Cubicles/Open Floor...Which is Best?

Forums: Life At Work, What Say Nothing, Cubicles, Open Floor
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I get some business mags and I see that Open floor corporate HG's are all the rage. I hear that millennials love them. The argument is that production is valued not real estate, and collaboration is where it is at.

I am skeptical about this being a good idea...many decades of corporate culture stuck with offices and cubes, I have to assume that this is because it was good for the corporation, presumably because more/better work gets done.

Personally I know that Balmer was removed at Microsoft in part because he did not believe in collaboration. I also know that my wife works at a fortune 500 company that has no intention of removing cubes because they think the system works.

What say you?

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Type: Discussion • Score: 1 • Views: 599 • Replies: 6

[+4] - jespah - 07/27/2014Open plan is LOUD. If employees have to do phone work at all it can be hard for people (even people with really good hearing) to hear details and nuances. I'm not a big fan of cubes but they do...

@hawkeye10,

Open plan is LOUD. If employees have to do phone work at all it can be hard for people (even people with really good hearing) to hear details and nuances. I'm not a big fan of cubes but they do muffle sound a bit, plus there's a bit of privacy.

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@jespah,

Quote:

Open plan is LOUD

I saw a comment by a person under a web article on this subject that open floor only works when the employees dont actually need to think to do their work. I heard another say that he gets most of his work done after most people leave for the day, because he needs to concentrate.
Another says he works from home as much as he can get away with so that he can actually get something done.

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@hawkeye10,

That's plausible. I have interviewed at places with open plan, and I absolutely put it into the minus column. Because even collaboration needs some quiet, and some thought behind it.

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but without a cubicle, where am i going to hang my

http://static.fjcdn.com/pictures/French_36defe_702449.gif

poster

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@djjd62,

If you are a millennial you have been trained that it is just you, a backpack, and temporarily held space. We dont believe in school lockers anymore.

It does not surprise me that young workers, people who have all their lives shared everything and who often cant stand to be alone, love open plan offices. I have to wonder though what if anything they get done with all that yakking (sorry collaborating) going on.

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@hawkeye10,

Quote:

The office cubicle might be one of the most potent symbols of modern atomization, segregating individuals inside vast honeycomb structures. But workers could come to miss those flimsy, chest-high partitions, as cost-cutting companies increasingly replace cubicles with communal areas that can accommodate more workers per square foot. Whether you call them "free address" floor plans or "nonterritorial offices," it's clear the open workspace is spreading beyond newsrooms and cool internet start-ups. Here, a guide:

Are open workspaces really on the rise?
Yes. About "70 percent" of workers now "inhabit open-plan offices," says Susan Cain at The New York Times. In these tough economic times, "average square feet per worker fell from 225 in 2010 to 176 in 2012," says Steve Yoder at The Fiscal Times. And the trend is only likely to accelerate: A whopping 97 percent of companies in 2011 said they "planned to implement one or more cost-saving measures relating to real estate," says Kelly Eggers at FINS Finance.

http://theweek.com/article/index/227010/is-the-office-cubicle-dead

maybe "millennials love it" is an excuse, that the real reason is corporations that are swimming in profits are too cheap to buy office space for their employees.

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Cubicles/Open Floor...Which is Best?

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