Do open plan offices really work? Part 3 From OPO to WFH.

By Gonzalo López Martí – Creative director, etc / LMMiami.com

  • In my humble opinion, the open plan office is just a real estate gimmick.
  • You know, another of those misleading ad clichés such as, but not limited to:
  • Cozy bungalow w/great bones! (tiny shack in need of rebuilding from scratch).
  • Once-in-a-lifetime opp. Won’t last. Live the dream! (it’ll take you 30 years to dig yourself out of this money pit).
  • The OPO (as in open plan office) is another glass-half-full trick of the trade to apply lipstick to swine.
  • More employees more closely monitored in less square footage.
  • Real estate euphemism meets human resources drivel.
  • Talk about a Molotov cocktail of bovine manure.
  • I do concede, however, that the open plan office torpedoed old atavisms of professional pecking order.
  • Enjoying the peace & quiet of one’s own office used to be a sacred badge of achievement in the corporate world.
  • A corner office perched atop a centrally located skyscraper?
  • Career bliss.
  • I still maintain that, despite all the talk about collaboration and flattened hierarchies, OPOs erode productivity and beget disgruntled employees.
  • My guess: eventually the pendulum will swing in the other direction.
  • With a vengeance.
  • In the attempt to gain a little privacy, workers will not only expect their own secluded workspace.
  • They will demand it.
  • And they will add remoteness to the equation.
  • Thanks to mobile communications, the day is coming when we will all “telecommute”.
  • Pardon the 90s cliché: it is called WFH now.
  • As in Work From Home.*
  • If you ask me, employers should embrace WFH with both hands.
  • They have no other option.
  • Do you really believe you can persuade the GenZ to ride the subway back & forth to a cubicle every day?
  • Don’t fool yourself.
  • I tried and failed miserably.
  • Plus, why pay prohibitive rent in Manhattan or Brooklyn when your staff can telecommute from the exurbs?
  • Or from anywhere in the world.
  • Granted, distractions will never end though.
  • It is hard to pay attention during a conference call when you are on a beach in Costa Rica.

*Silicon Valley tends to be particularly lax about their staff’s whereabouts. The logic being that, as long as you have cell phone coverage and a high speed of internet connection, you can work no problem. There are exceptions though. Yahoo! and IBM cracked down on the practice. Rumor has it that, during a company-wide conference call, Marissa Mayer said something along the lines of “Yahoo will not pay you a salary while you stealthily work from home on your little side startup…” Hey Marissa, didn´t you want employees with entrepreneurial spirit? Well, be careful what you wish for.

-Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer and her decision to kill the company’s popular work-from-home policy: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-marissa-mayer-told-remote-employees-to-work-in-an-office–or-quit-2013-2

-IBM, a Pioneer of Remote Work, Calls Workers Back to the Office. Big Blue says move will improve collaboration and accelerate the pace of work: https://www.wsj.com/articles/ibm-a-pioneer-of-remote-work-calls-workers-back-to-the-office-1495108802

 

 

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