Are Open Office Spaces Good or Bad?

For all the talk a few years ago about the benefits of open offices — they facilitate collaboration and communication and make everyone equal, for example — some people are now backtracking. It turns out not everyone is thrilled with open offices because of the noise, the distractions, and the germs. Open offices may not be all they were billed to be, but does that mean organizations should go back to the more traditional, closed offices?

There’s no real answer to this question because the debate often focuses solely on the physical office space. But an office by itself is just architecture and a building. What really makes the difference is the people and the environment of the office. Open offices are thought to be more forward thinking, but just because a company switches to an open office doesn’t automatically make it a modern, future-proof organization. Likewise, an organization working in a closed office space isn’t automatically traditional and stodgy. An office is merely the bones of the company that must be supported with the right culture and environment.

The future of work isn’t really about office structure — it’s about providing each employee the resources and environment to do their job to the best of their ability. The workplace is changing to customize the experience for employees to create an environment that showcases how and where they want to work. If an employee feels more engaged and productive in a private workspace, an organization should provide that, and if an employee feels more engaged in an open space, an organization should be able to provide that. Therefore, the true question isn’t really if open offices are good or bad but rather if they are the right fit for each employee.

Jacob Morgan is a best-selling author, speaker, and futurist. His new book, The Employee Experience Advantage (Wiley, March 2017) analyzes over 250 global organizations to understand how to create a place where people genuinely want to show up to work. Subscribe to his newsletter or visit TheFutureOrganization.