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Speaker 1: Welcome to How I Work, a show about the tactics

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Speaker 1: used by leading innovators to get so much out of

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Speaker 1: their day. I'm your host, doctor Amantha Imber. I'm an

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Speaker 1: organizational psychologist, the CEO of Inventium, and I'm obsessed with

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Speaker 1: finding ways to optimize my workday. Today's show is another

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Speaker 1: mini episode where I share some interesting research about how you.

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Speaker 2: Might be able to improve the way you work.

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Speaker 1: So I work in an open plan office at Inventium,

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Speaker 1: the innovation consultancy that I head up. Our Melbourne office

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Speaker 1: consists of two long, custom made wooden desks on which

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Speaker 1: staff cluster around with their MacBooks. Natural light streams in

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Speaker 1: from our four meter high windows, plants hang from the ceiling,

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Speaker 1: and patches of graffiti coat the walls.

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Speaker 2: Which is all good in theory, except for when you

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Speaker 2: actually want to work. Now.

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Speaker 1: When I sat down to research this episode, I did

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Speaker 1: that from my home office because I find it almost

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Speaker 1: impossible to do deep focused work.

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Speaker 2: From my real office.

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Speaker 1: When I try to do this kind of work in

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Speaker 1: the actual office, I'm constantly interrupted and my time becomes reactive,

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Speaker 1: reacting to other people's questions, needs and requests.

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Speaker 2: But when sitting across the desk from my teammates. It's

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Speaker 2: kind of hard not to fall into a pattern of

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Speaker 2: constant interruption. Now, as a general.

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Speaker 1: Rule, architects and bosses alike salivate over open plan offices

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Speaker 1: because they look so hip and creative, and if your

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Speaker 1: company is a fast growth tech startup, then an open

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Speaker 1: plan office is kind of par for the course. Aspirational

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Speaker 1: images of table tennis tables used as desks, colorful footballs

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Speaker 1: posing as chairs, and weird things hanging from the ceilings

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Speaker 1: kind of fill our mind when we think about an

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Speaker 1: open plan office. But open plan offices are not all

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Speaker 1: fun and games. In fact, research has shown the there

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Speaker 1: is a dark side to the open plan office.

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Speaker 2: Now.

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Speaker 1: Kind of counterintuitively, some researchers found that face to face

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Speaker 1: interactions actually decrease in open plan offices. So researchers from

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Speaker 1: Harvard University and Harvard Business School tracked the communication of

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Speaker 1: fifty two employees at a Fortune five hundred company. When

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Speaker 1: those participants shifted from a cubicle environment to an open

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Speaker 1: plan office, employees spent seventy three percent less time interacting

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Speaker 1: with their workmates face to face, and meanwhile, their use

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Speaker 1: of email to communicate with coworkers jumped up by sixty

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Speaker 1: seven percent. These results are surprising considering that one of

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Speaker 1: the so called benefits of an open plan is increased collaboration. Now,

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Speaker 1: one of the reasons driving the decrease in face to

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Speaker 1: face communication in an open plan environment is the lack

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Speaker 1: of privacy. The majority of people don't want to have

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Speaker 1: entire conversations overheard, so it becomes easier to resort to

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Speaker 1: email or instant messenger. And it turns out that employees

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Speaker 1: are generally less satisfied in open plan officers, despite the

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Speaker 1: fact that they are often talked about as being a

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Speaker 1: more appealing alternative to cubicles or officers. So research published

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Speaker 1: in the Journal of Environmental Psychology found that the negative

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Speaker 1: aspects of open plan, including the lack of privacy and

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Speaker 1: disruptive noise levels, outweighed the benefits such as ease of

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Speaker 1: interaction and Professor Ann Richardson and her colleagues from New

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Speaker 1: Zealand conducted a review of all the research published between

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Speaker 1: two thousand and twenty seventeen into open plan environments.

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Speaker 2: They found that open plan officers actually.

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Speaker 1: Have negative health effects on workers, so compared to individual officers,

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Speaker 1: those in open plan took more sick leave and were

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Speaker 1: less satisfied with their jobs in addition to being less

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Speaker 1: productive at work. Now, when I made the decision to

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Speaker 1: house Inventium in an open plan environment several years ago,

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Speaker 1: I had no idea that the research was so against

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Speaker 1: this type of workspace, and now, because of space constraints,

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Speaker 1: it's really difficult to reverse this decision. So, in the

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Speaker 1: absence of an office redesign, the solution to overcoming this

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Speaker 1: decision has been having a very flexible work policy, so

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Speaker 1: at Inventium, staff can work from wherever and whenever they like.

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Speaker 1: I personally am almost never in the office before lunchtime

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Speaker 1: because I prefer to spend my morning's doing deep focused

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Speaker 1: work at home or in a quiet cafe, basically anywhere

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Speaker 1: where I can control the level of interruptions facing me.

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Speaker 1: And my teammates mostly spend one, two or three days

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Speaker 1: per week working from home, which means that when we

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Speaker 1: are in the office it is a fairly quiet place

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Speaker 1: despite being open plan. So if you're about to embark

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Speaker 1: on an office redesign, resist trying to replicate the uber

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Speaker 1: col image of the classic open plan design and consider

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Speaker 1: bringing back the cubicles.

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Speaker 2: Your staff will thank you for it. Hello.

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Speaker 1: There.

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Speaker 2: That's it for today's episode.

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Speaker 1: If you liked it, there are plenty of others that

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Speaker 1: you might also enjoy, such as my chat with Mea

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Speaker 1: Friedman about her trick for overcoming procrastination, and my interview

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Speaker 1: with Rachel Botsman, who shares her one minute alternative to mindfulness. Finally,

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Speaker 1: it's great getting feedback from listeners such as yourself, so

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Speaker 1: feel free to give this podcast a review in iTunes

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Speaker 1: or wherever you.

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Speaker 2: Get your podcasts.

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Speaker 1: And if you like this episode, make sure you hit

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Speaker 1: the subscribe button so that you can be alerted whenever

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Speaker 1: new episodes are released.

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Speaker 2: See you next time,