Could the darling of the technology sector – the open-plan office – be besieged? Thirty-seven percent of employees say that an open office is distracting. This is revealed in Staples' annual workplace survey, which analyzed responses from 1,004 full-time employees and 200 office managers in the United States and Canada.
The general message of the survey was that employees now require privacy and their own space to do the job.
Is the Open Office plan dead?
Open-plan offices were once a big trend in office design, meant to foster collaboration and creativity. The Staples survey contradicts this sentiment, revealing that employees find that open floor plans lead to distractions and that they can even move people away from traditional offices.
As Modupe Akinola, Ph.D., associate professor of leadership and ethics at Columbia Business School, said in Staples press release about the investigation:
"The open office may have gone too far and could finally get in the way of itself, while employees in open offices are more likely to think that the culture and the environment of their are transparent, distractions – like the usual personal conversations of colleagues – have become inevitable. "
The study also found that 32% of employees spend all their time working in their own office. Fifty-seven percent of respondents believe that working remotely eliminates the distractions of working in a shared open-plan office.
Forty-three percent of employees surveyed said having the flexibility to work remotely is now a "must have."
For small businesses, the results of the Staples survey prove the importance and value of following the latest work practices and office trends in order to keep employees productive, happy and motivated.
80% of respondents believe that employers have a responsibility to keep their employees physically and mentally fit.
Office space plays a vital role in the well-being of workers. Providing employees with the freedom and flexibility to work from home in their own private work space without distractions, not only improves productivity within a small business, but can also boost morale, loyalty and job satisfaction. retention.
Photo via Shutterstock