Two researchers from Harvard Business School and Harvard University wanted to empirically test whether removing walls at a real-world workplace really does increase interactions between co-workers.

“To our knowledge, no prior study has directly measured the effect on actual interaction that results from removing spatial boundaries to create an open office environment,” Ethan S. Bernstein and Stephen Turban write in the paper.

To that end, they approached two multinational companies that were re-organizing their office spaces at the global headquarters, and enlisted small groups of employees for two studies.

For eight weeks before the office redesign and eight weeks afterward, the researchers tracked employees’ social interactions using sociometric badges and location using Bluetooth sensors.

This data was analyzed together with email and instant messaging info from the company’s servers to measure differences in how people were communicating with each other.

Across both experiments, employees’ social interactions in person decreased by a crazy 70 percent, while emails saw an uptick by roughly 20 to 50 percent.

So, instead of spending more time “collaborating” with co-workers in the sprawling new space where everyone could see them, people got their heads down and tried to preserve their privacy any way they could (hello, huge headphones).

According to these results, it appears that being forced into a more open-plan environment can make people switch from chatting to others in person to sending an email or using instant messaging instead.

As the team notes, it’s not automatically a negative thing, but it can certainly change work dynamics in an unexpected way.

It looks like this whole open-plan shtick needs more investigation.

According to the team, previous studies using surveys have shown that open-plan offices can have some negative psychological effects, reducing employee satisfaction, focus and their feelings of having privacy at work.

But since companies can save money on walls, doors and general floor space by cramming us all together, we’re not sure if open-plan trends are going away any time soon.

Words to Learn 相关词汇

【上升】shàngshēng uptick a rise or improvement in business activity, in mood, etc.

【噱头】xuètóu shtick a gimmick

来自哈佛商学院和哈佛大学的两名研究人员想通过实证检验知道，现实世界中的办公室如果没有了“墙”，是否真的能增进同事间的互动。

伊桑•S•伯恩斯坦和史蒂芬?图尔班在论文中写道：“据我们所知，没有任何先前的研究曾直接衡量过没有空间边界的开放式办公环境对实际互动的影响。”

为此，他们联系了两家正在重新规划全球总部办公空间的跨国公司，并征募了一小群公司职员来参与两项调查。

在公司重新设计办公室前的8周以及设计完办公室后的8周时间内，研究人员分别用社交计量仪和蓝牙传感器跟踪调查了职员的社交互动情况和互动位置。

研究人员分析了这部分数据以及来自公司服务器的电邮和即时通讯信息，以衡量人们彼此交流的前后差异。

在两次试验中，职员面对面的社交互动减少了70%之多，而发送的电邮数量增加了约20%到50%。

也就是说，在每个人都能看见自己的开阔办公空间里，人们不是花更多时间与同事“合作”，反而是埋头于自己的事情，试图用各种方式保护自己的隐私（比如头戴式大耳机）。

从结果看来，被迫在更开放的办公环境内工作，会让人们将面对面聊天改为用电子邮箱或即时通讯软件发信息。

研究团队指出，这不一定是坏事，但是肯定会以意想不到的方式改变工作气场。

看起来开放办公空间的噱头值得商榷。研究团队指出，先前的调查显示，开放式办公室会对职员的心理造成负面影响，降低职员满意度、注意力水平和职场私密感。

不过，因为大家聚在一起工作可以让公司省下墙壁、门和占地面积的钱，我们不确定开放式办公室这股风潮何时才会过去。

(Chinadaily.com.cn)