Open Space 2.0

It’s difficult to sell open space as a novel idea. Who still doesn’t wince at the image of an open-plan room with rows and rows of cubicles, each equipped with a computer, a phone and an L-shaped desk? You want piece and quiet? Put on headphones. You want to make a phone call? Cover your other ear with your hand and turn the volume up on your phone. In such an environment, privacy became a foreign concept, and self-expression was limited to putting up customized “motivational” posters on the cubicle walls. Why, then, is open space back in and why is Mark Zuckerberg boasting about Facebook moving into the “largest open floor plan in the world?” By Beata Socha Open space started to flourish in developed countries in the 1970s and 80s and the idea started to spread to developing economies. Proponents of the open office predicted that it would produce better inter- and intra-team communication, which would lead to increased sharing of task-relevant information, reduce workplace conflicts and, in turn, increase job satisfaction and motivation. Psychologists studying office arrangement and its effects on productivity have indeed found that employees working in open-plan offices spend far less time in formal meetings – most of their interchanges are ad hoc and informal, without decreasing efficiency. Still, over years of implementation by most large corporations across the globe, open-plan offices earned a good deal of criticism. They were lambasted for increasing noise and stress levels, the frequency of uncontrolled and unproductive interactions, thus impeding employees’ cognitive processes and lowering efficiency. “Cube farms” started to be seen as dehumanizing, while people working in this environment earned the unflattering moniker of “corporate drones.” Do it like Facebook [caption id="attachment_85732" align="alignleft" width="300"] Image: XPlan[/caption] Now, after a decade or two of being mocked as a hive-like contraption, open space is making a come-back. But it is a completely different space than what Mike Judge’s cult comedy “Office Space” ridiculed. It is no longer regular-shaped, monochromatic and boring. It has nothing in common with its 1980s counterpart. Open space is now colorful, interesting, environmentally-friendly and promotes individuality as well as interaction. The term “open space” has also undergone a major re-branding and repositioning to be associated with creativity, fun and teamwork. As is often the case, the trend came from US tech giants the likes of Apple, Google and Facebook. In the case of the world’s top-earning IT firms, cost-cutting is likely a secondary matter, as evidenced by the 3.5-hectare park planted on the rooftop of Facebook’s new HQ. These firms’ primary concern is to make their employees, some of the top brains in the industry, as comfortable as possible to coax out their creativity and genius. And they seem to strongly believe they can achieve that through modern and flexible open space. Facebook’s founder has even gone as far as to boast that it created “the largest open floor plan in the world.” Skeptics could argue that the reason why the tech business may be so much in favor of open-plan offices is that their predominantly male workforce runs a very low risk of overindulging in gossiping. Tech people are known for their professional zeal – there are few other topics they find equally interesting than their work, and often work-related hobbies. And that is exactly why open space is an ideal breeding ground for tech innovation. A general makeover But it isn’t just tech businesses that have been introducing, or reintroducing, open floor plans. In Poland, the trend is in fact still lagging behind. CBRE estimates that between 3 and 5 percent of tenants in Poland operate in flexible, open office space. “In the past, all offices were the same. First, there were only small rooms and long corridors, plus a giant conference room that could seat 50 people. Then open space was introduced and in many buildings almost the entire work area was arranged as open space,” said Łukasz Paryś, Director of Operations, Office Projects at Bouygues Immobilier Polska. “That is no longer the case. Now, about 20-30 percent of the space is closed. Desk sharing is also increasingly popular. If a company employs a large sales team who arrive at the office at 9 am for a briefing, [caption id="attachment_85727" align="alignright" width="300"] Image: EY[/caption] leave the office and then come back at 4 pm, it’s obvious they don’t need their desks all day long,” Paryś added. It was the consultancy firms that were first to realize there could be more to open space than meets the eye. “Advisory firms as well as those with dominant sales departments are those that decide on such solutions. You can’t see the trend taking off among law firms, though,” said Artur Winnicki, MRICS, CCIM, and board member of Reesco, an office construction and fit-out firm. Recently, consulting giant EY unveiled the results of a major makeover of its Warsaw offices. The project, dubbed “Workplace of the Future” was aimed at boosting employee efficiency as well as optimizing company costs, the firm stated. “EY studies showed that about 30-40 percent of the office space remains unused practically at any moment of the work day,” the company said. Same but different Naturally, modern open space has little to do with the rows of desks or cubicles in one large room. “Such spaces used to serve a single purpose: to provide working space for employees. Now, open floor plans serve entirely different functions – providing employees with the best possible conditions for spending time at work,” Winnicki explained. There are rows of desks, but there are also quiet work rooms and phone booths for people in need of privacy, meeting rooms of various sizes (for three, five or twenty people), as well as ample recreation areas. Last year, Skanska moved into its new open-plan office in Atrium 1, a “deep green” building it developed in Warsaw. The company decided to implement an open space with hot desking in its new HQ. “Not assigning individual desks to people lets us limit the number of desks and increase free space that can be arranged in a creative way. The areas we’ve designed support various types of activity. Those who need to concentrate, can use the quiet work area which features the largest number of desks – 50 – as well as stand-up desks with adjustable height. When we need to organize a teleconference or a formal meeting we can use one of 11 conference rooms of various sizes,” said Arkadiusz Rudzki, leasing and asset director at Skanska Property Poland. Y-centered   [caption id="attachment_85731" align="alignleft" width="300"] Image: EY[/caption] As to how employees see conversion to open space, Winnicki admitted that opinions varied in the polls his firm carried out. “From a clearly technical standpoint, employees didn’t see open space as superior to individual or two-person offices.” They do, however, see the advantages of open space in increasing efficiency. “The multipurpose nature of offices is an attempt to cater to different types of personalities in the workplace. Many of our clients’ employees see this attempt as successful,” he added. The concept of employees sharing one desk is an acquired taste, though. “It’s hard to offer a hot desk to an accountant, who deals with a ton of documents each day. It’s an entirely different story with sales people, who spend their working day traveling and do not need fixed workspace. But you have to get used to it. Putting your computer and personal things away at the end of the day is something that takes time before it becomes your second nature,” said Wojciech Kaczmarczyk, partner at Xplan, an office fit-out company. The often-cited ideology behind the return to open space, apart from cost-optimization, is that Gen-Y employees, who experienced internet from an early age, are much more open to collaboration and teamwork than cutthroat Gen-X individualists. “The efficient use of our offices is aimed at fostering creativity and at helping employees from different departments integrate and communicate,” said Agnieszka Maciejewska, personnel director at EY. Gen-Y professionals are also far less possessive of their space and don’t mind sharing things such as desks. “People entering the job market mainly care about being able to work from home. They also expect environmentally-friendly offices,” Maciejewska added. Newfound equality Sharing the same workspace with coworkers across all company echelons also makes the working environment egalitarian, which does wonders to employee morale. Colin Waddell, the head of Poland’s CBRE office, can often be spotted sitting in a quiet work area sharing the same space with a number of his subordinates. “Companies also want their space to be increasingly flexible, which corresponds to changes in management styles and company structure. Once, companies wanted to be located in the tallest building possible, now they prefer large horizontal spaces, which is related to the flattening of organizational structures and making them more horizontal these days. Sharing the same floor does wonders to company communication,” Paryś concluded.