What is an open space office? Open Space is: open space technology. Who is an open space office suitable for?

According to legend, open workplaces were invented by Potemkin. The statesman was dissatisfied with the laziness of the serfs, and therefore gave a decree on the special placement of outbuildings. They were erected in such a way that the manager could observe the work of each serf. However, open space gained widespread popularity only in the mid-20th century in America. In the 21st century, 90% of American workers work in this type of office. At the moment, open space is becoming more and more common in Russia. Despite their popularity, debates about their feasibility do not subside. Some believe that open workspaces promote corporate spirit, while others believe that they reduce employee productivity.

In some companies, employees are in principle not prohibited from having lunch directly at the office table, although this is questionable from a hygiene point of view and causes displeasure among colleagues who have lunch in the canteen, as well as among visitors (clients). How does this relate to the situation when organizing an open-space office ?

What is the result

When we open space for people to do the work that is most important to them, we never know exactly what will happen, but we can guarantee that the group will get the results they want when they enter the Open Space: 1.
All that is most important to them participants' questions will be raised.

2. All issues that will be raised by the participants will be put forward by the most qualified and capable of solving them participants, who themselves will be able to take the necessary steps in this direction.

3. In as short a time as one or two days, all the most important details, discussions, data, recommendations, conclusions, questions for future research and plans for immediate action will be documented in a comprehensive report completed, printed, and distributed to participants on time completion of their work.

4. If necessary, and if time permits, the overall content of the report materials can be reviewed and priorities can be set in a few hours even in the largest groups (hundreds of people).

5. After the event, all the results can be made available to the entire organization or community within a few days of the event, and thus all stakeholders can be involved in the process of discussion and implementation right away.

6. And such results can be planned and implemented faster than is possible with so-called large group interventions. It is literally possible to obtain them in a few days and weeks, where other approaches require months or many years.

The Open Space method works and allows people and work to move forward, but the bad news is that it may mean that things are done very differently than before. Desired things may appear, and those that are not desired may disappear, and sometimes vice versa. Overall, Open Space brings life back into the organization, and life into the organization.

The benefits of working in an open office

If you want to get from work not only a salary, but also some new experience and knowledge, then Open Space will definitely help with this. There are many colleagues around you who have been working much longer and have some valuable experience that is different from him. As for me, this is a great opportunity to learn from their experience and learn for free.

I adore my colleagues because... they are always ready to meet halfway and teach new things completely free of charge. By the way, I learned how to do various things quite well in PHP, and even worked as a freelancer a couple of times, using my new knowledge. With this example, I want to prove to you that an open office is the best platform for learning and gaining experience.

If you work closely in a team, an open office will make this much easier. For example, you can instantly discuss the most urgent issues on the go so that you can immediately begin completing important tasks. This will help you save half an hour to an hour of working time every day.

For new employees, such an office is especially beneficial, because it allows you to quickly remember all the employees, understand the role of each employee and his position in the team.

An open office motivates people to leave the office for lunch, which will certainly have a positive effect on the overall productivity of the employee, because... a change of environment during the day is necessary.

If you are a business owner, then the most important advantage of such an office for you will be the cost of renting workspace and maintenance. You can imagine that you have 10 employees who are united in work groups of 5 people. If you organized separate workspace for each group, you would have to rent two smaller rooms, but in terms of rental and maintenance costs it would be significantly more expensive.

Good example

An example of a well-planned open space is the Mars office in Moscow. In 2021, it received LEED Gold certification; the EcoStandard group acted as a consultant for certification.

Photo: Mars

The Mars office is an example of a successful combination of shared workspaces and other types of areas intended for relaxation or individual work. It also has a special room for cats and facilities for employees' dogs. Mars is one of the world's largest pet nutrition companies. A pet friendly office is an important aspect of a company’s corporate culture. Employees can bring their dogs any day of the week after receiving a special pet pass.

Photo: Mars

At Microsoft, some employees are located in the so-called. open-plan "neighborhoods" that also include rooms for private phone calls, solo work or team meetings. The rooms are located away from the main circulation areas of the office—hallways, reception areas, and general work areas—to minimize visual distractions. It is recommended to divide such spaces into two types of premises – available by advance reservation and on a “live” queue basis.

Photo: Microsoft

How to create an open space

Recommendations for arranging an office in open space style:

Provide each employee with comfortable working conditions: equip his workplace with modern technology, as well as provide the opportunity to work in comfortable humidity and temperature. Of course, it is impossible to provide each specialist with a separate air conditioner, so you will have to look for average options, not ideal, but suitable for the entire team.
Equip each workplace with point light sources, in addition to general lighting. There should be curtains or blinds on the windows; An anti-reflective coating, which preserves the vision of employees, would not hurt either.
Reduce noise level. To do this, you can upgrade the equipment, use soundproofing materials and other available means. The lower the sound load on an employee, the easier it is for him to perform his official duties - and therefore, generate income for his company.

Frequent mistakes in organizing an open space office

Can open space be called the optimal type of office arrangement? Provided that healthy and comfortable conditions are provided and there are areas for informal communication and individual work, perhaps yes. If the room is too noisy, stuffy, fussy and uncomfortable, and employees can only go out to smoke for relaxation, such an office will clearly not meet the principles of modern and optimal.

To ensure your open space is a safe, healthy and comfortable work environment, you need to avoid the most common mistakes that companies make:

lack of ability for employees to control environmental parameters (heating, ventilation and air conditioning).
presence of noisy equipment.
lack of noise reduction measures.
ill-conceived lighting.
irrational site planning.
poor visual design.
irrational combination of departments (for example, a noisy sales department and a concentrated accounting department).
excessive saving of space, creating a feeling of clutter.
lack of other areas for work and communication.

Photo: Unsplash

Disadvantages of working in an open office

If someone didn't know anything about what open offices look like.
When you work in a separate office, you are king and god there. If you are hot, you can open the window or turn on the air conditioner at full power, because no one else will feel cold except you. It became cold? Just turn off the air conditioner. It seems like a childish little thing, but when you work nine hours in an office, it starts to seem like a good bonus.

You can look at conversations differently, but noise always interferes with work. In general, this doesn’t bother me so much, because... I often talk on the phone with clients, which generates noise, but I can’t imagine what it’s like for software developers who work about 4 meters away from me.

Open Space itself encourages conversation, and this often leads to the spread of gossip. It is believed that this is relevant for women’s teams, but it also happens among men. And despite the fact that we previously wrote on our Zen channel, they infuriate me a little and have always infuriated me. I'm so conservative that people prefer to work at work, so gossip makes me a little sad. They waste their working time on the wrong things.

I haven’t worried about this topic for a long time, but at first it was terribly unusual to feel like you were in sight all the time. There are times when you are unwell and feel extremely tired and depressed. If you go to work on this day, then your working day in a separate office would be much easier and more enjoyable.

Life has forced me to love cleanliness, because I am allergic to dust, flowering plants, wool and woolen things, and animals. I am so allergic that when I come into close contact with people, they can feel if their cat is shedding in their house. And not all people like to clean their workplace, and dust tends to accumulate endlessly. Yes, the cleaners wash the floors, but they won’t wipe down the desktop, because... there is equipment and a lot of valuable things. Unfortunately, some colleagues won’t wipe down their desks either. Of course, you can start cleaning up and drag your colleagues into it, but here you need to have charisma and leadership qualities for everything to work out.

How to communicate most effectively at work? How to convey your message to the entire audience so that it is properly understood? About effective communication at work.

Recommendations for employees

Increasing comfort in a common space is a task not only for the manager, but also for the employees. Employees can use the following guidelines:

Each person can arrange a comfortable personal space themselves. To do this, you can get headphones, place photographs and favorite decorative trinkets on your table.
It is not recommended to eat at the workplace, or use perfume with a strong odor. The mixture of aromas may cause discomfort to neighbors in the room.
Even if the manager has not given special instructions, you must follow the general rules of politeness: speak more quietly, turn down the volume on the phone.

The joint efforts of the owner of the organization and employees will help make even an open space comfortable for work.

A little in defense of open space

— This workspace format became widespread in the mid-20th century in the United States. Today, up to 90% of American workers work in offices of this type.

Dmitry Arkhipov Head of Business Solutions Plantronics

In Russia and the CIS, open plan is also rapidly conquering the market. This can be explained primarily by savings. The fact is that when placing the same number of employees in an open space, without walls and separate offices, much less space is required. This significantly reduces the cost of renting or purchasing premises, as well as utility costs.

Another advantage of this choice is the increase in corporate spirit and strengthening of interpersonal connections among employees, which contributes to team unity and improvement of work processes. For example, a Bank of America study in which 90 employees wore sensors that recorded movements and tone of voice during conversations found that more sociable workers were more productive.

After the experiment, special breaks for communication were introduced, as a result of which the team’s productivity increased by 10%.

In general, the open space looks brighter and more modern, putting you in a working mood.

However, it should be noted that when located in an open space office, it can be much more difficult for employees to concentrate on tasks, because the level of background noise is significant. According to a 2021 study by Plantronics and global consulting firm Oxford Economics, only 1% of employees (down from 20% in 2015) say they are able to block out distractions and focus without taking special action. At the same time, 54% of managers believe that their employees have the necessary tools to minimize noise and bustle in the office, but only 29% of workers agree (compared to 41% in 2015).

75% of those surveyed said they need to go outside to concentrate, and 32% use headphones to block out environmental noise. And employees in the noisiest office environments are the most likely to quit within the next six months.

But even despite employees’ dissatisfaction with working conditions in open space offices, managers do not abandon this format because of its economic benefits. And in order to retain good specialists on staff, management is taking steps to modernize the office and create more flexible working conditions. I’ll tell you about the technologies and techniques used to improve employee comfort

Recommendations and tips for organizing an open-space office

Based on the pros and cons of an open office, every employer thinks about how to arrange such a workspace, leveling out its disadvantages and making the most of its advantages.

Our tips and recommendations will help with this:

Quartz lamps, regular wet cleaning and ventilation will help fight viruses and infections in a common room. In addition, it is important to monitor employees who decide not to take sick leave and continue to go to work even with a severe cough and other symptoms of illness.
A non-standard approach to the design of an open office can reduce employee stress and increase their comfort. Let it be bright and unusual! Yes, the employer may have to resort to the services of a designer, and this is an additional expense. But an original and at the same time convenient office will attract new applicants for vacant positions, raise the prestige of the company, and improve its image.
Remember that management must also be on equal terms with employees and be located on the same territory with them. Otherwise, you will have to forget about many of the advantages of an open-space office. The head of the department or unit located in this room must be together with his subordinates.
Half-measures in the form of light partitions will not save the situation, although in some cases they can be used to at least visually separate functional areas. For example, a place for receiving visitors or a meeting table.
It is necessary to immediately resolve conflicts that arise in an open office and take measures to ensure that the atmosphere in the team is friendly and positive.

Mistake 2: Darkness

Problem: in large rooms there is not enough natural light: if the windows are located only on one side, then employees on the opposite wall do not see the sun for 8 hours a day. Solution: An expensive solution was proposed by Frank Lloyd Wright at the Johnson Wax office. In the main room, light pours from the ceiling, passing through tree-like columns and creating soft, diffused lighting. But there is a more universal solution, which was used, for example, on the Google campus in Dublin: white screens were suspended from the ceiling. They hold electric and natural light, preventing it from scattering.

A dark ceiling with open communications absorbs a lot of light

The main room in the Johnson Wax office is the Great Workroom.

Too much noise

Many of us cannot work in noisy environments. Scientists at the University of Sydney found that about 50% of people who work in open spaces, and almost 60% of employees who sit at desks with partitions, are dissatisfied with audio privacy. And only 16% of personal account owners suffer from such problems.

Proponents of an office without walls believe that in an open space, interaction and communication between employees improves. But do they always talk only about work? Hardly. And brilliant ideas are rarely born when we chat about nothing.

If necessary, a person will work in a noisy room, but the final product will not be as high quality as if he worked in a separate office. It's a fact that we do better work when we're fully focused on it.

Selecting a location

Valentin Shchitov, service station
We were looking for premises with large floor areas in order to move from one floor to another as little as possible. We looked at different sites in Moscow that could provide premises of the required size, and assessed them based on the level of comfort, location and a whole range of other factors. It was very important for us to be able to make our own renovations in order to completely customize the space for ourselves. As a result, BC 1Zhukov was chosen from several finalists. It was there that we could create the office we wanted.

Of course, we did not immediately welcome the idea of moving from Paveletskaya to Polezhaevskaya, noticeably further from the city center. However, many found it convenient to travel along the MCC to Khoroshevo station; someone rented an apartment within walking distance from the office that was cheaper than before. We now have more secure parking spaces, and I always find a place for a car sharing car in the free parking lot around the building.

External Atrium of the business center

Open space what is it

The openspace office format was invented in the 1960s by Frank Duffy, an architecture student. Americans liked the new idea of organizing office space. During the period of the “industrial boom” in America, they decided to organize the work of clerks using the example of an assembly line: workers were seated at tables, like in a school, and the best employees who received promotions moved to their own offices. Also, the boss had his own personal space in the form of an office with an all-round view, and could fully control the work process.

Nowadays in the USA, more than 70% of offices operate in open space premises. In the CIS countries, this format appeared in the mid-1990s. Today it looks like an efficient, unified workspace for office workers.

Advantages of an open space office

Let's consider the advantages of working in an open space layout for managers and HR.

1. Ease of communication between staff. If an employee is always among his colleagues, then he simply has to communicate with others. This simplifies business processes and facilitates more efficient resolution of daily work issues.

2. Cost-effective. One large room requires less costs, unlike an office with separate rooms.

3. Work control. Management has the ability to observe what employees do, how much time they spend on certain tasks, how often they communicate and what they discuss.

4. Information content and openness. In an open space, all issues are discussed out loud and the entire project or company team is involved in this. Thus, employees are informed about the company's goals, the state of affairs, they have the opportunity to speak out and contribute to the development of the company.

5. No gossip. It’s quite difficult to gossip or get under your boss’s skin if there are other people around you all the time. That is why open space workplace creates obstacles to such unconstructive activities.

Disadvantages of an open space office

What are the negative aspects of working in such offices for managers and employees themselves?

1. Open spaces are noisy, and this is the main disadvantage of working in an open space. Sometimes such an office looks like one huge hive that does not shut up for a second. On the other hand, it is illogical to expect silence in a place where several dozen, or even hundreds of people have gathered at the same time. According to a study by Dutch scientists, 32% of office employees are annoyed by loud conversations of colleagues, and 30% are annoyed by constant phone calls.

2. Conflicts. And most likely, this will not be a working disagreement, but a struggle between a group of lovers of fresh air and opponents of drafts. Domestic quarrels can concern anything: how the blinds are lowered, where the missing handles go, and how many degrees the eternal source of quarrels—the air conditioner—should show. Yes, it's an endless story in a huge office.

3. Lack of personal space. Introverts will obviously feel psychologically uncomfortable in open space offices. But even if the employee is an extrovert, then sharing a workplace 5 days a week with a huge number of other people who hear your personal conversations and already know that you are allergic to seafood because you constantly order food to the office is not very comfortable.

4. Employees get sick more often. This happens very often in open spaces: after one employee falls ill with a viral infection, half of the office becomes infected and goes on sick leave. In Denmark, they even conducted a study according to which in openspace offices where more than 6 people worked, employees took sick leave 62% more often.

The Ultimate Question: How to keep OpenSpace noise to a minimum?

Even at the stage of planning the walls, we began to cut the space into small pieces, scattering meeting rooms between the working blocks, since they are solid from floor to ceiling and completely block the path of sound. Even the doors to adjacent meeting rooms were designed from different sides in order to separate the flow of people at the same time as much as possible. Workplaces have been moved away from walk-through areas: no one sits near the toilet or kitchen.

Indirect passages, space zoning

Cozy and varied meeting rooms are the most interesting and important thing we have done to improve work comfort. There are as many as 43 meeting rooms on three floors, which is 2.5 times more than in the previous office. This is where the designers got away with it! You can suddenly find yourself in a leather saddle in the Cowboy meeting room or sprawled across a soft felted wool chair in Oversize - we have our own stylized room for every clothing style.

Special booths for talking on the phone have significantly improved the situation; we placed 5 of 25 such booths on the tech floor. Everyone knows that the only thing worse than a loud voice in OpenSpace is a loud voice, distorted and amplified by the speaker. The perimeter booths are lined with soundproofing material—you can safely hold Zoom or Skype calls in them without threatening the mental health of your colleagues. There are also soft poufs there. Some booths can easily accommodate two people, so they are sometimes used for quick, confidential conversations.

Telephone booth on the 2nd floor

Telephone booth in the Atrium

All noisy rooms - kitchens, printer rooms, kicker areas - are separated from the workspace by doors, so that the entertainment of some does not interfere with the productive work of others. Even for technical support specialists to work with hardware, a separate room is provided so as not to rattle in the common space. The support department specialists call it “filling”.

The kicker playing area is also separated by always closed doors

We achieved the result we wanted: noise in the office is kept to a minimum. Guests are surprised that we don't have the typical Open Space buzz, and are doubly surprised when they learn that 300 people work on the floor.

But sometimes work requires special concentration, and you want to do it in complete silence and solitude. For such cases, we have two solutions.

Separate soundproofed rooms with network sockets, Wi-Fi, tables and chairs - you can lock yourself in there and calmly think about solving a problem for several hours. These are not bookable meeting rooms, but rooms for individual work in cases where even the breathing of a neighbor is distracting. There are 3 of these on the tech floor.

One Day Home Office - the idea was proposed by the guys from the business process automation department, and management launched a pilot, and then rolled out the program to all engineering positions in development. Once a week, according to a schedule agreed with the team lead, any engineer (and even sometimes the team lead) can work from home.

Room for individual work

It’s not for nothing that our office is called Lamoda Home - we wanted it to be cozy and comfortable, like home. And at home, a person with a laptop usually does not sit still all day, but moves between the sofa, armchair and kitchen table. To create the opportunity to also take a break from the main workplace inside the office, we designed special niches with soundproofing upholstery in the walls, where we installed sofas of different colors with plush coverings; it is very pleasant to lie on them.

Cozy sofas next to work areas

Soft area for coworking

Ottomans in quiet relaxation, there are also massage chairs and a capsule for sleeping

In large sofa areas, some teams even conduct stand-ups. Sofas with very high backs have also proven themselves very well: placed opposite each other, they create an isolated space for conversation inside, and outside they create an additional barrier to sounds if they are placed between teams as a separator.

High back sofas

Here the desktop website development team conducts stand-ups

How to create an open space

Open space, or open space, is the organization of a workspace according to the principle of openness: employees’ desks are either not separated from each other at all, or are separated by thin partitions of human height or shorter. The scheme came to American offices from prisons: this is how prisoners’ cells were placed there, which allowed guards to control the maximum area with minimal effort.

Open space in the office is a modern concept that allows you to minimize the cost of renting and maintaining the premises

There are two open space options:

With completely free internal space without any partitions or other means of delimitation. In this case, co-workers not only sit literally shoulder to shoulder (especially if the room is cramped), but can also change places, since neither tables nor computers are assigned to any of them

This type of open space is highly discouraged for implementation in countries where personal space is of great importance in the culture. Open space in its absolute meaning is completely unsuitable for reserved or not very sociable employees: when implementing the scheme, the employer must understand that there is almost a 100% probability of losing them

Completely open space

With partitions, low walls, banners and so on. Allows employees to maintain at least a partial sense of privacy, calm down and concentrate on work instead of watching others. This option is suitable for specialists who do not have a particular desire for communication, but is still unacceptable for closed people - with the introduction of “open space” they will have to look for a new job, since they are unlikely to be able to get used to the obviously unpleasant working conditions.

Open space with partitions

According to studies conducted in domestic conditions, more than half of the employees in a standard office are dissatisfied with the open space layout:

60% complain about increased noise levels from surrounding people and equipment;
55% - discomfort due to the lack of personal space and the inability to be alone with their thoughts;
53% - to unsatisfactory (too high or low) room temperature and other unfavorable and unregulated climatic conditions;
50% - for problems with sleep and concentration that appear with the accumulation of stress on the nervous system.

Based on the above, we can draw the following conclusions:

Open space is not suitable for organizing the work of people in creative professions and specialists engaged in intense mental work. Concentrating attention in an “open” office is impossible or requires too much effort from the employee, which will inevitably lead to professional burnout.
An open space is a good option for organizing people busy with routine office duties: processing information, receiving applications or making cold calls. Since in this case each individual employee is not unique and does not represent special value for the employer, the company owner does not risk anything even with serious staff turnover: you can always hire new ones.

Recommendations for arranging an office in open space style:

Provide each employee with comfortable working conditions: equip his workplace with modern technology, as well as provide the opportunity to work in comfortable humidity and temperature. Of course, it is impossible to provide each specialist with a separate air conditioner, so you will have to look for average options, not ideal, but suitable for the entire team.
Equip each workplace with point light sources, in addition to general lighting. There should be curtains or blinds on the windows; An anti-reflective coating, which preserves the vision of employees, would not hurt either.
Reduce noise level. To do this, you can upgrade the equipment, use soundproofing materials and other available means. The lower the sound load on an employee, the easier it is for him to perform his official duties - and therefore, generate income for his company.

What else can you do?

In addition to organizing open space, it is important not to forget about the correct and comfortable organization of each individual workplace: the ergonomics of the table, chair, monitor and computer, the level of lighting and optimal microclimate parameters. These factors must be taken into account in any type of office.
To control all office environmental factors, it is recommended to conduct an environmental assessment of work premises, which will identify problems (water and air quality, noise and vibration levels, lighting, electromagnetic fields, etc.).
To analyze the current situation, the development of the company and monitor the mood in the team, it is advisable to conduct periodic anonymous surveys of employees about their satisfaction with working conditions.

Organization

The idea itself arose a long time ago to monitor work on the lands of landowners, and belonged to Prince Potemkin. He was looking for a way to help cope with the laziness and lies of the serfs, who did not want to work at all and were engaged in theft. By placing all the outbuildings in the barnyard in such a way that they became visible to the manager, he achieved the desired result.

Only this idea was adopted for completely different purposes, and not by entrepreneurs, but by the penitentiary system. They began to build prison buildings to control prisoners. And only in the 1950s they began to use it in offices, as managers of large companies liked it.

Typically, employers equip workplaces with small partitions in order to at least somehow maintain the possibility of a sense of personal space. But there are also rooms where everything is common, without boundaries, and without even leaving the opportunity for employees to store personal belongings, since due to high turnover or due to lack of attachment to one place, the next day a person may simply end up at a different table and a computer.

Preliminary stage: collecting ideas

Preparations for the move began six months before moving things. Our contractor, IND Architects, provided the initial vision. After that, we asked all colleagues to express their wishes for the new office. All ideas were written down, ranked, and discussed by the entire office directly with the designers in open meetings. The designers and builders became involved only after each idea had been discussed and the final concept had emerged. List of the most frequent wishes collected from our colleagues

high noise barriers and movable partitions are needed;
need places for individual work;
we need sofas and pear chairs;
requires a lot of negotiations on the floor;
a meeting room for 50 people is needed;
We need a gathering space for 200 people;
soundproof telephone booths are needed;
the area with print printers should be closed to prevent noise;
the kitchen should be large, closed with doors for soundproofing and powerfully air-conditioned to prevent odors;
need more refrigerators;
need more microwaves;
we need coffee points on the floor, not just in the kitchen;
the kicker and table tennis should be in a separate room with soundproofing and ventilation;
need a gym;
need shower rooms;
We need completely enclosed toilet stalls, with maximum insulation;
you need to consider the placement of monitoring equipment in each team;
We need jobs for seconded employees from other locations.

The wishes and dreams are understandable, but not the simplest, however, we managed to bring almost everything into reality.

The Lamoda office is located on three floors, the tech departments live on the second

Why employees don’t like open spaces, and what to do if you can’t give up the open plan

Posted on 2014-01-23 15:36 by Valeratal

Office noise is the leading cause of employee dissatisfaction with their workplaces, according to a study published in November by the Center for the Study of the Built Environment at the University of Berkeley.

According to a study by the International Management Facility Association, 70% of employees in the United States work in open-space offices. And a very significant part of them do not like open spaces, reports Fast Company, citing a recent survey of its readers. iBusiness.ru gives five reasons why office workers have a bad attitude towards workplaces that are “open to all winds.”

Noise

Arrangement

“Before engaging designers, we always study connections within the team, patterns of interaction between people, and their work schedules,” says NAYADA Sales Director Galina Galkovskaya. “To do this, we communicate with executives, managers, and employees

Here it is important to take into account connections and contacts, to give the manager a place so that he can see his subordinates, but they have personal space.”

The manager's desk is usually placed at some distance, and it usually stands out in a slightly larger size, maybe from the same line as the employee desks, but of a different shape and shade. Sometimes it is raised to a slight elevation, sometimes it is separated by an almost transparent partition. “Partitions are our main strength,” says NAYADA Sales Director Galina Galkovskaya, “depending on the size of the company’s office and the specifics of its work, we offer different solutions.”

An office that can transform

Timur Nurutdinov, head of development of E-commerce platform
Our new premises have three floors, and one of them is completely occupied by IT specialists. Now developers, testers, analysts, projects and products are in one large space, but they do not sit at endless parallel rows of tables throughout the office area. Thanks to columns, non-standard angles and thoughtful placement of work stations, we created separate areas for each team. Essentially, offices, only without solid walls. This way, colleagues can quickly ask each other questions and solve complex problems. Moreover, due to the size of the entire room, such departmental work areas are quite distant from each other - colleagues see each other’s constant presence, and communication between teams becomes easier. But the feeling of an “anthill” does not arise.
Traditional walled cubicles for each group would be significantly more expensive. Yes, and there would be problems with flexibility - we are actively developing, teams are changing, so division into offices would quickly lose relevance. Now each team has enough space to sit at long tables with wide aisles between them. Mobile development even complained that they were too spacious and far apart from each other, so they had to hire more people for their teams (in fact, we now want to double these teams to solve product problems).
We drew the general floor plan with all the tech management, but at the same time we actively asked the opinions of our colleagues: some shared images, some offered ready-made ideas in essence, some expressed proposals from the design studio at a general meeting. The final version was not born the first time - we repeatedly changed the location of the tables, the purpose of the meeting rooms and the placement of departments. Now, thanks to the zonal distribution of open space, everyone knows where each department is located. At the same time, the space is planned in such a way that there will be no confusion with the expansion of the company.

Map of the 2nd floor, where the tech departments sit
Thanks to the active participation of colleagues and their ideas that arose in discussions with designers, we ended up with a very lively room. Despite the large space, there are almost no long boring walls, each area looks well-equipped, and it is clear that people are actively using it. At the same time, the entire room has a uniform and effective design. The glass walls separating the open spaces from the meeting rooms are covered with mirror and dichroic films that change color depending on the angle - the designers wanted to recreate the atmosphere of a fashion store with a bunch of fitting rooms and mirrors. By the way, at first it seemed to many that they were walking in a labyrinth, but then we got used to it and it became interesting.

Dichroic film looks like this (on a phone booth door)

Mistake 5. Impracticality

Problem: Work culture is changing rapidly, and a space that is not flexible enough to change may become unusable within 5-10 years of construction. This has already happened in the past: the building of the Central Economics and Mathematics Institute (CEMI) was built from 1966 to 1978, and during this time it became hopelessly outdated. The halls designed by the architect Pavlov for large lamp-based computers turned out to be unnecessary - by the end of the 70s, electronic computing equipment took up much less space. Solution: the halls intended for computers at CEMI were adapted into halls for seminars. However, the problem was never completely solved - the institute’s employees were freezing in these rooms, since they did not have normal heating.

Despite design errors, the CEMI building is recognized as a monument of Moscow modernism.

The benefits of openness

The first and main argument in favor of open spaces comes from management. It is the ease of control over employees that makes open space so attractive to management. In such an office you won’t be able to cheat with impunity. Colleagues and your boss can see what exactly you are doing at your computer - writing a report or mastering a new solitaire game.

The second advantage of densely populated offices is ease of communication between employees. Willy-nilly you will have to communicate with a colleague if you divide the space of one large table in half. In addition, in open space offices, all employees, as a rule, are well acquainted with each other, whereas in office seating, many are not aware of who is working behind the next wall, especially if we are talking about employees not of yours, but of an adjacent department. Meanwhile, lack of communication is one of the biggest obstacles to creating a friendly team; when one department does not really know what the other is doing and how busy the employees are, conflicts are inevitable.

How to protect yourself from gossip? Psychologist says: Lack of gossip. It’s quite difficult to shake the bones of one of your employees when he sits two meters from you and perfectly hears all conversations. Of course, in order to gossip from the heart, you can go out, but still, open space creates obstacles to slander.

Eye contact. You see how busy your colleagues or bosses are, and you can always choose a convenient moment to ask them or simply discuss current problems.

What was wrong with the old office?

The idea of moving did not come out of nowhere.
We loved the old office when we first moved into it. But the company grew, and we realized that the layout of the premises was not the most convenient for so many people, and it was forbidden to rebuild anything to suit ourselves. There were more employees, and at some point we simply no longer had enough space. The Tech block grew to 300 specialists: Information Technology and Data Analytics, who had to be housed on three and sometimes four floors. The meeting rooms were constantly busy, and there were no other places for conversations at all, so many communicated directly in open space. The IT infrastructure also required expansion: this was most clearly noticeable by how many extra wires were scattered throughout the premises. As the company grew, we began to host more and more events. And the only available conference room was designed for 300 people, and for any meetups it was necessary to rent it - even if only 30 participants showed up for the meeting.

We didn't like the canteen in the old office either. Let's face it, she was terrible. There were vending machines in the common areas, but there were clearly not enough of them, and the food there was so-so.

Some of the problems listed were somehow resolved by reaching an agreement with the landlord. But it was still clear that this was only a temporary measure. We needed more space tailored to our needs. This is a problem that does not have an ideal solution: it is obvious that it is impossible to find a site for 1000 employees that could be built from scratch to suit your wishes, within the Garden Ring and for a reasonable price.

Mistake 6. Too many people

Problem: large companies with 100-200 employees are trying to put all employees in one space. Solution: anthropologist Stanislav Drobyshevsky in the book “The Missing Link. Book 2. People” writes that the number of about 10-50 individuals is universal and inherent in us by evolution - this is exactly how many individuals were required for survival in prehistoric times. The optimal number of people in one room is 12-15 people. In a situation where it is not possible to seat everyone in small spaces, height differences come to the rescue - they visually separate large areas into smaller ones. For example, David Chipperfield used this technique when designing the BBC office in Scotland.

The atrium space becomes more proportionate to a person when it is divided into small segments that are at different heights.

Examples of the most popular rules for working in one Open Space office

1. Loud calls (ringtones) on mobile phones.

It would seem that this is the most obvious and distracting “time sink”. Nevertheless, it is still found in a huge number of companies. All you need to do is agree to set your phone to vibrate when you enter your office or Open Space.

Moreover, this “time sink” appears even more often when an employee leaves and leaves his mobile phone at the workplace. For some reason, it is at these moments that the employee begins to receive calls from his mother or wife, who immediately call back again, waiting for an answer. However, it is not always convenient to take your phone with you. Therefore, it can be agreed that anyone can turn off a mobile phone left by someone.

However, sometimes this is considered too harsh a rule, and it does not suit every corporate culture. Therefore, you can agree that any colleague answers the call and writes down the information received on a sticky note.

2. “The chatter of others is not relevant.” Communication not related to work.

The next mistake that can often be found in a shared workspace is discussing non-work issues, which distracts colleagues. This rule applies both to communication over the phone and, in principle, to any communication. Do you want to discuss yesterday's match? Please, to the kitchen!

However, distracting conversations are not always unrelated to work. They often relate to work-related issues that are not relevant to other employees.

3. Negotiations in the workplace that do not concern others sitting in the office.

Negotiations with each other that do not concern the rest of those sitting in the office are conducted only in the meeting rooms. Yes, that’s exactly what meeting rooms were invented for.

However, often you need to talk on the phone or quickly hold a work meeting on site, but it is important to maintain a smooth work background.

But sometimes even for small negotiations you need to go into the meeting room. For example, this applies to negotiations with external contractors. Strangers always first of all distract and disturb people sitting in the office; this is how the collective consciousness has been structured since ancient times. If possible, we do not invite outsiders into the office for negotiations, thereby distracting our colleagues - we use only meeting rooms for these meetings

4. We coordinate our plans with each other. Any internal non-urgent meeting is first scheduled using the Outlook calendar at a time that is convenient for everyone.

Particular attention should be paid to invitations to meetings. Often we have to watch how one employee shouts to another across the entire Open Space something like:. - Wow! Can you give me five minutes now?

- Wow! Can you give me five minutes now?

- I can’t!

- When will you be able to?

- I’ll tell you in five minutes!

- Okay, I'll ask in five minutes!

And this can be repeated several times. Lack of culture, of course, but since it occurs, then let's fight it.

5. Swearing, showdowns, negativity.

The common space is a place for positivity and drive. We tend to air out negative moods on the street. Anyone can ask a “negative person” to go out for a walk for 5-10 minutes.

This is a very important rule, mandatory for many Russian offices and Open Space. Unfortunately, the level of culture in many Russian companies allows people to sort things out in front of everyone.

This, of course, will unfocus and confuse everyone sitting in the office. All employees must be made responsible for this productive atmosphere so that everyone has the right to demand compliance with this rule...

6. Lack of fresh air, incorrectly adjusted air conditioning (one is cold, the other is hot).

In addition to emotional comfort, physical comfort is also important. Employees' work is negatively affected, for example, by a lack of fresh air or too hot or too cold room temperatures.

These issues are always the topic of intense negotiations at the sessions. Indeed, one is hot, the other is cold

However, it is always possible to agree if everyone understands the importance of these rules for productive teamwork.

However, if we touch on the topic of health, the most common is this typical mistake with a very simple rule.

7. Entire epidemics of employees in the winter due to the fact that someone, in agreement with colleagues, came to work sick and worked all day “I can’t.”

It's simple. Employees should get sick at home so as not to cause epidemics within the office.

Photo: facebook.com

How to increase employee productivity in an open space?

A manager can mitigate the disadvantages of open space by using the following recommendations:

Diverse workspace . It is not recommended to standardize jobs, because each employee has his own individual needs. Some places need to be well insulated; small partitions are placed between other tables. The employee can choose the location that best suits his needs.
Proper placement of common areas . Jobs alone will not be enough to solve everyday problems. It is also necessary to install a large table for joint discussions, provide a relaxation room, and a dining area. All these rooms should be in close proximity to the main work space.
No high partitions . It seems that installing high partitions will solve the issue of personal space. However, this is a misconception. Employees working behind “high walls” will feel like they are alone in the room. This will increase the noise level. Workers in such conditions do not maintain silence and talk loudly.
Approval of rules of conduct . Rules may include a ban on loud conversations and music. Employees should be encouraged to use internal chat more often. You can set a special signal that the employee does not need to be disturbed at the moment.
More plants . Living vegetation in the workplace has been proven to reduce stress levels, increase productivity and focus on work tasks, and create a positive atmosphere.
Placement of executive workplaces in a common space . As a rule, managers are located in a separate office. However, this is not an entirely correct policy. Firstly, the manager will not be able to fully control the work of his employees, and secondly, he will be cut off from the team and will not be able to promptly identify the weaknesses of the work process.

The manager must be interested in the truthful opinions of his employees in order to introduce innovations in accordance with the real needs of the team.

Study: Employees in noisy offices are more likely to quit within six months

Only 1% of employees now say they can cope with distractions in the office, marking a sharp drop in this figure since 2015;

Millennials are less satisfied with office space layouts than older colleagues

10 July 2021, Moscow - Open offices are designed to improve employee collaboration, but a new study from Oxford Economics, commissioned by audio innovator Plantronics, finds that the noise problem in open offices has reached epidemic proportions. Conditions have worsened significantly since the previous Oxford Economics survey in 2015, according to the findings.

How you can get rid of the biggest disadvantages of open offices while maintaining all the advantages

Also an open-type office, but with well-thought-out partitions. As for me, this is a much more convenient option. Yes, the partitions are not high, but they will suppress excess noise,

Open office of Sberbank.
By the way, pay attention to the high glass partitions. It seems to me that banks were among the first to understand not only the advantages of an open office, but also its disadvantages. This is where I most often notice the presence of partially transparent partitions between employees. These partitions will help get rid of excess noise, which significantly increases the risk of errors and increases the degree of employee fatigue. At the same time, the employees themselves remain within sight of each other, and if necessary, they can get together as quickly as possible to discuss urgent issues.

Advantages of open-space offices

Cost-effective – an open floor plan allows you to accommodate more staff and reduce rental costs.
Employees work in full view of each other. They do not have the opportunity to retire to discuss various news that disrupt the work rhythm. There is no reason for management to worry about staff wasting their time. There is a good working atmosphere here.
There is no queue at the official's door. Everyone can see how seriously the manager is engaged in the conversation and when is the best time to approach him. That is, the time for resolving issues is reduced.
The team is always up to date with the latest events of the company. Employees coordinate their actions faster and make the right decisions.

Cost-effectiveness, practicality and efficiency of open-space offices contribute to the success of each employee and the development of the business as a whole.