Open plan offices: the productivity paradox 🏢
Hi everyone,
Following on from the previous conversation about the four-day work week, I've been thinking about something that feels like the flip side of the same coin. How we work, but also where we work.
Most of us here are probably no strangers to the open plan office. It's been the default for most collaborative spaces for years now. The idea being that fewer walls means more team work, more spontaneous conversations, better team culture. Sounds great in theory.
Except the research keeps suggesting it doesn't really work out that way.
A Harvard Business School* study tracked employees at two large companies before and after moving to open plan layouts using wearable sensors and communication data. Rather than seeing more face-to-face interaction, they found it dropped by around 70%*. People weren't talking more, they were retreating to email and instant messages instead, because the open environment actually made conversation feel more exposed.
And then there's the noise side of it. A survey of 2,000 knowledge workers across the US, UK, Germany and France found that 63%** struggle with concentration because of workplace noise. Another study found workers can lose up to 66%** of their productivity from just one nearby conversation, and that after any noise-driven interruption it takes on average 23 minutes to fully get back into what they were doing.
For the kind of work a lot of people in this community do, configuring policies, reviewing deployments, working through a complex issue, that kind of constant interruption isn't just annoying it’s a tangible resource cost too.
Now with hybrid working being so common, a lot of us have more control over where we do our more in-depth work than we used to. Which maybe makes the open plan question feel a bit less urgent day to day.
But I'm curious about how you folks find the experience:
- Is the open plan still a reality for you on your office days, and if so how do you manage around it?
- Do you think it actually helps with collaboration or has it quietly become something companies just do because it's cheaper?
- And if you could redesign your office setup tomorrow, what would it look like?
Would love to hear how people are working around it, or whether you've just fully leaned into the headphones-on-do-not-disturb approach (like me! 😄)
🔗* The Impact of the Open Workspace on Human Collaboration — Harvard Business School / Royal Society
Speak soon,
Kirk
