Why Collaborative Workspaces Are Not for Everyone
What comes to mind when you think of collaborative workspaces? My own reaction is noise, interruptions, lack of privacy, inability to concentrate, and being in each other’s faces. But maybe I’m looking at it all wrong; after all, cubicles don’t exactly facilitate collaboration.
EF Education First, a company on the forefront of collaborative workspaces, offers conference rooms with glass walls looking out onto panoramic views, and large, colorful living room-like spaces that serve as meeting areas. That sounds mighty nice, especially given research that has found an association between lack of windows and decreased productivity. It seems the absence of natural light affects the ability to get to sleep at night, and less sleep translates into reduced productivity.
These findings are interesting. At a company where I once worked, those of us in IT management had offices in the central windowless core of the building, and the IT staff—the people doing the real work—had cubicles along or in view of the glass-walled perimeter. I always figured that my difficulty sleeping was because of the political climate and the finger-pointing culture, but maybe it was simply the lack of natural light.
Many companies are now reducing the number of enclosed offices altogether and locating work stations and open areas along the perimeter, allowing for more natural light as well as more collaboration and interaction among employees. Maybe some people prefer this sort of layout, but I’d hate working in an office that has done away with walls between work stations. How can anyone concentrate when everyone can see (and, presumably, hear) everyone else? Offices are increasingly being designed with these sorts of shared spaces, so maybe it’s just a matter of getting used to them.
Of course, collaboration isn’t going to happen just because people are in earshot of each other—especially when they use headphones as substitutes for the walls they used to have. Even more so than in the cubicle-based world, people in open environments are subject to differences in work styles and communication preferences. Explicit steps to learn about each other’s likes and dislikes and agree on some basic norms may be valuable if not outright necessary.
Finding open-space offices as distasteful as I do (and having heard nothing but negatives from people who work in them), I empathize mightily with those who work in such an environment and are made miserable by it. A study of forty thousand American office workers found that employees thought the downsides (increased noise level and decreased privacy) outweigh the upsides (the ease of collaboration and interaction). Hopefully, those who design such workspaces and those who foist them on others take note of such studies.
