The Advantages And Disadvantages Of Open Plan Offices

Why Open Plan Offices?

In the 1950s in Germany the Quickborner team of management consultants developed the radical office layout idea of Bürolandschaft or 'office-landscape'. This consisted of free and open plans of furniture scattered in large, structurally undivided spaces with mechanically controlled environments. Unlike the American open plan, strategic use of partitions and large plants created some degree of differentiation and privacy. The use of carpets and ceiling absorbing panels tempered the noise of a large office to some degree. Whereas in the secretarial pool chatter was frowned upon, the new type of open-plan office encouraged disclosure, discussion and debate.

Demographic Differences

Research carried out by the International Workplace Studies Program at Cornell University found that people over the age of 30 prefer working in a closed space environment, Younger workers, in particular, reported a stronger preference for team-oriented offices because they provide greater access to colleagues from whom they felt they could learn. Older respondents, however, found it more difficult to concentrate in open offices, possibly because over a number of years they had become more comfortable with traditional offices, Becker says.

In my personal experience of working in the same office for the last 10 years I realise that there are many pros and cons to working in an open plan office.

Communication

PRO: Open plan offices help communication. Proximity to our colleagues makes it easier to have spontaneous micro-meetings.

CON: Millions of people who work in open-plan offices today know that there is such a thing as too much communication. This could be sitting through a colleague's deconstruction of last night's Corrie or the loud and smug colleague give her blow by blow account of her romantic weekend in Rome with her perfect boyfriend.

Increase In Focus

PRO: Working in an open plan office can help you focus on the job in hand.

CON: Working in an open plan office can drive you to despair; it's so noisy that you can't concentrate on that presentation that has to be finished in half an hour! The only way to drown out the noise is to wear earphones, which isn't allowed will be brought up in your next appraisal.

Teamwork

PRO: Increased teamwork. It is easier to work together as one team when communication and ideas are flowing.

CON: There is no privacy apart from the multiple toilets breaks you take just to have a break from your colleagues.

Learning

PRO: Being in such close proximity helps build an atmosphere where people learn from each other on an almost unconscious level.

CON: You find yourself saying words in your day to day conversations that you realise other people in the office say, and wonder when you lost your identity and your soul.

Help

PRO: If you need help you can ask.

CON: You can ask but it happens too much you might get a reputation of not being up to par in your job. Best to google the answer and learn it yourself so it is not used against you at a later date.

Air-Con

PRO: Offices are regulated by a constant temperature in open plan offices.

CONS: The office gets divided into Girls vs boys. The boys are always hot and the girls are always freezing. This creates daily arguments, bad feeling and plots to breaks the air con with a hammer.

So what is the answer? The perfect solution would be glass partitioning between the desks. That closed off space between you and your colleagues would give you privacy, focus, protection from the air con and a general result of more productive workflow. You will still be within the team, and working more efficiently.

Do you work in an open plan office? What do you feel about this sort of working environment? Please leave your comments below!

Editor's Note: Katy Lever is an aspiring writer from Manchester. She works in an open plan office and often muses the pros and cons of it. She recommends Applied Workplace.

Image by Wikimedia Commons