The Pandemic May Mean the End of the Open-Floor Office

[LovingA2andMI]

SAN FRANCISCO — The modern corporate office is renowned for open, collaborative work spaces, in-house coffee bars and standing desks with room for two giant computer monitors.

Soon, there may be a new must-have perk: the sneeze guard.

This plexiglass barrier that can be mounted on a desk is one of many ideas being mulled by employers as they contemplate a return to the workplace after coronavirus lockdowns. Their post-pandemic makeovers may include hand sanitizers built into desks that are positioned at 90-degree angles or that are enclosed by translucent plastic partitions; air filters that push air down and not up; outdoor gathering space to allow collaboration without viral transmission; and windows that actually open, for freer air flow.

The conversation about how to reconfigure the American workplace is taking place throughout the business world, from small start-ups to giant Wall Street firms. The design and furniture companies that have been hired for the makeovers say the virus may even be tilting workplaces back toward a concept they had been moving away from since the Mad Men era: privacy.

The question is whether any of the changes being contemplated will actually result in safer workplaces.

“We are not infectious disease experts, we are simply furniture people,” said Tracy D. Wymer, vice president for workplace at Knoll, a company that makes office furniture and has been engaged by anxious clients, including some of the country’s largest corporations, to come up with ways to make workplaces less of a health risk.

The actual disease experts say that a virus-free office environment is a pipe dream. Dr. Rajneesh Behal, an internal medicine physician and the chief quality officer of One Medical, a primary-care chain that recently held a webinar for businesses on how to reopen, said, “A core message is, do not expect your risk goes down to zero.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/04/health/coronavirus-office-makeover.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article

If a human cannot effectively work from home in most traditional office settings outside of restaurants, retail, auto repair, construction, manufacturing, etc -- then they need to grow up. Period. Your need to be "around people" is beyond high school. Stay home, get your work done and stop being like a kid at a playground.

This is going to be the future, for many days to come. Get over yourself and get to WORK!

The "Open Floor" corporate concept has always been BS. Always!

[Bev54]

1. Never liked the open floor concept

Had my own office that I could shut the door and shut out the noise.

[redstatebluegirl]

2. Excellent! I absolutely HATE the open floor office concept and so do most of my co-workers.

It has actually moved to research buildings, instead of each professor having their own closed lab space, they are full floor open designs where they are assigned a certain number of benches. It is nuts!

[ProfessorGAC]

3. As Someone Who Had Their Own Office...

...for 36 of my 42 career years, I always rejected that concept.
It was clear, that having an office was intended to be a status symbol from jump!
It was never about more efficient use of space.
It was a signal to lower ranking people that they were less important.
99.9% of people already know they rank lower than their boss. They don't need a systemic reminder on a daily basis.
To minimize space, floor to ceiling partitions with a door for everyone would require only a small incremental cost.
But, no.

[fleur-de-lisa]

4. I work for a very small company.

Most of my colleagues work from home. Those of us in the New Orleans office all have our individual offices with doors.

Ya' know what worries me? Our office is on the 13th floor of a high-rise building in downtown New Orleans. For security reasons, you can only walk down the stairs . . . they are locked at the bottom to prevent unauthorized visitors from entering. There are other firms located even higher than us, up to 32 floors.

How are we supposed to get to our respective floors without using the elevator? There is no way in hell I'm packing into a crowded elevator with strangers.

[SWBTATTReg]

5. The concept of open floor offices has been going away for some time...when companies started ...

discovering that workers could work from home just as effectively (in most cases), thus demand for office space has been dropping for some time.

No wonder rump is so edgy...what remains of his vaunted business model is falling to pieces all around him. He's been fired and doesn't even know it. I'm still waiting for him to try and bankrupt himself again but I don't know if he can do so again (just how many times can a business go bankrupt?).

[woodsprite]

6. IMO, the open office concept is used by many places to enable micromanagment of

their workforce. The talking points of going to an open office design to increase collaboration, team building, etc. is just that - talking points to try to sell the idea to their workforce and management who may not buy into it otherwise.

Can you tell I come from such an environment? I find it very distracting. I don't like to wear headphones all the time because I get headaches/earaches from them if I have them on too long. Maybe I'm a bit ADD, but since moving to such an environment, my productivity has been negatively impacted. Just before the quarantine, we were moved from our rather spacious open corners (so management can see what's on your monitor when they walk by) to a bull-pen room (13 people, each with 2 monitors and 1 to 2 systems with only about 12" between our mouse area and the next person's telephone). I was just totally shut down in that room. Couldn't concentrate worth anything. I turned my monitors to portrait and created a visual wall for myself which helped some. The bull pen was only supposed to be temporary during construction of slightly smaller 3 wall cubbies with lower walls.