Open office backlash

Do you work at the office? If so, can you see colleague's faces from your seat? And most importantly, do you wish so?

In the US, Open office architecture was spread in these few decades. Now, 70% of the offices adopt open architecture, according to a statistics. In Japan, open offices are not so popular. On the other hand, many people working in the official sector have no barricades at the side of their desk.

Open office was introduced based on a hypothesis that it would let workers be more collaborative with each other and help them to make innovative ideas through free conversation. It sounds fantastic.

The influence of open architecture has not been examined, however, at least with a structured study. Then, a couple of international companies conduct a series of experiments. They introduced open office architecture. And the workers' movement and behaviors were evaluated for months before and after the installation.

As a result, the whole productivity was reduced by 15%, surprisingly. Instead, utilization of email was increased. There was no evidence of promoted productive conversations by the open office.

Philosophical Transaction of Royal Society B: The impact of the ‘open’ workspace on human collaboration

It is a terrible outcome. Looking through the published article, this study is rationally constructed.

And the result is compatible with some workers' perception. There are many complaints about open office. People dislike being always looked at by their colleagues. Therefore, they tend to go home as soon as possible even if there are remained tasks. Workers are likely to talk about their family and the weather more frequently than business issues.

In my opinion, there are some conditions to make open architecture work effectively. First, your neighbors should be reliable. If you are afraid that colleagues would report your laziness to your boss, you must be silent whenever at the desk. Second, you can understand your colleague's work at least partially. Then, you can occasionally listen to your colleague's request for help. And of course, you should not too busy to look around the room to find something valuable.

Open office is a valuable structure, I believe. But it is not a magic rod.