Canadian HR Reporter Weekly

2 Canadian HR Reporter, a Thomson Reuters business 2018 CANADIAN HR REPORTER WEEKLY Popular wisdom for the past few decades has dictated that open-plan offices encourage greater employee collabora- tion. However, this concept can result in decreased face- to-face communication between employees, according to research out of Harvard Business School. Given that many Canadian workplaces operate with an open plan, that's problematic news — 56 per cent of Canadian HR managers said their companies moved to an open-concept workspace to enhance collaboration, according to a 2017 report by Robert Half. e Harvard researchers followed two Fortune 500 companies, collecting quantitative data, as they moved from a traditional office space to an open concept one. "In making the change, each organization had a goal to create a more 'vibrant' environment where workers from different areas of the business interacted more often," said Ethan Bernstein, study researcher and associate professor in organizational behaviour at the Harvard Business School in Boston. "ey were hoping there would be more impromptu interaction between employees — more serendipitous, face-to-face 'collisions' between individuals — leading to more innovation and greater performance." But that's not what happened. With employees using wearable devices to capture how often they interacted with each other in the new environments, the researchers found staff engaged in an average of 70 per cent less face-to-face communication, with an associated increase in electronic communication. Instead of prompting increasingly vibrant, face-to- face collaboration, the open architecture appeared to trigger a natural human response to socially withdraw from co-workers and interact instead over email and instant messaging. And that could be problematic, said the study authors, because prior research on media richness suggests that substituting email for face-to-face interaction can lower productivity. "In theory, we like to imagine open-concept workspaces will create really vibrant interaction between the people within them, but the reality is often quite different," said Bernstein. "We put on big headphones to focus. We try to look like we are intently working hard so that those around us — who can now see us all the time — believe we are hard workers." As a result, others see an intently focused person wearing headphones and decide not to disturb her with conversation, sending an email instead, he said. Dealing with noise (and quiet) Several studies have found noise, and in particular "un- wanted speech noise," can be one of the biggest challenges of open-plan offices. A 2014 study by Steelcase and Ipsos, for example, found that workers lost as much as 86 min- utes per day due to noise distractions. "Our office isn't really optimized for sound absorption," said Kira Charron, content marketing manager at Collage HR in Toronto. e 20-plus team works in an airy, open-concept space that, while flexible and well-suited to their needs in some ways, presents the team with noise challenges. Some employers handle this challenge by introducing periods of company-wide quiet time. "Sometimes, they'll encourage employees to work quietly each morning from, say, 10 am to noon," said Charron. "Or they might have do-not-disturb Tuesdays or ursdays so that's at least one day of the week where there's a collective agreement for when everyone will Open-concept workplaces can mean less collaboration: Study But careful planning, balanced design, feedback can all help, say experts BY MELISSA CAMPEAU Sign up for the Canadian HR Newswire today for free and enjoy great content from the publishers of Canadian HR Reporter. HR News at Your Fingertips THE LATEST NEWS THE BEST COMMENTARY DELIVERED WEEKLY FOR READING ON ANY DEVICE Visit www.hrreporter.com/ canadian-hr-newswire

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