The Open Office

The Atlantic has a little feature on the "research" that shows the downside to the open office plans that are proliferating across corporate America:

A 2002 longitudinal study of Canadian oil-and-gas-company employees who moved from a traditional office to an open one found that on every aspect measured, from feelings about the work environment to co-worker relationships to self-reported performance, employees were significantly less satisfied in the open office. One explanation for why this might be is that open offices prioritize communication and collaboration but sacrifice privacy. In 1980, a group of psychology researchers published a study suggesting that this sacrifice might have unintended consequences. They found that “architectural privacy” (the ability to close one’s door, say) went hand in hand with a sense of “psychological privacy” (feeling “control over access to oneself or one’s group”). And a healthy dose of psychological privacy correlated with greater job satisfaction and performance.

With a lack of privacy comes noise—the talking, typing, and even chewing of one’s co-workers. A 1998 study found that background noise, whether or not it included speech, impaired both memory and the ability to do mental arithmetic, while another study found that even music hindered performance.

It seems clear that people prefer private offices -- I know I do. But that doesn't mean corporations will rush back to putting up walls. For one thing, personal offices take up a lot more space, which in a place like Washington or New York costs a lot of money. I also wonder if one reason people prefer their own offices is so they can get away with doing more goofing off on company time. Not that there is necessarily anything wrong with a little goofing off, but I have a feeling the crowded, zero-privacy open office is going to be around for a while.