Open Plan Offices Encourage Long Working Hours

08-12-2006

A study commissioned to identify key changes in the office working environment over the past four decades has uncovered a stark correlation between the growth in the number of open plan offices and the lengthening of worker's hours.

For those working in the 1970s, open plan offices and long working hours as characteristics of working life were only identified by 5% and 6% of respondents respectively. By the 1980s, both had doubled in significance (open plan offices at 13%, long working hours at 12%) apparently tracking each other. In the 1990s their growth exploded, with open plan offices being highlighted by 33% of respondents and long working hours by 22%.

In the current decade, the curve continues upwards, with open plan offices being recognised as the most significant characteristic of the modern workplace (53%) with long working hours following in second place (37%).

The relation between the characteristics seems clear, which leads to the question of whether open plan offices lead people to spend more time in the workplace? Does the fact that workers and their managers have a clear view of each other lead to pressures of "presenteeism"?

Or, conversely, does an open plan office lead to increased social interaction between colleagues, and therefore a desire to spend longer in the workplace? Or, perhaps, do the numerous and continual distractions of an open plan office mean that people are finding that their most productive work time is out of normal working hours, and are therefore arriving at the office earlier and staying later?

Dr Carsten Sørensen, London School of Economics, comments: "The move from individual offices to open-plan was a necessary step to enable better communication and through this speed up decisions. It made everyone visible and immediately accessible. It also made it clear to everyone who is at work and who is not. The fact the open-plan offices and long working hours follow each other is a reflection of increased pressure on information workers."

We are now at a stage where organisations fundamentally need to reconsider this arrangement as both customers and employees demand flexibility beyond that offered by the open plan office. Such new measures require managing outcome and not attendance. It critically requires mutual trust enabling flexible and distributed information work away from the office.

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