Any interior designer will tell you the same thing, but it’s impossible to understand until you experience it yourself: An office’s layout has a massive impact on the employees in it.
I say this because I, myself, have run the gamut of work environments, starting in a cubicle atmosphere and ending in a truly open workspace. What I’ve learned: that an open workspace enhances collaboration and helps me develop a deeper bond with my colleagues and my company.
How cubicle walls discourage collaboration
My story starts with my first corporate job, where the office atmosphere conformed to all the traditional tenets of workspace layout: assigned desks, private offices for managers, separate teams on separate floors, etc. I worked in a cubicle with gray walls; I had to stand on my toes to see my nearest neighbor.
For context, I’m 6’4”.
The layout promoted a heads-down work culture — my colleagues and I rarely collaborated because literal walls separated us. I felt disconnected from others as soon as I sat at my desk; it’s hard to develop meaningful friendships in that environment.
This atmosphere didn’t just impact my social life, but also negatively affected my work. For example, a client once noticed that my colleague and I were giving him different answers to the same question. We worked 50 feet from each other but didn’t know we were answering the same question until our client mentioned our numbers were different — because we never collaborated.
Even outside of this episode, the impact was noticeable. When faced with errors, I rarely had help troubleshooting; I often worried I was wasting time retracing my steps to find an error that someone else could locate quickly. In addition, I seldom solicited or received input on my slide decks until a draft was complete. When I came to forks in the road or had questions, I often guessed because I wasn’t able to get input when I needed it. Unsurprisingly, a lot of my guesses were wrong, so I typically had to make massive edits to these presentations.
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Don’t get me wrong, my coworkers were kind and helpful people, but our physical space and culture encouraged me to work alone instead of asking for help. Eventually, the stress of the work and the silo I inhabited became too much for me. I opted to find work elsewhere and eventually found Torrent Consulting.
Ironically, my old company moved to a more open floor plan after I left.
How an open workspace transformed my approach to business
At Torrent, I’ve realized how an open layout can enhance collaboration and change an office’s entire culture. Here, I’m able to get answers immediately when I have a question, instead of scheduling a meeting later in the week to discuss it. My colleagues and I can whiteboard solutions in the middle of the office on the fly. All of this is possible because my colleagues are physically accessible, instead of walled off.
This culture allowed me to develop deeper friendships with my colleagues at Torrent in my first month than I built with many coworkers at my last job — over the course of a year and a half. I’ve felt more dedicated to them, and my company as a whole, all thanks to a change in physical space.
Now, it’s definitely taken me time to adjust to an open office. I’ve made changes to my personal work style to maintain productivity in an open atmosphere (more on that coming in another blog soon) and learned the importance of finding quiet spaces — and good headphones — when I need them.
But the transition to an open office has reintroduced the human element to my work, for which I will gladly adjust my working style.
If you’re interested in other ways of enhancing collaboration in your business, read about how technology can facilitate collaboration for service teams in their everyday work.
