Stress at Work: Open-Plan Offices

Open-plan office layouts were the idea of ‘new wave’ management thinking to get employees more connected and face-to-face. The idea being that this created a better environment for innovation and creative thinking. People would be able to discuss their ideas with their colleagues without having to deal with the barriers caused by the cubicle layout of days gone by.

Experts now think that open-plan offices are actually detrimental to the office environment and can result in added stress instead of a more sociable and relaxed atmosphere. Studies have shown that while employees are more frequently talking, the conversational quality isn’t high. Most conversations are short and superficial. Researchers believe that this is because of the lack, or perceived lack, of privacy among co-workers. The barriers created by cubicle offices were mainly psychological rather than actually prohibitive.

The idea behind open-plan was to generate the kind of ‘water-cooler’ informality that can bring about greater cooperation and creative thinking. In some cases though, it has the exact opposite effect. Employees are still sneaking off to empty conference rooms or waiting to leave the office on a break before relaxing. Another component to the building of stress is the noise level. While there was certainly noise in previous office layouts, it was more subdued due to the private space of cubicles. In an open-plan, you are subjected much more to low-level background noise. This includes hushed chattering, the typing of keyboards, computer notifications dinging and people walking around, eating or drinking. This doesn’t seem like a huge deal. All offices have background noise.

However, studies have shown that when a group of clerical workers were subjected to low-level background noise they were much more likely to give up on difficult tasks after only a few attempts, were less likely to rearrange their desks to make themselves more comfortable and generally displayed a lack of motivational behaviour against a similar control group that were asked to work in silence. Strangely, both groups reported the same level of perceived stress, indicating that background-noise can be detrimental to motivation without workers even realising it.

Many people, especially those who are of a younger generation, will try to combat the background noise pollution with their own headphones. Some have argued that this creates the same amount of noise and distraction as background-level noise but the ability to control the noise seems to be the deciding factor. Some researchers posit that the background noise is such a stressful factor because it is outside of one individual’s control.

Another tenet of the ‘open-plan’ thinking is that employees will be more willing to help each other with problems and that this would increase productivity. However, research has shown that while those needing help are satisfied and can get on with their work, the employees supplying help can become more stressed and show a drop in work efficiency.

This is also on top of the likely chance that some co-workers will not get on very well, nor is it the ideal layout in case of workplace bullying. There are many reasons that can cause an open-plan office to negatively stress workers out. All of this being said though, there are some contradictory studies that show the opposite. Some offices show that workers increase in productivity, happiness and creativity when placed in an open-office environment.

The moral of the story here, is that it’s not so much a choice of either cubicles or open-plan, but each company is different. Depending on the size of the company, how it’s organised and what it’s trying to accomplish can all affect whether or not an open-plan office is the design for you.