The Cubicle: Outdated or Ahead of It's Time
Jacob Morgan
5x Best-Selling Author, Futurist, & Keynote Speaker. Founder of Future Of Work Leaders (Global CHRO Community). Focused on Leadership, The Future of Work, & Employee Experience
Many people today hate cubicles and see them as an outdated part of the office that confines and traps employees. But the history of the cubicle is quite interesting.
Cubicles are a symbol of outdated office spaces. Most of us cringe when we see them and we wish for more updated workspaces to improve the work experience. In fact, for most of us, if we walked into a new company and saw that they have cubicles we would probably want to run in the other direction and we would feel that the company itself is stuck in the past. However, if you look at the history of the cubicle you may be surprised to learn that it has actually shaped our modern day offices.
It was invented in 1960 by Robert Propst as a way to give employees freedom and flexibility in their work. He wanted to find a way to allow employees to customize their workspace and be able to work in different ways. Even if cubicles themselves are not what we want in our workspace nowadays, we should still be thankful for Robert Propst and the invention because it gave us the mental capacity to see what we could do to move beyond that. This was the idea that started it all.
If it weren’t for the cubicle we probably wouldn’t have the awesome new workplaces we have nowadays. Instead of viewing the “cube” as an outdated, unpleasant space to work, we should see it as a symbol of the modern work space and the beginning of change for the better.
Jacob Morgan is a best-selling author, speaker, and futurist. His new book, The Employee Experience Advantage (Wiley, March 2017) analyzes over 250 global organizations to understand how to create a place where people genuinely want to show up to work. Subscribe to his newsletter or visit TheFutureOrganization.
Senior Designer at Adrianse Group
8 年More offices now go for an open space plan especially the bpo's but then, this depends on the nature of the business & yes mixing the openess in design vs the semi private area makes the office environment more interesting that's why the addition of open collaboration areas are more popular now in office space planning...
Writer/Editor
8 年It should be 'ahead of its time'.
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8 年A counter argument for the 'Cube'. Maintaining its influence and how it was conceived to give staff flexibility to personalise their space has helped pave the way to the modern office and new ways of working.