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Engineering efficiency in open plan vs seperate offices

Andy Millar
Just for once I'm working in an open plan office *. I've been, from my point of view, very lucky (or rather, very determined!) - for the last two years I've worked from home, and for 15 years prior to that I have had a succession of private offices (in a company where the official policy was that only the president and VPs had private offices!)


HOW DOES ANYONE GET ANY WORK DONE IN AN OPEN PLAN OFFICE??? Sorry, that just burst out smiley


Now, thinking back to a LONG time ago when I was working in development teams of maybe 2-3-4-5 engineers it did actually seem to work well for us, we could share and bounce around ideas, however when I started managing the same team in a large office space it was clear that those discussions were also extremely disruptive to anyone else in the same office area **. The best arrangement I've worked in for team engineering was probably when we had 5 of us in a single (fairly soundproof) office.


Equally, having been involved in business management, I am very well aware that large open plan offices are cheap and flexible, but personally I'm suspicious of the impact on overall productivity, at least for engineering functions.


I haven't even started discussing getting the air conditioning set right for everybody...


Does anyone here have any views? It's a serious point.


Right, I will stick my headphones on, play some brown noise, and try again.


Cheers,


Andy


* Our company Mentoring scheme is being audited by the IET today, hence the fact I've been asked to work at HQ and prepare to be quizzed by the IET!

** I led a raiding party and commandeered a soundproof space away from anyone else where that team could work, before any actual murders occurred. I ignored the suggestions from the rest of the engineers that it should also be made airtight...
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  • 0
    Lisa,

    I am aware of the research, but are the employers?

    My previous employer set up an arrangement as I described but it was a compromise. Each department has an assigned 'neighbourhood' but there was what we called no-mans land between the departments which could be used by either department, depending on the attendance on the day (i.e. how many were not working from home/out on business). Also visitors from other offices could pick any of these desks. It did also allow people to move to an area between other departments to get away from interruptions as anyone wanting them would go to their departments neighbourhood, and find they were not there. In terms of how people dealt with it, some were happy to work from a different desk each day, others would always use the same desk. The one thing missing was the opportunity to personalise the desk environment.

    Alasdair
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  • 0
    Lisa,

    I am aware of the research, but are the employers?

    My previous employer set up an arrangement as I described but it was a compromise. Each department has an assigned 'neighbourhood' but there was what we called no-mans land between the departments which could be used by either department, depending on the attendance on the day (i.e. how many were not working from home/out on business). Also visitors from other offices could pick any of these desks. It did also allow people to move to an area between other departments to get away from interruptions as anyone wanting them would go to their departments neighbourhood, and find they were not there. In terms of how people dealt with it, some were happy to work from a different desk each day, others would always use the same desk. The one thing missing was the opportunity to personalise the desk environment.

    Alasdair
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