Open office workspace - Research Paper Example

Open Office Workspace Intuition Introduction Open office workspace design has become a shared topic between firm owners, employees, and interior designers. This debate has emerged from what has been termed as emerging trends in office layout; open workspaces. The new office spaces are borderless, putting all the employees under one roof, sharing the same walls, and proximity from one to the other reduced significantly. This occurrence has attracted controversy as to which one between advantage and disadvantage is offered by open workspace office layouts.

This paper will summarize 3 articles inclined as the topic on the authors’ revelations, and in it provide reasons as to why open office workspaces are far from being the popular trend in office design today. In her article Why the open office fails, and a solution, Susan Adams generally feels that the open office is not the best idea for firms yet. She describes her experience with a regional director for Vitra, a furniture company that supplies big companies such as Google, EBay, and Facebook with furniture.

The Director revealed that employees spend less than 60% of their time in their offices, and as such, firm owners do not want to waste their resources on unused resources. He, however added that open office workspaces deny privacy, distractions are very common, they reduce concentration, and waste a lot of time (Adams, 2013). Dawn Klingensmith’s article, Open Office Space: How wall-less workspaces can help promote productivity and collaboration- and why some experts are critical provides a more positive side of the debate.

Klingesmith states that an office’s physical layout is a reflection of its culture, and that it affects employee health and job satisfaction to a large extent. One advantage provided here is that open workspaces bring together managers and employees, enabling “coaching in the moment”. In addition, collaboration, group work, and interaction are supported, and collectively, they contribute to an organization’s performance. The article states that offices can be made such that while they are generally open layouts, private unassigned offices can be incorporated as well as private areas which can be used when need be (Klingensmith, 2014).

In an article featured on the BBC by Ronald Alsop entitled The Victims of Open Offices are Pushing Back, the case of Microsoft is discussed. Microsoft has come up with office designs that allow for both privacy and collective working. Their offices are made such that they have individual doors, but when the need for an open space emerges, they simply open their doors and roll their desk chairs into a corridor they have named “the hallway of knowledge”. According to Microsoft, their employees complained of too much noise, lack of privacy such as when making phone calls, and visual distractions which collectively saw their performance and job satisfaction decrease.

This was the reason why they adopted the new office style that allows for both functions (Alsop, 2014). Evidently, the idea of the open office workspace is quite controversial. However, the downside of the open layout seems to weigh more. In my opinion, open office workspaces would not work in sensitive environments such as when one needs to think deeply. This is because visual distractions, ringing phones, movements, and other occurrences such as office loudmouths would hinder concentration.

In addition, there are chances of more noise and unethical practices such as use of office time to chat away. As such, it may require some alterations to it before it can be fully adopted as the best trend in office design.Conclusion As the discussion above reveals, office layout designers might be encountering a tough time, having been caught between opposers and proposers of open office workspaces. As is provided in the article summaries above, the open layout has advantages such as promoting collaboration.

Conversely, they also have disadvantages such as higher chances of distractions, lack of privacy, and an overall reduction in job satisfaction. In the light of these, it makes sense to state that while the idea might be a promising one, it needs to have some alterations made if it is to be wholly accepted.ReferencesAdams, S. (2013, May). “Why the open office fails, and a solution”, Forbes. Retrieved on 13 Feb, 2015 from http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2013/05/17/why-the-open-office-fails-and-a-solution/Alsop, R.

(2014, Sept.) “The Victims of Open Offices are Pushing Back”, BBC.com. Retrieved on 13 Feb, 2015 from http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20140911-open-office-victims-push-back Klingensmith, D. (2014). “, Open Office Space: How wall-less workspaces can help promote productivity and collaboration- and why some experts are critical”, NWTimes. Retrieved on 13 Feb, 2015 from http://www.nwitimes.com/business/jobs-and-employment/open-office-space-how-wall-less-workspaces-can-help-promote/article_9689aea6-2ee4-5418-a4dc-2b49eab2eafb.html