Out Of The Box

Open-plan offices replaced the soulless cubicles in the Asia-Pacific region. Now the no-wall workplace is having its bubble-burst moment. Is an ideal workspace really a myth?

- Pooja Singh

It started with sprawling floors with no walls and cubicles. Long tables came marching in, making everyone, from junior to senior, sit shoulder to shoulder. More collaboration will happen. More ideas will sprout. Productivity will skyrocket. Outsiders will applaud the energy bursting in the office.

That’s how the idea of open-plan offices was sold to the world decades ago. According to a 2010 study by the US based International Facility Management Association, almost 70 percent people worked in an office with either no walls or low walls. Giants like Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, and other startups have made the open-plan the epitome of a productive office. The $20 billion unicorn WeWork flourished on the principle that if people are in a shared space, they will network more. But do they?

LET IT BE KNOWN

In an open-plan office, one can hear the sound of heavy fingers tapping away at a keyboard from a corner, or know who is having a tough time convincing a client. In other words, there’s seldom any privacy, and often plenty of noise. “I try to tune people out by putting on noise-cancelling earphones. All that chatter interrupts my flow of thoughts. It’s uninspiring. It kills epiphanies,” says Nicole Wee, a young writer who works with a startup in Malaysia.

Such spaces are not good for collaboration either, the very reason they are promoted for. A 2018 July study by Harvard University’s business school found that open offices reduce face to-face interaction by 70 percent and increase email and messaging by almost 50 percent. Open offices, the researchers wrote, tend to be “overstimulating”. Too many people mean too much information, too many distractions, too many people walking around — all of which “appears to have the perverse outcome of reducing rather than increasing productive interaction.”

PEACE COMES AT A COST