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The open plan office is not a new concept. In the 19th century offices were felt to be more productive if they were designed as large open spaces as these were seen as promoting an efficient flow of work for clerical operations in a similar manner to a factory, although cellular offices were provided for management. By the 1960s, the 'human relations' philosophy of management emphasised the importance of communication and employee participation. These were seen to be facilitated by open plan offices.

The open plan office is now viewed as the norm in the UK. A national survey of office occupation, commissioned by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors1 in 1997 revealed that 45% of respondents had more than 75% of their offices as open plan space and 68% had more than half their offices as open plan space.

However office work and office workers are far from homogenous. Offices have to accommodate widely differing roles from the managing director to the telesales operative, and to support tasks requiring concentration, creativity, isolation or integration. They also have to cater for individual physiology and psychology.

One size of open plan does not fit all, an obvious message and yet one that many designers forget, even though they themselves probably occupy an open plan office and probably complain about it too.

This article looks at the philosophy of open plan and what it sets out to achieve. It highlights some of the principles that you should bear in mind when designing for what might appear to be a simple space but which lies at the heart of many people's dissatisfaction with their working environment. And it reminds designers that their challenge is to adopt a people centred approach to their designs, and possibly the best place to start to understand what this means is to take a look at themselves.

Why is open plan considered a good thing?
Open plan working is seen as a means of reducing property costs through savings in space requirements. Minimising the number of walls and doorways also reduces construction costs and probably makes it easier to install heating, lighting and ventilation systems. In organisational terms open plan is perceived as a means of enhancing communication and collaborative team working, and a demonstration of a move towards a flatter hierarchy. Finally it is often a response to the introduction of so called 'new ways of working' such as homeworking, accompanied by hot-desking or hotelling which demand a more creative use of office space.

The human element
Asking occupants what they think of open plan and its impact on their work performance within staff surveys often provokes a reaction.

Take a typical day at the office. Our office worker comes in with a report to finish by lunchtime. He settles down at his desk in the open plan office but is constantly distracted by the ringing of his colleagues' phones. He is irritated further by a noisy team meeting taking place at the other end of the office.

The heat is particularly unbearable today and it feels stuffy giving him a headache. But there is nothing he can do about it, or so he has been told.

The glare from the overhead light on his screen is also very annoying but the lights are not individually controllable and if he turns his section off, his neighbour sitting in a dark corner turns it on again. Eventually he finishes the report late and takes it over to his manager who has her own enclosed office at the building perimeter complete with a view, her own thermostat to adjust, and a task light.

  Of course not all open plan offices provide a bad working environment and not all cellular offices provide a good one. Ours is an extreme example – but it illustrates some of the issues that can arise for occupants of open plan offices and their impact. Many of these issues are present in any shared office space but they are often compounded by the larger scale of an open plan setting.

A major cause of complaint about open plan offices is noise. In occupant surveys we have undertaken it has been cited as causing stress and even depression. It is particularly distracting when complex tasks are being carried out. However paradoxically, it can also be unsettling to work in an open plan environment deemed to be too quiet, where the slightest disturbance stands out above the lack of background noise. And in some instances noise can act as motivation for those doing mundane work.

People report that they cannot concentrate or hold private conversations because of the distraction caused by neighbours and phones or just the general noise from conversations and office equipment elsewhere in the office.

Without a door to shut a quick solution is acoustic partitions, although these disrupt sight lines, block off daylight and can affect ventilation strategies. However with care, noisy activities can be located outside the occupied space altogether or positioned together in an area that can be treated separately.

Strategies to limit phone noise can be adopted, for example quieter ring tones or lights. It can also be helpful to raise awareness amongst occupants of the impact of noisy behaviour on colleagues for instance by introducing office protocols about where meetings should take place and providing additional spaces to facilitate these.

The open plan office is not designed for privacy although in practical terms everyone requires this occasionally either for concentrated work or personal issues. Less privacy is often equated with a reduced feeling of control and a recognition of this by providing quiet or 'hideaway space' where staff can make a phone call or work without interruption shows that staff are valued as individuals with their own personal needs.

Open plan offices form circulation routes, reducing privacy and increasing disturbance around desks. This could be addressed by paying attention to the location of areas that are frequently visited and designating allotted routes that avoid the main seating areas.

The effects of environmental conditions - thermal and visual comfort, and indoor air quality – on satisfaction and performance have been well documented and are relevant to both cellular and open plan offices. The difference is in the amount of control individuals have or are perceived to have, over these conditions to suit their personal and work needs. Personal control has been found to be a key issue in achieving occupant satisfaction².

Attention needs to be paid to hvac system zoning and the location of thermostats so that they are representative of the space being controlled and relate to people working in a similar manner.

The labelling of controls is also important so that occupants know how to make themselves hotter or colder or to obtain more fresh air and the area over which they have control.

Problems can arise from the very flexibility provided by open plan as changes to layout can be made easily for example more staff are moved in than the space and services were originally designed for, or a kitchen area is added without adequate provision being made for extraction and ventilation. The facilities manager should be aware of any limitations created by services systems.

Inability to control lighting in open plan spaces can also be a major source of frustration and disagreements between colleagues. Individual control can be difficult due to the switching arrangements but this can be remedied somewhat by the allocation of task lighting or in some circumstances the ability to remove lamps from multi-lamped fittings.

While glare from light fittings can be more readily reduced by their appropriate selection and spacing, the control of glare from daylight relies on the use of blinds. Those seated in the centre of the space may receive inadequate daylight if those near the windows have closed their blinds. Also they may be affected by blinds that are some distance away due to aspects of the layout, which leave them unable to be at right angles to all those windows to which they are exposed.

  In many open plan offices once a blind is down it tends to be left down all day even though it may not be needed unless someone takes responsibility/ownership for its use. It is also more difficult to ensure that all those located in an open plan office have an external view. If someone is unable to attain this then an external view can be provided in the common spaces or relaxation areas.

How does open plan impact on the way people work?
One of the great arguments made in favour of open plan working is that it brings about improved communication. The assumption is that visual accessibility and physical proximity will create opportunities for face to face conversation and facilitate information sharing.

Some occupants do see open plan as permitting greater access to colleagues and providing increased opportunities for interaction and information sharing through overhearing work conversations.

However others feel that communication is constrained by open plan rather than supported. The fear of disturbing co-workers and lack of privacy inhibits much of the social chat that is so important for creating organisational commitment, the glue that holds an organisation together.

Informal ad hoc work meetings by desks are similarly restricted out of consideration for the noise these create. In the course of our research people moving to open plan offices have reported that they communicate less than before because of these restrictions. One solution is to provide adequate communal facilities away from the open plan area.

It is assumed that as the physical barriers between people are reduced a greater sense of team cohesiveness results making teamworking easier.

However teamworking does require some degree of privacy to ensure its success. The erection of barriers around teams provides a boundary that reinforces the feeling of being a unit apart, and allows privacy for the group to build its own norms and culture and develop a sense of belonging. In open plan areas barriers can be provided by partitions or often by workers erecting their own from files or books arranged along the front and sides of desks. Unfortunately these barriers can often be so high that they in fact result in reduced interaction with colleagues outside of the team.

Although open plan offices offer the potential for flexible layouts to accommodate frequently changing project teams, in practice many remain unaltered as moving workstations, partitions or services is seen as too onerous a task to undertake unless absolutely necessary. The provision of team rooms and informal meeting areas away from the open plan office space can be used instead to provide a valuable support for teamwork by giving the team a base in which to interact.

Open plan layouts can often affect staff/management relationships. Placing all workers, including managers and directors in an open plan space removes the status markers associated with the allocation of cellular offices and reinforces an organisation's support for the newer, flatter hierarchies. Some open plan offices have done away with cellular offices altogether, even for those at director level, to increase accessibility.

This is appreciated by many employees who feel there is less of an 'us and them situation', although sometimes they can feel too much 'under the boss's eye'. It does bring other implications in reducing opportunities for privacy and confidentiality particularly in performance management situations. Managers have described to us how they need to sidle up to a member of staff by the coffee machine or in the corridor because it is so difficult to have a quiet word with a member of staff in the normal office environment without everyone else in the office knowing what is going on. This situation can be alleviated by the provision of adequate meeting rooms, provided that they are acoustically sound as the protection of four walls may falsely give rise to a feeling of privacy.

One of the keys to motivating a workforce is instilling a sense of appreciation, a feeling that the organisation values you as an individual. A manager can feel demotivated by having his sense of status removed with the loss of the marker of a cellular office.

Even a client or customer can feel that his custom is not appreciated when he attends a meeting held, as frequently happens, not in a meeting room or private office but around a table in an open plan area. In the absence of other signs, such as an enclosed office, proximity to a window is seen as a perk and status is often ascribed to a window seat.

Staff need opportunities to express their individuality by personalising their space but this is difficult within open plan offices. There are few walls for noticeboards or pinboards, and because of the increased visibility in an open plan office the company often prefers to create an overall impression of uniformity and orderliness.

Key design lessons
Research by Leaman and Bordass³ found that perceptions of productivity are higher in smaller workgroups, and that given a choice most employees will choose their own room or a small work group with colleagues. Other research by Canter⁴ supports this preference for sharing with a small group – the ideal being two to seven people – as offering the best compromise between accessibility and privacy.

However given that open plan is likely to stay with us, both for economic and practical reasons, it is important that attention is given to the effective design of open plan space. This should take into account the physical, psychological and cultural needs of the organisation and the staff who work there.

The factfile points provide a checklist of some of the key issues that should be taken into account by services engineers.

It should be noted however that any office solution will only work if it takes a holistic view of the individual, team and organisational requirements and if it is to be a sustainable solution is able to adapt to a variety of processes, people and tasks.