Open plan offices have gained a lot of popularity in the last few decades. They can be great for improving collaboration between departments and encouraging a more relaxed work environment that boosts productivity. But there are some downsides to open plan offices that can cause big problems for your business. That doesn’t mean you should avoid open plan working, but you do need to know what the issues are so you can take steps to tackle them. These are some of the most common problems you will experience in an open plan office.
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Noise
There is a reason that the cubicle setup was so popular in offices for a long time. Cubicles gave you the privacy you needed and blocked out all of the noise from the rest of the people in the office. But in an open plan office, noise can be a problem and it quickly becomes a distraction. Rethinking your office design is the best way around this. Find a good interior fit out partner and reconsider how the office is laid out. Open plan doesn’t have to mean completely open. You can still use glass partitions between certain areas to help dampen out the noise. Creating some private workspaces is important too. When designing your office, always think about noise and how you can limit it.
Disputes Over Common Areas
In an open plan office, people are mixing more and sharing work areas more than they would in a standard office. Having this flexibility is great, but it can lead to disputes over common areas and who is responsible for them. Creating a schedule and sign in sheet for meeting rooms and private workspaces will deal with any conflict about usage of common areas. However, there may also be disputes about who is responsible for looking after them and keeping them clean and tidy etc. Using office cleaning professionals to deep clean the office is important, but you also need to set clear guidelines in the meantime. Whenever people are using common work spaces, make sure they understand it is their responsibility to leave them as they found them.
Office Gossip
Office gossip is always an issue but it’s more of a problem in open plan offices. People are mixing more and when everybody is sharing a space, it’s more tempting for people to get up from their desk and distract others. If you don’t get a handle on gossip early on, it spreads like wildfire and causes a lot of conflict around the office. Employers often make the mistake of waiting until the problem comes up before trying to resolve it. But the damage is already done by this point, so you need to put a zero-tolerance policy in place and make sure that your employees understand that. If there is an issue, call all involved parties into the office for a meeting and discuss it before it gets out of hand.
Open plan offices are great, but you need to tackle these problems if you want the model to work for your business.