Offices vs. open space: deciding whether to tear down the walls or build them up isn't always an open-and-shut decision - Cover Story

HR Magazine, Sept, 2002 by Robert J. Grossman

However, if you take this tack you may need to take the responses you receive with a grain of salt. The office is a complex organism, with many interrelated forces--cultural, physical and psychological. To understand what's really happening, you sometimes have to read between the lines.

Workers' near-universal call for more privacy is an example. In surveys, workers' No. i complaint is lack of privacy; the top request is for a private office, no matter how small.

Grousing about privacy, however, often is a smoke screen. Such complaints sometimes involve nothing more than status. "We're working in an environment where vice presidents have been moved out of their private offices," Becker says. "They feel they've been devalued. But it's easier For them to complain about the noise than to admit to their real sentiments."

Still, whatever their reasons, aren't happy workers more productive? Not necessarily, says Becker. Sometimes an environment that's not the most personally comfortable does a better ob of enhancing group productivity.

"Creative tension can be healthy," Becker says. "People who are asked about privacy usually respond from a personal perspective. Even if a private office would make them more productive, it's not always the best option. When people discover that a hindrance of their personal productivity may help the team move along, they tend to accept the open office."

Brill counters that office design must satisfy both the needs of the organization and the individual. "You have to accommodate both--they're not tradeoffs," says Brill. "We have watched the physical environment go from private to open offices. But it doesn't increase interaction and doesn't make for an open organization. When you do a serious investigation, you discover ... it's really a myth."

He bristles at the suggestion that private office designs promote individual status over team performance. "The idea that status comes from the physical trappings of isolation, size and splendor is a kind of lunatic vision of what's important to a business. People get status from a whole series of channels. The big ones are good colleagues, challenging work and intelligent management."

Down the Road

When the dust settles, will private offices re-capture the turf they have ceded to cubicles in the past 25 years? Or will the partitions that divide cubicles be cast aside, opening offices even more dramatically?

Whatever the outcome, it's clear that HR, as monitor of culture and measurer of satisfaction, productivity, health and safety, needs to be involved.

"HR should be thinking broadly about the physical environment and how it impacts employee satisfaction and productivity," concludes Lisa Bender, vice president and director of FIR at the MITRE Corp., Bedford, Mass. "Space is a people issue. When decisions are made, we need to be in the middle, helping employees say what they need to do their job. We need to be advocates for having an inclusive, participative process."

Editor's note: Michael Brill passed away shortly before this issue went to press.