Watch BBC Head of Values Ian Fletcher negotiate the tricky terrain of the office hot desks.
Clip from W1A (BBC Comedy):
Clip from W1A (BBC Comedy):
BBC iWonder - Is hot desking all good?
It's clearly not a good place to work - despite what our local political leaders would have us think:
Futures Forum: Knowle relocation project: Open-plan offices have been found to reduce productivity and impair memory. They’re associated with high staff turnover. They make people sick, hostile, unmotivated, and insecure.
As is clear from this excellent piece looking at the issues, from the i-newspaper last month:
It's clearly not a good place to work - despite what our local political leaders would have us think:
Futures Forum: Knowle relocation project: Open-plan offices have been found to reduce productivity and impair memory. They’re associated with high staff turnover. They make people sick, hostile, unmotivated, and insecure.
As is clear from this excellent piece looking at the issues, from the i-newspaper last month:
Open-plan offices are killing face-to-face communication. Should we bring back the cubicle?
Production staff on the weekly fashion magazine, Grazia edit in a makeshift open-plan office. Photo: Getty
Permanent exposure
A study published this month in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences demonstrates that open-plan does not achieve one of its primary purposes: making us collaborate and communicate with our colleagues.
Researchers examined what happened when two major corporations switched from cubicles to open-plan working. Face-to-face interactions plummeted by 70 per cent, as employees switched to email and instant messaging. Ethan Bernstein of Harvard Business School said that while it seems logical that being close to your colleagues should mean more communication, things have become a little too up close and personal.
Importance of privacy
His findings might be unpalatable to companies who have invested big in the open-plan model. Few have gone bigger than Facebook, whose Menlo Park HQ in California boasts what Mark Zuckerberg hailed as “the largest open-floor plan in the world”, accommodating more than 2,800 engineers. But do they “like” their Frank Gehry-designed home? They’d be in the minority if they do.
An international survey of 10,000 workers by Ipsos in 2014 found that 85 per cent of employees are dissatisfied with their workplace and cannot concentrate. While 95 per cent said that being able to work privately was important, only 41 per cent said this was possible, and the average office worker lost 86 minutes a day to distractions.
And if the open plan isn’t too noisy – Steve from HR discussing last night’s Love Island – it is too quiet. Two Harvard professors reported in a 2011 article titled “Who Moved My Cube?” that employees who know they might be overheard “have shorter and more superficial discussions than they otherwise would”.
“Open-plan offices are really about saving money, says Lily Bernheimer, author of The Shaping of Us: How Everyday Spaces Structure our Lives, Behaviour and Well-Being. At best, the funds saved are put into common amenities, creating a variety of benefits and spaces for different kinds of work. But pros often don’t outweigh cons.”
Hot-desking
Most, though, have come a fair way from the banks of desks in classroom formation favoured by industrialists such as American engineer Frederick Taylor at the turn of the 20th century. “Taylorism” was all about efficiency, and pioneered open-plan as a form of battery farm for clerical workers, with managers looking on from offices.
In the 1960s, German companies pioneered Bürolandschaft, which cut down the them-and-us approach of Taylorism by bringing managers into a more organically designed open-plan mix, before Herman Miller pioneered the “Action Office” (aka the cubicle) later that decade.
By the 1980s, companies such as Apple were swapping suits for hoodies and pulling down the partitions, in a move that changed corporate culture almost as much as the company changed computing, and a decade later, amid a “virtual office” revolution prompted by developments in laptop computing and mobile phones – and a desire to reduce rent – advertising executive Jay Chiat was trumpeting the fact that his Los Angeles staff had been stripped of not only their cubicles, but of their own workstations. “Work,” Mr Chiat said in 1993, as hot-desking became the latest craze, “is no longer a place but a process.”
Friday July 13th 2018
There is a scene in the BBC’s self-flagellating comedy W1A in which Ian Fletcher, the corporation’s fictional Head of Values, gets the chance to explore “some of the possibilities offered by the open-plan work environment in New Broadcasting House”.
He wanders haplessly in search of a vacant computer – the few that are unoccupied are bedecked with handwritten signs declaring: “This is not a hot desk”, “Dunroamin” or simply “F*** off” – while overhearing a colleague, who has nowhere private to have her excruciating telephone conversation about Alan Titchmarsh having been voted the world’s second-sexiest man.
The next time we see Fletcher, he has built himself an office, despite this being against protocol, because “ultimately, in the big scheme of things, sod it”.
There are many who feel his pain – not least at the real-life BBC, where only 3,500 workstations were provided for the 5,600 staff at its new London HQ in a bid to generate collaboration and “positive crowding”. Despite being favoured by many employers, open-plan offices are the bane of many workers’ lives, and for some years, evidence has been mounting that they make us distracted, stressed and unproductive.
There is a scene in the BBC’s self-flagellating comedy W1A in which Ian Fletcher, the corporation’s fictional Head of Values, gets the chance to explore “some of the possibilities offered by the open-plan work environment in New Broadcasting House”.
He wanders haplessly in search of a vacant computer – the few that are unoccupied are bedecked with handwritten signs declaring: “This is not a hot desk”, “Dunroamin” or simply “F*** off” – while overhearing a colleague, who has nowhere private to have her excruciating telephone conversation about Alan Titchmarsh having been voted the world’s second-sexiest man.
The next time we see Fletcher, he has built himself an office, despite this being against protocol, because “ultimately, in the big scheme of things, sod it”.
There are many who feel his pain – not least at the real-life BBC, where only 3,500 workstations were provided for the 5,600 staff at its new London HQ in a bid to generate collaboration and “positive crowding”. Despite being favoured by many employers, open-plan offices are the bane of many workers’ lives, and for some years, evidence has been mounting that they make us distracted, stressed and unproductive.
Permanent exposure
A study published this month in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences demonstrates that open-plan does not achieve one of its primary purposes: making us collaborate and communicate with our colleagues.
Researchers examined what happened when two major corporations switched from cubicles to open-plan working. Face-to-face interactions plummeted by 70 per cent, as employees switched to email and instant messaging. Ethan Bernstein of Harvard Business School said that while it seems logical that being close to your colleagues should mean more communication, things have become a little too up close and personal.
The comfort of office cubicles has all but been forgotten. Photo: Getty
“I’ve spent enough time on the Tube at rush hour to see that being packed together doesn’t necessarily lead to interaction,” he said. Being permanently exposed, he theorises, leads workers to erect their own defences.
“People put on huge headphones to avoid distraction. They stare intently at their screens, because they know people are watching and want to look busy. Then people looking at them from across the room see someone working intently and don’t want to interrupt. So they send an email instead.”
“I’ve spent enough time on the Tube at rush hour to see that being packed together doesn’t necessarily lead to interaction,” he said. Being permanently exposed, he theorises, leads workers to erect their own defences.
“People put on huge headphones to avoid distraction. They stare intently at their screens, because they know people are watching and want to look busy. Then people looking at them from across the room see someone working intently and don’t want to interrupt. So they send an email instead.”
Importance of privacy
His findings might be unpalatable to companies who have invested big in the open-plan model. Few have gone bigger than Facebook, whose Menlo Park HQ in California boasts what Mark Zuckerberg hailed as “the largest open-floor plan in the world”, accommodating more than 2,800 engineers. But do they “like” their Frank Gehry-designed home? They’d be in the minority if they do.
An international survey of 10,000 workers by Ipsos in 2014 found that 85 per cent of employees are dissatisfied with their workplace and cannot concentrate. While 95 per cent said that being able to work privately was important, only 41 per cent said this was possible, and the average office worker lost 86 minutes a day to distractions.
And if the open plan isn’t too noisy – Steve from HR discussing last night’s Love Island – it is too quiet. Two Harvard professors reported in a 2011 article titled “Who Moved My Cube?” that employees who know they might be overheard “have shorter and more superficial discussions than they otherwise would”.
“Open-plan offices are really about saving money, says Lily Bernheimer, author of The Shaping of Us: How Everyday Spaces Structure our Lives, Behaviour and Well-Being. At best, the funds saved are put into common amenities, creating a variety of benefits and spaces for different kinds of work. But pros often don’t outweigh cons.”
Hot-desking
Most, though, have come a fair way from the banks of desks in classroom formation favoured by industrialists such as American engineer Frederick Taylor at the turn of the 20th century. “Taylorism” was all about efficiency, and pioneered open-plan as a form of battery farm for clerical workers, with managers looking on from offices.
In the 1960s, German companies pioneered Bürolandschaft, which cut down the them-and-us approach of Taylorism by bringing managers into a more organically designed open-plan mix, before Herman Miller pioneered the “Action Office” (aka the cubicle) later that decade.
By the 1980s, companies such as Apple were swapping suits for hoodies and pulling down the partitions, in a move that changed corporate culture almost as much as the company changed computing, and a decade later, amid a “virtual office” revolution prompted by developments in laptop computing and mobile phones – and a desire to reduce rent – advertising executive Jay Chiat was trumpeting the fact that his Los Angeles staff had been stripped of not only their cubicles, but of their own workstations. “Work,” Mr Chiat said in 1993, as hot-desking became the latest craze, “is no longer a place but a process.”
Some not-so-subtle messaging on the Facebook London HQ stairwells to encourage productivity. Photo: Getty
Fast-forward to the new millennium. Four years ago at Lego’s London headquarters, they took hot-desking to the next level with “activity-based working”. Gone were the offices and even the fixed seating; in came zones for quiet and team work, and lockers for belongings.
“All employees have to get used to the fact that they do not have a dedicated desk,” said Bali Padda, then the company’s executive vice-president, “and that their activities during the work day determine where they are – not what department they are part of.”
Office quirks
Shiny add-ons have become part of the workplace. Google’s Zurich HQ has a slide into the canteen and Deloitte’s Amsterdam base has a room on every floor in which workers can put whatever they want – table football features heavily.
With more people technologically able to work from wherever, the office – a bit like the high street shop – has become a “destination” to keep us coming back. Or at least, that’s true for the lucky ones.
“Many of these benefits are showered upon rising industries like tech,” says Ms Bernheimer, “while other workers find they don’t even have a desk to depend upon!”
Some of the trends are more substantive than others. More of us are opting to work standing up, as awareness that constantly sitting isn’t good for our health, although the roughly 1 per cent who have standing desks is tiny compared with Denmark, where it is a legal requirement to offer sit-stand desks.
Fast-forward to the new millennium. Four years ago at Lego’s London headquarters, they took hot-desking to the next level with “activity-based working”. Gone were the offices and even the fixed seating; in came zones for quiet and team work, and lockers for belongings.
“All employees have to get used to the fact that they do not have a dedicated desk,” said Bali Padda, then the company’s executive vice-president, “and that their activities during the work day determine where they are – not what department they are part of.”
Office quirks
Shiny add-ons have become part of the workplace. Google’s Zurich HQ has a slide into the canteen and Deloitte’s Amsterdam base has a room on every floor in which workers can put whatever they want – table football features heavily.
With more people technologically able to work from wherever, the office – a bit like the high street shop – has become a “destination” to keep us coming back. Or at least, that’s true for the lucky ones.
“Many of these benefits are showered upon rising industries like tech,” says Ms Bernheimer, “while other workers find they don’t even have a desk to depend upon!”
Some of the trends are more substantive than others. More of us are opting to work standing up, as awareness that constantly sitting isn’t good for our health, although the roughly 1 per cent who have standing desks is tiny compared with Denmark, where it is a legal requirement to offer sit-stand desks.
A sweet dispenser decorated as a double-decker bus is displayed at Facebook’s London HQ. Photo: Getty
Mobile tech now means that we can be at work 24/7, wherever we are – which not everyone sees as a healthy idea. In France, employees have a legal “right to disconnect” and not answer emails outside of working hours.
Gideon Haigh, author of The Office: A Hardworking History, has said that technology risks making work “encompassing and inescapable”. The advantage of a physical workplace, however much we might moan about it, is that: “For as long as the office exists, it will be possible to get away and leave it behind.”
For all of the innovation a 2016 report for Oxford Economics contained a simple and perhaps surprising truth. Asked about the most important feature of their work environment, 1,200 employees from around the world cited the ability to focus and operate without interruptions more often than anything else.
“Leadership at some companies may think employees only care about bean bag chairs and free burritos,” the report’s authors noted, “but most people come to work to – well, work.”
Open plan offices 'killing' communication. Should we bring back cubicles? - i news
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Mobile tech now means that we can be at work 24/7, wherever we are – which not everyone sees as a healthy idea. In France, employees have a legal “right to disconnect” and not answer emails outside of working hours.
Gideon Haigh, author of The Office: A Hardworking History, has said that technology risks making work “encompassing and inescapable”. The advantage of a physical workplace, however much we might moan about it, is that: “For as long as the office exists, it will be possible to get away and leave it behind.”
For all of the innovation a 2016 report for Oxford Economics contained a simple and perhaps surprising truth. Asked about the most important feature of their work environment, 1,200 employees from around the world cited the ability to focus and operate without interruptions more often than anything else.
“Leadership at some companies may think employees only care about bean bag chairs and free burritos,” the report’s authors noted, “but most people come to work to – well, work.”
Open plan offices 'killing' communication. Should we bring back cubicles? - i news
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1 comment:
o wow, I like that research and information it. thanks for sharing this interesting topic.
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