Photo credit: Gensler
Yahoo!’s decision to cancel its mobile work policy and require all employees to keep hours at a company office hit the news cycle like a ton of bricks.
Myriad challenges arise in open work spaces.
Thanks again to the Microsoft Global Workplace Strategies (GWS) team for allowing me to share their videos about the problems that arise in open offices! Here are four more. If this is the first of my posts about their videos you’ve checked out, you might want to see this earlier post for my favorite of the videos.
Erik Lucken 
Open plan offices have brought new meaning to the saying "whistle while you work."
The contemporary workplace is apparently on a diet. Much lauded in the national press as well as industry publications, you’d be challenged to find any article about office design that doesn’t mention increased density. Whether it’s eradicating private offices, tearing down cubicle walls, or drastically decreasing square footage/person allotments, how low can you go seems to be the newest measure of workplace design success.
Lisa Bottom 
I apologize for the long gap between my blogs on this subject…frankly, I have been distracted working on projects about distraction in the workplace! My fascination (some might call it an obsession) with workplace distractions is the result of surprising observations stemming from a study we did several years ago, looking at the work processes of two different organizations. One was a law firm, the other a bio-tech company. We wanted to know where employees did their focused concentration work. Each organization was full of knowledge workers, and the work setting provided for their focus work was individual offices with fully closing, wooden doors.
Erik Lucken 
With startling consistency, predictions of the future workplace envision open, densely populated office environments full of constant interaction, collaboration, and teamwork. In this vision of tomorrow, the cubicle and private office are extinct, and dynamic, barrier-free workplace layouts spur innovation and push employees to perform at their highest levels. That’s great if you’re an extrovert who feels comfortable spending the majority of the day interacting with colleagues, but for the estimated 25 percent* of the population who are introverts, that future workplace is a daunting prospect.
Copyright 2016, Gensler. All rights reserved. Privacy Statement & Cookie Policy
