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December 7th, 2007
Who Needs a Private Work Space, Anyway?
I hate that I come off sounding like a dinosaur whenever I say this, but I’ve been around long enough to see more than my share of dumb workplace trends. Like the swallows returning to Capistrano, they seem to come and go with an eerily predictable degree of regularity.
One particularly idiotic trend that popped up at a large metropolitan newspaper I was working at was something called the “newsroom without walls.” Without going into the details, suffice it to say that the experiment didn’t work very well because it only succeeded in replacing an imperfect, flexible and familiar workplace structure for an imperfect, inflexible and unfamiliar structure that made many managers crazy and drove worker stress levels through the roof.
Change is healthy and needed in the workplace, but too often I’ve seen change injected into a workforce structure simply because someone decided a change was needed. Sometimes the change is welcome and good, but other times, it simply amounts to rearranging the deck chairs and comes off as change for the sake of change.
California’s Silicon Valley is often ground zero for a lot of creative workplace initiatives, and here’s another new trend to come from the Left Coast—the wall-less workplace. A story this week in the San Jose Mercury-News reported that big companies like Cisco and Intel are “casting aside the cubicle culture that has thrived in the United States since the late 1960s. In its place, the company is embracing a new workplace design that saves space and money, and encourages collaboration among co-workers.”
Not surprisingly, the company that is doing the workplace redesign for Cisco and other organizations thinks this is a swell idea. “It’s a competitive world,” said John Scouffas, principal and designer for Gensler, the San Francisco-based architectural firm that’s been redesigning workplaces. “Collaboration has been shown to spark innovation and speed product to market.”
Yes, collaboration can help drive innovation, but what happens if you need private space to hunker down and just get some work done? As someone who has been involuntarily relocated to a cube from a private office, I find it hard sometimes to do simple things like make a private phone call in my lovely cubicle. I can’t imagine how I’d get much done with no cube at all. I’m not sure the kind of hybrid shared cubicle that Trane is using currently would be much better.
Some workers feel the same way. A follow-up story talked to a number of workers who feel that the wall-less, cube-less office is another one of those workplace trends that may sound good in theory, but in practice doesn’t work quite so well. “I know people all over the place who are working in the new workplaces and they literally hate it,” said project management consultant Marsha Hayes Walker. “Their stress level is up 1,000 times. They no longer have a place to keep anything that belonged to them. People don’t want to be pack rats, but they need certain tools and materials at hand. Not everybody is a programmer with just a computer and a phone.”
The lesson I get from all this is pretty simple: one-size-fits-all solutions don’t work for everyone. The key to any workplace structure is flexibility and sensitivity to the kind of work that’s being done. A cubicle-free environment might work for some people, but others might need some private space to be productive and effective.
Are cubes a thing of the past, or is this just another crazy workplace trend from California? I’d love to hear your thoughts, either in a comment below or in an e-mail to me a jhollon@workforce.com.
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Whenever I read the phrase, “[this] encourages collaboration among co-workers” I develop an eye twitch. Very few initiatives designed to encourage collaboration at work ever work. Why? Employees are onto the scheme. They know why you are doing what you are doing and they naturally rebel against it. I know this sounds totally cynical but I really believe it is true.
Also, noise control is a very big deal in a lot of workspaces. Take out cube walls and you will increase the noise. From annoying, abandoned cell phones ringing to the person who talks to themselves to the person who constantly clears their throat to the guy who listens to the most offensive radio show possible we already have enough noise. Please, just let us keep our cube walls!
-HR Wench (who has an office now, THANK GOD!)
http://hrwench.blogspot.com/
Posted by: HR Wench | December 7th, 2007 at 2:27 pm
I’ve seen this in action - in Japan. There, each person has a desk of about 3×3 feet, in a bank of other desks, so that someone is across from them, as well as on either side of them. My Japanese collegues don’t seem to have a problem with it, and I will say the arrangement does force people to share important files (common filing banks) and to be in virtual constant communication with each other (there’s no other choice). However, I find it hot, loud and distracting. It’s good for collaboration, but I do think it stifles innovation, as group-thing is the natural outcome of a world without privacy.
Posted by: Olivia | December 11th, 2007 at 5:26 am
Collaboration among coworker is most often a crock. Very rarily are you able to put together a team of workers who are each motivated and willing to step away from the common trend to produce a quality product. Chances are, the same hard workers are going to produce the end product while slackers keep on slacking.
I’m in a cube now, a step up from our former arrangement of desk touching desk and no walls at all. You are right, it is very hard to take care of business with noise all around you. Especially when that noise around you has included Christmas music everyday since Halloween! I say give me walls or give me death.
Posted by: JL Anson | December 11th, 2007 at 5:34 am
Who needs a private workspace??? Another sneaky way to keep discourage people from taking calls from recruiters, huh? My employer takes away my office, they lose me.
Posted by: Marc | December 11th, 2007 at 6:45 am
When I worked for a very large company, my department was shifted from closed offices to low cubicles. I sent a memo to our manager suggesting that the loss of nap time would seriously reduce afternoon productivity, and I suggested a coordinated nap time when we all left one another alone.
Fortunately, he knew me well enough to assume I wasn’t serious. (He may have been wrong.)
Posted by: Will Kenny | December 11th, 2007 at 7:13 am
Our company is moving into this “open space” design. Does anyone have some change management materials or ideas for our employees? This is and will continue to be a HOT topic for us but I have a difficult time finding how to deal w/ the shift of workplace ettiquette in this type of environment. I’m sure we are going to have more HR issues and need new policies.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!!
Posted by: Karla G | December 11th, 2007 at 7:31 am
Has anyone ever heard of a school without walls? This clever little idea was a brain-child of the drug-induced 60’s. Not sure why business can’t take a hint from failed public education policies.
Posted by: Ann E | December 11th, 2007 at 9:04 am
As a very private person, I dislike not having some privacy to make those necessary calls to a bank, doctor, school, etc. While cubicles may increase workspace I believe it increases stress as well. However, since cubicles seem to be the trend, management should make an effort to provide cubicles with as much privacy, with respect to wall height and location, as possible relative to the positions that occupy them. Particularly important for management/ professional staff that deal with sensitive information.
Posted by: ellen | December 11th, 2007 at 9:54 am
I have moderate to severe hearing impairment. Though I am usually able to use telephones, constant background noise makes even hearing aid-friendly telephones practically useless to me. Background noise is an issue for those with even just mild hearing impairment, which becomes more common with age.
Even for those with normal hearing, having to mentally \’filter out\’ extraneous noise all day, every day will increase stress levels among individuals and among the workforce as a group.
Posted by: J.L. Carter | December 11th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
I am in a senior management position and prior to me and my group of peers being promoted to the level the people in our same position had very nice offices with closed doors. As someone working their way up in the company, part of the allure of moving up included some perks, like the office. Those days are gone, as are the salaries paid to people who held the same position.
Posted by: L.M. | December 12th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
Cubicles are not necessary, but Cubicle Level Protection in Systems Furniture is.
Cubicles are a tool that allows knowledge workers to function in crowded offices.
They were designed for this purpose after the discovery of a ‘conflict in the physiology of sight’ in the 1960\’s.
Posted by: L K Tucker | January 11th, 2008 at 8:11 am