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Beyond Open Floor Plans: Rethinking Collaborative Spaces in Offices
We all saw the rise of open floor offices. We all know that there are better alternatives that could be better than open floor plans. Here’s why we need to be rethinking collaborative spaces in offices.
If you’ve ever worked in an open floor plan office, you’ll know how distracting and noisy they can get. Hardly any work gets done and even if you find your focus, it lasts for the shortest time. If you look at it from the point of view of managers who have a cabin all to themselves, it makes sense since it saves money and is also easier for them to keep an eye on everyone at once. But this is of course, just their point of view.
Another reason why this way of office floor planning got so famous is because organisations wanted to make their employees collaborate more easily and be able to solve any arising problems instantaneously by having open communication with all departments.
Even though their intentions were right, they did not realise how this plan would not work. So we are here to point out why organisations need to switch to different methods of office space layouts.
Discussions
Having made open floor plans in offices for discussions to take place, they actually are very hard to have. Since every team is having their discussions in the same space, there is way too much noise in the office. People cannot concentrate on their thoughts and therefore it affects the team’s planning process.
Hygiene
It does not need to be pointed out to know that open floor offices are extremely unhygienic. If one person gets sick, everyone is bound to catch the infection because everyone is breathing in the same air. It’s ironically not efficient to be in an open floor office.
Other than this, in an open floor office, since everyone shares the same space, people who are careless with their trash end up littering everyone’s space. People usually don’t like this and it causes conflict.
Hygiene
It does not need to be pointed out to know that open floor offices are extremely unhygienic. If one person gets sick, everyone is bound to catch the infection because everyone is breathing in the same air. It’s ironically not efficient to be in an open floor office.
Privacy
Every person is comfortable in their own preferred spaces. If someone is more comfortable working in a corner and not surrounded by 10 people then they should be given that option. This not only increases productivity but also gives the employees assurance that their health is cared for by the organisation. Except, this is the opposite of what an open floor plan office does. Someone might be more comfortable sitting in isolation only because their job requires a quiet environment.
How Do We Change Things?
The alternatives to an open floor plan are not very difficult to implement. There are many ways that an organisation can change their already existing open floor plan offices into better replacements. For example, a hub and spoke setup is an office plan where there are cabins or rooms surrounding a common area. This gives every team their own separate area. It also allows inter team communication in the common area.
An organisation can also just incorporate quiet areas and booths for people who do like to work alone. These areas can be accessed by all employees either for work or for rest. This would give them a break from the office commotion.
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