By KADIAN HALL, GRACE HEBRON & RYAN SULLIVAN
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writers
As she sat in the backseat of her car with a laptop, notebook and coffee, Towson University senior Casey Gray wondered why her internship did not provide a private space for employees to work. The collaboration and interaction taking place in the office were exhilarating at first, but this muggy Monday morning was different for Gray
Sitting at her desk in the middle of the office, surrounded by about 20 co-workers that morning, Gray felt as if she were in the middle of a shark tank. Her project was due at noon, but the constant distractions from her co-workers forced Gray to find a new place to get her work done — her car. Gray’s office had an open-office design, with few walls or private rooms, so the only place she could find solitude was the backseat of her car or in a bathroom stall.
This story is all too familiar for employees who have worked at open-concept offices, known for their collaborative yet distracting atmosphere. To find out what students thought of these open workspaces and want kind of office they want when they begin working full-time, we interviewed eight people. Additionally, we conducted a content analysis of news coverage of open offices in recent years.
[infogram id=”open-office-sample-1h7z2lonodly2ow?live”]
Out with the open office
Interviews found that Gray was not alone in her dislike of open offices, which became a trend in the 2000s as companies sought to build camaraderie among employees and reduce the feeling of haves and have-nots in the workplace (CEOs can sit alongside temps).
A majority of students interviewed associated negative words with open offices – most commonly distraction and noise. Conversely, words like collaboration and productivity were frequently mentioned throughout the interview sessions. This dichotomy demonstrates how students can feel both stimulated and overwhelmed by an open-office concept.
Almost everyone mentioned that they need privacy at times in the workplace to focus on important tasks. One student who had such an option said that, “The limited distractions enhanced my productivity. I was hardly ever taken away from my work or felt like I couldn’t concentrate on it.”
Another student expressed a clear preference for a private office, commenting that in a future job “my ideal officee would be a private office with my own space. White walls, little to no furniture, very spacious and large windows.”
Yet another student disagreed: “I would love for it to look like what I imagine Google where you have bean bags and it’s a chill environment. Colorful, with lots of windows.”
A preference for hybrid designs
One solution that many students mentioned was a hybrid office design, which merges the traditional cubicle environment with an open-office concept, allowing employees to avoid distraction as needed while giving them the opportunity to work near others.
This option was preferred by students like Gray, who expressed interest in having an office that would allow her to open and close her door.
“I like working in collaborative spaces but also value closed off areas for enhancing productivity and getting work done,” Gray said. “Having a door would enhance my ability to focus and be productive.”
Our content analysis revealed that journalists also spoke highly of this hybrid setup. “Privacy” and other variations of the word were used 48 times by journalists in the 18 print news articles analyzed. Most articles stressed a need for privacy lacking in open-office spaces with suggestions including cubicles, walls, dividers and booths.
Many students like Gray also valued privacy, but still wanted to benefit from the collaboration and innovation found in an open office.
“Collaboration is key,” said Amanda Hipzer, a Towson graduate student who worked as an intern in an office that allowed her to work collaboratively or in a private setting. “But I would like my own space to compress and find solitude. We also had separate offices if we needed to focus without interruption, a separate area for eating and couches to take a nap.”
Press coverage of open offices has been mostly negative
Our analysis of news coverage showed that many journalists also have gone cold on the open office. When analyzing the articles, a Likert scale was created to determine the tone of each article. The scale ranged from 1 to 7 with the questions ranging from (1=mostly positive to 7=mostly negative). We examined each article based on the number of positive or negative words used. We found that 44% of the articles had mostly positive tones and 48% had mostly negatively related tones.
One article referred to open offices as “agile” spaces that allow employees to work together and have the freedom to retreat to a closed-off space to do things like making phone calls.
Some articles used terms such as “inefficient,” “chaotic,” “unproductive” and “noisy” to critique open-office spaces. Many journalists described them as distracting.
According to the analysis, 52% of the articles cited research on open-office spaces and the effect it has on employee productivity. One research study cited found that “90 percent of research studies find negative effects on employees who work in an open-plan office.” The reasons for this negative effect according to the study’s author, Dr. Vinesh Oommen from the Queensland University of Technology’s Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation, in Australia were high levels of stress, conflicts, high blood pressure and high levels of staff turnover.
The article, “The Science of Why You Hate Your Open Office,” cited a 2018 Harvard Business School study in which it was found that open-office plans led to less face-to-face interaction among employees and more communication via email. The study found that email as a method of preferred office communication was increased by 67%.
An article entitled, “Here’s Proof that Open Layouts Don’t Work and How to Fix Them” reported on a research study in which employees at a company wore special badges for three weeks before and after their office redesign from traditional to an open-office layout. The study showed that merely listening to another person as they talk on the phone can reduce one’s attention span.
Several studies also found that employees choose to sacrifice face-to-face interaction in resorting to using headphones in open offices to control noise distraction. An article titled “Workplace Distractions Are Impacting the Bottom Line,” noted that some companies go as far as to offer employees in open-office spaces allowances for headphones that cater specifically to their comfort and noise tolerance.
We interviewed Stephen Turban, the co-author with Ethan Bernstein of “The Impact of the ‘Open’ Workspace on Human Collaboration,” published by the Harvard Business School. Turban said privacy is typically preferred in the workspace so that disruption can be prevented.
“Our research is pretty unidimensional in its finding, essentially that an open office decreased communication in-person and increased communication online,” Turban said. “We’ve hypothesized that part of this reason for the decrease in communication is because people do not want to disturb others or be disturbed.”
Added Turban: “A hybrid space might help fix that — creating a space for people to meet, do heads down work, but also socialize when they’d like.”
Video news stories were the only ones to portray open-office designs in a positive light
The video news stories analyzed featured offices like Hipzer’s: teeming with amenities, which were used to make open-office spaces seem more appealing. Our content analysis revealed that of all news stories analyzed, video pieces were the only ones to portray open-offices spaces in an entirely positive light. Videos featured open-office spaces and focused heavily on amenities available to employees such as cafes and gaming spaces, and proximity to nature. One video stressed the importance of staff interaction as the basis of their new office design, but only through using the opinions of company officials.
The videos did not cover distractions or the noise associated with open offices.
Gray could likely have used her own set of headphones at her old internship. Especially if it meant that she wouldn’t have had to retreat to her car to get work done. But her dream job will require Gray to deal with many distractions. The graduate student, who hopes to practice occupational therapy, now prefers the social aspect of work. “It allows me to get out of the house and meet new people in person,” she said.