A growing body of research suggests it’s time to end the era of open-office plans:
A 2002 longitudinal study of Canadian oil-and-gas-company employees who moved from a traditional office to an open one found that on every aspect measured, from feelings about the work environment to co-worker relationships to self-reported performance, employees were significantly less satisfied in the open office. One explanation for why this might be is that open offices prioritize communication and collaboration but sacrifice privacy.
In 1980, a group of psychology researchers published a study suggesting that this sacrifice might have unintended consequences. They found that “architectural privacy” (the ability to close one’s door, say) went hand in hand with a sense of “psychological privacy” (feeling “control over access to oneself or one’s group”). And a healthy dose of psychological privacy correlated with greater job satisfaction and performance. With a lack of privacy comes noise—the talking, typing, and even chewing of one’s co-workers. A 1998 study found that background noise, whether or not it included speech, impaired both memory and the ability to do mental arithmetic, while another study found that even music hindered performance.
There’s also the question of lighting. Open offices tend to cluster cubicles away from windows, and a forthcoming study shows that on workdays, employees without windows get an average of 47 fewer minutes of sleep than those with windows, and have worse sleep quality overall. Artificial light has its own downsides. One pair of researchers found that bright overhead light intensifies emotions, enhancing perceptions of aggression and sexiness—which could lead to a lack of focus during meetings if arguments get heated, or co-workers get overheated.
The Dish 