Unexpected Insights: Open office plans decrease face-to-face communication
Open office plans, also known as open workspaces or open floor plans, are a popular layout in modern office environments. These designs typically feature large, open areas where employees work without the physical barriers of cubicles or private offices. The goal of Open office plans is to foster collaboration, communication, and a sense of community among employees. They promote a more egalitarian and inclusive atmosphere by eliminating hierarchical barriers and encouraging interaction between team members and different departments.
So does removing spatial boundaries in the office creates open and unbounded offices that increase interaction?
Research from Ethan Bernstein and Stephen Turban used intervention-based field studies of two Fortune 500 companies to answer this question. The goal was to examine the effect of open office architecture on employees’ face-to-face, email and instant messaging interaction patterns. Both companies were transitioning from traditional office spaces to open office plans.
Contrary to conventional belief, the research revealed a significant decrease of approximately 70% in face-to-face interaction among employees in both case studies. Interestingly, there was a notable rise in electronic communication. In Study 1, there was a 56% surge in emails sent, and IM activity increased by 67%. Study 2 demonstrated an increase in email communication ranging from 22% to 50%. Therefore, instead of fostering greater face-to-face collaboration, the implementation of open office architecture seemed to elicit a response of social withdrawal from colleagues, leading to increased reliance on email and instant messaging for communication.
Possible causes for this phenomenon include the innate human need for privacy. In open offices, the level of privacy during face-to-face interactions is reduced, leading employees to opt for communication through email or instant messaging instead. Additionally, the decrease in face-to-face interaction could be attributed to employees compensating for the lack of privacy in open office environments. They may employ behaviors such as wearing large headphones to signal a “do not disturb” message while trying to appear as occupied as possible, as their actions are visible to everyone in the office.
This is the first in the series of posts where I would be discussing unexpected or unintuitive findings and insights from research work. Did this revelation surprise you, or have you encountered similar experiences? If you would like more posts in this series, let me know in the comments. Should we delve deeper into each topic or keep the posts concise? Your feedback will shape the future of this series, so please share your thoughts.
Disclaimer: Always have healthy skepticism for cutting-edge research. These areas of study are continuously improving and re-evaluating their theories and hypothesis. This study provides empirical evaluation using two real-life scenarios but it is not definitive.
Further Reading
Bernstein, Ethan S., and Stephen Turban. “The impact of the ‘open’ workspace on human collaboration.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 373.1753 (2018): 20170239.
Birnholtz, Jeremy P., Carl Gutwin, and Kirstie Hawkey. “Privacy in the open: how attention mediates awareness and privacy in open-plan offices.” Proceedings of the 2007 international ACM conference on Supporting group work. 2007.
Kim, Jungsoo, and Richard De Dear. “Workspace satisfaction: The privacy-communication trade-off in open-plan offices.” Journal of Environmental Psychology 36 (2013): 18–26.
