The Workspace Race

If you had asked me without pre-amble what I thought about open-plan offices, I would probably have answered that I had almost always worked in them. Within IT, it's very much the norm. In other office environments, it became a fashion for various reasons.

It makes sense in IT where there is a collegiate atmosphere - people collaborating on a project or related technologies, constantly in need of a few minutes interaction to verify an idea, even if they're not pairing up on the same task. There is no privacy, but the theory goes that you shouldn't need any. Open offices are great space savers, too, because you can pack more desks in.

The next step up is the good old cubicle, which gives you a sense of being cut off from the rest of the team - usually with your back turned to the place where people come along to bother you. Depending on whether it's a half-height (easily lean your elbow on the top to talk), of full (can only stick your head over the top), the cubicle walls are a barrier of mixed blessings. This is fine if you're not collaborating much, or if there are a lot of break-out spaces.

Then there's the office - a place where you can shut the door if necessary & block out everything but the fact that people keep walking past in the corridor. You can ignore knocks on the door, if you're lucky, or invite people in for an intimate chat. In IT, this is usually a great luxury.

The open plan works for IT, & it has a great history of working for different occupations down the centuries. We can easily imagine a Dickensian scene of accounting clerks tallying their numbers to a slight murmur of pages swishing & pens scratching, usually placed around the pedestal of the supervisor. We can also imagine a middle-ages scriptorium filled with monks carefully copying manuscripts with their coloured inks in precision, & the librarian available for consultation. Open plan.

I'm not suggesting that IT people are necessarily celibate or in need of constant supervision, but the idea of a space being open & littered with desks so that people share the experience while doing work that requires great concentration has a very long tradition.

I'll just throw in a bad example or two - imagine a 1950s secretarial pool with a sea of women typing up from short-hand notes at tiny desks, & the constant clatter of typewriters. Not my scene. Finally, a chicken farm, with rows on rows of confined birds doing the only task they know how (& have room for) - laying.

The modern equivalent offices are customer support & telephone sales people.

Understanding ergonomics & OH&S will not change the applicability of an office plan to its usage. There is never a "right" answer, there is just effective use of the space available. If you don't put that thought in, & review the results, & ensure that the reviews are meaningful, & act on what you've learnt, then there is always an impact. That impact is a decrease in productivity & increase in staff turn-over, usually - direct costs to the business.

Using the space for the purpose at hand is like choosing a methodology for product development. Throwing some furniture together & spreading resources about will never be enough to make a project successful. Open plan encourages open communication, but doesn't cause it. It is also true, though, that closed doors ensure that there is no communication.