Is an Open Office Space Ideal for Employee Productivity?

Walk into any Silicon Valley office space and you're likely to find three things: a lot of men, a lot of beer, and all of said men drinking respective beer in a very open office environment. When I started working in the startup world, I thought this (well, at least the latter part of the trifecta) was amazing - instead of being hidden away behind closed doors, everyone - from the intern to often even the CEO - would be available to reach or, in the case of sales teams, shoot nerf darts at.

The problem is, open office environments are notoriously bad for productivity. While worse for your employees with attention deficit disorder (which, by the way, will be a sizable chunk of your creative workforce), the floor plan is a challenge for an even larger set of your workforce. A new study by FlexJobs reports that 76 percent of employees are more productive when they leave the office.

While larger companies opting for this style of seating may have the luxury of also putting in quiet spaces where employees can work, startups rarely have space to offer employees somewhere else to go to get work done. This often leaves a lot of people in a few or even one large room, all trying to focus on getting their work done. 

Seventy-four percent of survey respondents said that an open-office environment is a productivity killer. This isn't the first time research has come out that highlights the challenges of the open office environment. Late last year, The Washington Post featured a scathing review of  this startup-inspired model of corporate design. The reality is that the new floor plans maximize a company's workspace and save costs and offer ultimate flexibility when changing headcount, so that is why they're gaining momentum around the world. The article noted that in a previous study "the loss of productivity due to noise distraction... was doubled in open-plan offices compared to private offices."

The New Yorker, in their review of research on open workspaces, agrees:

"The benefits in building  camaraderie simply mask the negative effects on work performance. While employees feel like they're part of a laid-back, innovative enterprise, the environment ultimately damages workers' attention spans, productivity, creative thinking, and satisfaction. Furthermore, a sense of privacy boosts job performance, while the opposite can cause feelings of helplessness." (Source)

FlexJobs, the group that put out the newest research on open office space challenges, clearly has a bias on the benefits of a flexible work environment. That said, the disadvantages of this open arrangement are affirmed by numerous research organizations. 

Many employers make the argument that employees can put on headphones and this is just as good as a wall. "Headphones are the new wall," commented one software entrepreneur in a 2012 New York Times piece about the death of cubicle culture in favor of these open office spaces. That article quoted a UC Berkeley study of over 65,000 people who were dissatisfied with the level of "speech privacy" at their office spaces, making the leading complaint in offices everywhere."

Open office spaces are unlikely to disappear anytime soon, but employers can nurture higher productivity by either providing small, quiet work rooms for focused, uninterrupted periods of work, or, better yet, support employee telecommuting and acknowledge that the most productive workforce is one which employees are supported and encouraged to work in the environment(s) where they are most productive, whether that be a noisy open office, a coffee shop, or even home.

There are certainly challenges to every kind of work environment, and not every company's culture aligns with such a flexible style setup. Yet even larger firms are moving to more flexible work environments.  While employees used to leave larger companies in favor of startups for their flexibility, today, it appears startups offer less flexibility than their enterprise counterparts. In fact, distributed workforces are becoming increasingly more common. According to a VentureBeat article posted today, Dell has publicly stated that by 2020 it wants half of its employees working remotely, and Intel has 82 percent of its employees regularly telecommuting. Today's technologies for smart teleconferencing and corporate social networks ensure these employees feel connected when they need to be, and can focus on getting work done when it's time to put their heads down and focus.

"The pendulum has swung too far," said Christine Congdon of Steelcase, a Michigan-based company that designs corporate interiors, in a Huffington Post article earlier this year. "People have to have places to rejuvenate and absorb and process information [in order to be productive at work.]"

What do you think? Are open offices good or bad for employee productivity? What is the best mix of office environments for the most happy, healthy and productive employees?