After years of open-office layouts, employers are finally figuring out how to use them to shrink spaces and employees are starting to speak with a clear voice. Many of them say that they hate the office layout. However, when you dig into the data, it's not the open office that they hate. It's its drawbacks, and they can be managed with a bit of creativity.
So what do employees hate about open offices? There are a few common complaints:
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No ability to make phone calls or have conversations without being overheard.
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A lack of ability to work without interruption.
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Intervening noise from other employees.
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No personal defined space.
While one way to solve this problem is to go back to a traditional closed-floor plan office layout with private offices for everyone, most companies aren't going to do this. Instead, they can use some (or all) of these techniques to mitigate these typical complaints:
Add Beneficial Sound
One of the ways to manage sound levels in an open floor plan office is to add the right kind of sound. A background sound like white or pink noise can help to both prevent it from seeming eerily quiet. At the same time, a constant, pleasant sound gives people's brains something to focus on instead of a neighbor's conversations.
Offer Small Private Spaces
Private spaces -- like small impromptu conference rooms -- can serve the role of offices. Workers that need a place to make a private phone call or that just need some time to think can use these spaces to duck out of their cube or workstation and get some work done. The key to making these work is to include enough of them in your office layout that they can be used on an as-needed basis instead of needing to be reserved.
These spaces have a second benefit, too. When a group of people need to get together for a collaboration session, they use the spaces for it. This saves them from disturbing the people around them.
Create Serendipity
One of the biggest benefits of an open floor plan office layout is that the space you save by getting rid of private offices and large cubes can be reassigned to more productive uses. Larger break rooms or employee cafe's don't just let workers get out of their cubes. They also make it possible for lunchtime chatter to turn into productive business decisions. Shared work areas for printers and other office machines can reduce your IT budget by saving you from buying everyone a printer and scanner. Employees also have to get up, walk around and bump into each other to use them. This also shifts conversation away from the cube while contributing to a healthy level of non-disturbing background noise.
Embrace Working from Home
Finally, one of the best solutions to the problems with an open office layout is to let employees escape it periodically. While part of the reason for an open floor plan is to increase employee collaboration, the reality of the modern work place is that your team spends a lot of its time physically apart. Accepting this reality and allowing your employees to choose to work from home (at least part time) gives them the opportunity to have a space that they control while also lessening the load on your traditional office. That way, when a worker is at the office, it's because she wants to be and, hopefully, because she's open to leveraging your open office layout's benefits.
