true sense of community within the office space. All these things are bound to add up to higher employee morale.
• Why open space is bad: Morale is great when you are sitting face to face on a daily basis with someone you like. But what if that person happens to be someone you dislike? And communication can be great—but some kinds are much better than others. Unfortunately open spacing gives us the bad along with the good. Being forced to listen to every co-worker’s phone calls and conversations, not to mention bad-mouthing and gossip, can kill morale instead of enhancing it. And another side effect of openness can be a higher risk of personal property theft. What could be more demoralizing than that?

Productivity/Bottom-line Profits

• Why open space is good: Studies have shown that open space offices are very cost-effective, saving businesses upwards of 20% in overhead costs. More people can be fit into workspaces and if the right kind of furniture is chosen, planners can maximize their usable space. Also, open spaces tend to more naturally accommodate modern work practices such as teleworking and office-sharing.
• Why open space is bad: A study by Australian scientists published in the Asia-Pacific Journal of Health Management concludes that open space offices are bad for employee health. The research found that in 90% of cases studied, “the outcome of working in an open-plan office was seen as negative, with open-plan offices causing high levels of stress, conflict, high blood pressure, and a high staff turnover.” Germs are also more easily transmitted, leading to more employee sickness and a loss of production. Another negative risk to the company’s bottom line is the potential for theft of company secrets. In an open office space, the odds of someone seeing or hearing confidential or business-sensitive information increases considerably. And a leakage of proprietary information can not only destroy profits but can destroy entire companies too.

Workplace Environment

• Why open space is good: For many of the same reasons that consolidation into an open space plan yields corporate cost savings, it can also result in a greener workplace. Facilities with open offices are generally more eco-friendly due to greater efficiencies in heating and cooling.
• Why open space is bad: One type of pollution that usually rises in an open setting instead of falling is noise. There is more of it around and more employees are exposed to it. A 2002 study cited (in addition to lack of privacy and confidentiality) increased noise as a primary complaint of open offices listed by surveyed employees.

Individual Worker Performance

• Why open space is good: It’s not hard to see how an open office design can facilitate more teamwork and better communication. In support of this premise, a 1996 research study published in the Harvard Business Review revealed that companies that had modified their business processes by, among other things, migrating from private spaces to open environments realized performance increases averaging 440 percent.
• Why open space is bad: Lack of privacy is often cited as a downside of open space offices, but its impact can be more profound than simply a feeling of inconvenience. In her book Communication Theories in Action, Julia Wood explores the dynamics of communication from a performance standpoint, and offers the theory that there are two types of communication, both of which are needed to be effective: “front stage” (in front of an audience) and “back stage” (where one can relax and not have to worry about what others think). The danger of open offices is that employees may no longer have an individual office area to recuperate from the demands of continual front stage interactions.

So what do we conclude from all this? Well, the fact that there are undeniably positive aspects to open offices is surely a good start. The common-sense thinking is that if we can figure out how to design the open spaces in a way that keeps the good and eliminates (or at least cuts down) the bad lends hope to the thought that the trend is overall a good one and that the negatives can be looked upon as road bumps that need to be overcome. Variations of open office design are already being tried with positive results, some of them based on a very early study by Greg R. Oldham, whose research as far back as 1988 provided information on solutions to some of the problems presented by open office design. The trend towards open offices is not likely to go away anytime soon but there is definitely hope that it can be tweaked and managed in a way that will make open offices look increasingly good, less bad, and never ugly.

About the Author: Dean Stier is Vice President of National Business Furniture, one of America’s leading providers of office desks, office chairs and other office furniture to businesses, government agencies and other institutions.

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