Every time I read these threads against the open-plan office, I think back to two arguments that an old boss put forth for them that I haven't been able to find a good answer for:
1) If it works for some of the most successful tech companies on the planet (Google / Facebook / Amazon,) why can't it work for us?
2) Prove to me that the loss in productivity is higher than the cost / investment necessary to build everyone an office (or a semi-isolated cube) + value gained from collaboration.
I hear lots of hearsay and opinions, but if folks have good research or articles to point to, I'd love to have them in my back pocket for the next time I have this argument.
The obvious answer to 1) is "you're not Google, Facebook or Amazon". How does he propose to distinguish between it "working" for them vs. them being able to function despite the productivity hit because of their other strengths? Given that all the research shows almost entirely negative impacts of open plan offices on multiple dimensions it seems more likely that those exceptions succeed despite not because of the disadvantages.
The OP links to the recent study that the supposed communication benefits of open plan offices also appear to be a myth which calls into question the premise of 2)
The loss in productivity includes productive people who leave for a better workplace. Does your boss need research to understand the value of not alienating and driving away employees?
>1) If it works for some of the most successful tech companies on the planet (Google / Facebook / Amazon,) why can't it work for us?
Because it's not about what merely works, it's about what's better.
Keith Richards and others wrote great music even while on heroin. But you can do even better without heroin.
>2) Prove to me that the loss in productivity is higher than the cost / investment necessary to build everyone an office (or a semi-isolated cube) + value gained from collaboration.
There's no extra collaboration, just extra disruption, so you don't have to prove anything.
>1) If it works for some of the most successful tech companies on the planet (Google / Facebook / Amazon,) why can't it work for us?
Have these companies always been open-office, or is this something they've recently moved to? These companies have been successful for years and can probably absorb the productivity losses an open office generates for a while.
>1) If it works for some of the most successful tech companies on the planet (Google / Facebook / Amazon,) why can't it work for us?
The open floor plans hurt their expensive worker's productivity, but they have the money to hire more people. A small company has to be more worried about worker productivity than a large mega corp.
>...2) Prove to me that the loss in productivity is higher than the cost / investment necessary to build everyone an office (or a semi-isolated cube) + value gained from collaboration.
There is pretty much overwhelming research that people are more productive and healthy at work when they have some privacy and don't have distractions. One example - a study published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology of more than 40,000 workers in 300 US office buildings:
"...Enclosed private offices clearly outperformed open-plan layouts in most aspects of IEQ (Indoor Environmental Quality), particularly in acoustics, privacy and the proxemics issues. Benefits of enhanced 'ease of interaction' were smaller than the penalties of increased noise level and decreased privacy resulting from open-plan office configuration."
Even the idea that there is any actual "value gained from collaboration" in an open floor plan is questionable and anyone claiming it should show some evidence for it. In a large company, the issues always seem to be between teams, not inside the individual teams. An open floor plan lets you hear every random conversations in your own team, but it really discourages people from going to another teams area to ask a casual question or have an impromptu discussion of what they are working on since they know they would be disrupting several people.
The best environments I have seen are when there are individual offices with plenty of open areas and conference rooms for people to meet.
1) If it works for some of the most successful tech companies on the planet (Google / Facebook / Amazon,) why can't it work for us?
2) Prove to me that the loss in productivity is higher than the cost / investment necessary to build everyone an office (or a semi-isolated cube) + value gained from collaboration.
I hear lots of hearsay and opinions, but if folks have good research or articles to point to, I'd love to have them in my back pocket for the next time I have this argument.