Open plan offices suck. Why people are finally waking up to it - Telegraph
Worth a read.
In summary :
Background noise - it can be stressfully hard to string a sentence together or review a column of figures in monastic silence, let alone amid a cacophony of conversations.
Lack of visual privacy - it is a biological fact that whenever you’re in a ‘crowd’ or public setting, the body’s fight-or-flight mechanism is on permanent standby.
Reduced ability to control personal space - Nomadic hotdesking.
For female workers, the worst offenders – in terms of sick days – were the three sizes of open plan offices.
For men, flexi-offices – with no individual workstations, though some shared meeting rooms – were most likely to result in days taken off.
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I'm currently working in a large open plan office. My malingering to one side, I do find the throng of telephone calls, impromptu meetings held at yodelling volume and people just popping by a big distraction.
I'm not so bad if I'm just doing bugfixes, but if I'm having to design a moderately complex object model I find my thought processes about as fragile as a soap bubble. Perhaps I'm just old and cranky.
I make good use of earphones, but even then the background noise can reach such a hiatus that even they don't drown stuff out.
Anyone else find office configurations counter productive? What tips do you have for me so I can get back to my autistic monastic ways?
Worth a read.
In summary :
Background noise - it can be stressfully hard to string a sentence together or review a column of figures in monastic silence, let alone amid a cacophony of conversations.
Lack of visual privacy - it is a biological fact that whenever you’re in a ‘crowd’ or public setting, the body’s fight-or-flight mechanism is on permanent standby.
Reduced ability to control personal space - Nomadic hotdesking.
For female workers, the worst offenders – in terms of sick days – were the three sizes of open plan offices.
For men, flexi-offices – with no individual workstations, though some shared meeting rooms – were most likely to result in days taken off.
***
I'm currently working in a large open plan office. My malingering to one side, I do find the throng of telephone calls, impromptu meetings held at yodelling volume and people just popping by a big distraction.
I'm not so bad if I'm just doing bugfixes, but if I'm having to design a moderately complex object model I find my thought processes about as fragile as a soap bubble. Perhaps I'm just old and cranky.
I make good use of earphones, but even then the background noise can reach such a hiatus that even they don't drown stuff out.
Anyone else find office configurations counter productive? What tips do you have for me so I can get back to my autistic monastic ways?
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