Do open plan offices really work? Part 3 From OPO to WFH.
June 6, 2017
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