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This is a blog about understanding the pros and cons of different office floor plans. This article will help you understand why you might want to design an open-office layout, as well as give some alternative layouts for those who aren’t interested in designing a new space from scratch but still need more privacy.
A floor design based on a big, open area with few covered offices is known as an open office layout. Open office designs are cost-effective, adaptable, and may work well for highly collaborative teams. Poorly designed spaces, on the other hand, have been shown to reduce productivity and employee happiness in research. An effective design must strike a balance between openness and privacy choices.
Another major component that contributes to the success of an open workplace architecture is technology. Combining wireless connection with cloud services, such as Aircall’s VoIP office phone system for small enterprises with three or more workers, allows your open office workplace to be as flexible as you want it to be.
The two most aggravating issues that employees confront in open office settings are noise and privacy. Looking for a better solution for your employees than this? Continue reading.
Here are seven stages to creating an open office plan, as well as some advantages and disadvantages to consider when selecting which office layout ideas are ideal for your company.
1. Determine your team’s workspace requirements.
The first step in planning an open office layout is to figure out what kind of work environment your team needs to be effective. A raucous creative team, for example, may flourish in an open, highly collaborative environment. However, the same setting produces an irritating and unpleasant background hum for salespeople making critical calls. Human resources, legal, and accounting personnel, for example, deal with comprehensive, sensitive information that needs both sound and visual privacy.
Noise control, privacy, and security top the list of workplace issues, according to studies of employees in open office settings. Tech connection concerns and access to common facilities like conference and break rooms come at second and third, respectively. You must choose which of these issues is most important to your employees and be prepared to address each when you plan your open office arrangement.
According to research conducted by the University of Sydney, sound privacy is the primary source of employee dissatisfaction in open office layouts.
Manager meetings may help you identify your workforce’s requirements, but a survey of all workers will give you a better picture of what matters to them. Pose queries such as:
Free online survey tools, such as SurveyMonkey, may reveal how your team works and how an open office idea design could affect productivity.
You’ll probably find that certain job types and personalities are just better suited to open workspaces than others when you evaluate the outcomes. With that knowledge, you’ll be able to consider numerous open office layout options, avoid common pitfalls, and create a place that benefits your whole team.
2. Create a rough layout for your open office.
After you’ve assessed your workers’ workspace requirements, you can start sketching out several open office layout options on paper. Begin by making a physical duplicate of your present office floor plan or layout. You may either mount your plan to a poster board and use tracing paper overlays to draw layout choices, or you can produce numerous copies of your design and sketch ideas directly on the copies.
Use an online layout tool if you don’t have a copy of your current floor plan or want more than paper drawings. Here are three excellent choices to consider.
Online Layout Tools
Open office layout concepts may be explored in 2D and realistic 3D representations using online design tools like RoomSketcher, as illustrated above.
You’re ready to start looking at several open office floor designs after you have a hardcopy of your layout or have placed it into an online design tool. Note: Throughout this article, we utilized RoomSketcher to show several open office ideas and alternatives.
Incorporate Static Elements
Begin by noting current aspects that you want to keep, such as kitchens and break spaces, conference rooms, and covered offices, on your floor plan. Make a note of any electrical and data plug outlets that you’ll retain. Remember that designing around existing electric and wire drops, permanent walls, and fixtures save money on demolition, permits, and construction.
Make a list of the elements
Next, make a list of any separating walls or enclosed places that you want to get rid of. Remove these features from your blueprint using an online tool like RoomSketcher to expose your free area footprint. Use whiteout or a new overlay to generate a clean copy with the open space footprint if you’re utilizing copies or overlays.
Add Existing Equipment & Furniture
Place carryover items into your layout if you have current workstations, desks, storage pieces, and other office fixtures that you wish to keep. To reduce the need for additional drops, locate equipment such as computer servers, printers, internet, Wi-Fi, and VoIP equipment near existing power and data outlets.
Insert New Wiring, Furniture & Fixtures
You may experiment with your alternatives once you’ve mapped static and carryover pieces into your open office floor design. Workstation pieces may be moved about in your workspace to evaluate what works best for your team. You’ll want to think about how existing workers are accommodated by team and workspace placement, as well as how it may be altered in response to staffing and scope-of-work changes. Consider any electrical or hardwire data requirements for each of these relocations.
In our office setup guide, you’ll learn how to pick the correct fixtures, equipment, and furniture for your business.
Keep your options open.
If you get resistance from managers or employees who think your design is too open or vast, don’t fix the problem right away by putting up static—and expensive—walls. Instead, strive to solve the difficulties in a flexible fashion that provides separation without sacrificing the open space’s character.
To create private sections, consider using moveable whiteboards or elegant, sound-dampening fabric panels. Alternatively, use dual-purpose office furniture, such as tall file cabinets, to form demi-walls and provide storage.
Above all, make sure your strategy addresses the major issues that arise in an open workplace setting, such as noise, privacy, and security. In the phases that follow, we’ll look at solutions to these and other crucial open office layout aspects.
3. Address Noise Control & Sound Privacy
The most common concerns in an open office setting are noise disruptions and a lack of privacy during conversations or personal interactions. “Loss of productivity due to noise distraction was twofold in open office layouts compared to private offices,” according to the University of Sydney research, “and jobs involving a sophisticated verbal process were more likely to be disturbed than relatively easy or regular ones.”
In any open workplace space, tackling noise management and sound privacy is clearly task one—and one that many design professionals have tackled head-on with tremendous success. Lori Wiles, lead interior designer of Lori Wiles Design, for example, reduces noise by strategically placing inexpensive and beautiful ceiling-mounted “sound traps” around the area.
To reduce reflected sound, Lori Wiles suggests dangling cheap decorative items over conference tables and open workstations.
Wiles explains, “It may be as easy as placing a rug on a hard floor or hanging cloth in the room.” “We often suspend sound clouds’ from ceilings, which enable sound to pass through the ‘cloud’ and get trapped above a porous material, reducing reflected sound,” adds Wiles.
“Placing a wooden pallet or recycled doors with louvers over the table is a simple DIY’sound cloud’ option,” Wiles suggests. “Leave at least a few inches between the ‘cloud’ and the ceiling above it,” says the author.
Joyce Interiors creator Dan Joyce advises company owners to include a few “beyond the box” places in an open workplace floor design. Including a few enclosed places in your design provides a calmer alternative for detail-oriented workers and enables teams to communicate without being distracted by neighboring employees.
“For teams that demand privacy, such as legal, human resources, and finance,” Joyce suggests, “provide quiet zones such as huddle rooms, private offices, and conference rooms.” “Then, for the bulk of your area, establish hybrid workstation zones.” Employees may pick how they want to work at hybrid stations. “These places,” Joyce argues, “should enable people to sit or stand, work alone or collectively.”
4. Solve Visual & Personal Security Concerns
Another problem with an open workplace architecture is securing personal things and critical work output. Keep the security requirements of both in mind as you design your place. Physical item security is easy to include in your strategy. In communal spaces, locking desk drawers or a wall of locker units perform the job quickly and cheaply.
Visual and acoustic security might be difficult to enforce. As a result, Dan Joyce recommends that sensitive professions such as human resources, legal, and accounting be situated in more secluded places. If this isn’t practicable, moveable dividers and desk and computer screen arrangement may assist protect work from prying eyes.
Lori Wiles offers a cost-effective and practical answer to privacy problems. “Not only can tall lateral file cabinets with lockable drawers safeguard baggage and supplies, but they also serve as room separators,” Wiles notes. “Without a permanent barrier, they may assist visibly isolate critical work locations from the rest of the workplace.”
When Comrise switched from a high cubicle setting to an open workplace this year, Samantha Meyer, Marketing Associate, says her firm ingeniously solved privacy and security concerns.
“We have set-aside sections with sound-dampening swivel privacy seats in our open workplace structure,” Meyer explains. “This enables employees to take a break from their workstations and position themselves out of view in order to keep calls secret.” “We also incorporated an enclosed conference room and a smaller breakout room in our concept,” Meyer continues, “which are utilized for private meetings, calls, or guest and visiting office space.”
5. Encourage collaboration
One of the main reasons firms choose an open office setting is for team contact and collaboration, but making this work needs planning. Consider how your team communicates and exchanges information and duties before simply placing workstations together, and identify any jobs that work across various teams.
Identify workgroup zones in your open office plan using this information. Workspace flexibility is important in a fluid workplace setting, such as one that houses creative or fast-changing workgroups. Designer Lori Wilkes suggests “combining tables and filing cabinets to create a dynamic workspace” in these cases. Tables may be adjusted and redistributed as required to serve as a desk for one or more employees.”
Deborah Sweeney, CEO of My Corporation, used “low-walled ‘pod’ cubicles that hold three workers” to create a collaboration-friendly open office arrangement.
Sweeney’s employees work in a bright, airy environment that encourages open communication, provides private breakout areas, and uses sleek, ultra-high ceilings to reduce noise.
Individual workplaces are defined more by low-walled cubicles than by open tables, yet communication is still encouraged. “High ceilings that really assist with acoustic difficulties, plus a few secluded rooms for calmer gatherings and conveying sensitive information,” Sweeney’s proposal said.
6. Make a plan for continuous connectivity.
Electrical and data connections become an issue when barriers are removed. While using wireless secure internet, cloud-based services, and VoIP phone technologies like Aircall will assist, you still need to provide power to each workstation. Furthermore, some data management scenarios may need a hard-wired server solution.
“We prepared ahead by burying all lines and providing additional wiring for future development,” Sweeney explains. This provides her unlimited freedom to rearrange cubicle pods as required to suit the needs of her evolving workgroup.
Calvin Tran, founder & CEO of Hype Well Media, took a wireless data approach for his company’s open office layout. “We set up a mesh Wi-Fi network across our large space to reduce router load and solve distance issues,” says Tran.
Many Wi-Fi routers are used in a mesh Wi-Fi network to wirelessly connect multiple users over large regions.
Include Inviting Common-Use Spaces in your design.
Although private conference rooms and breakout rooms have already been highlighted, they are not the only common-use areas to add to an open office layout. Staffers who need to get away from the commotion of the open office area for downtime or quiet work welcome break spaces, reservable seclusion rooms, and even a complete kitchen.
Using double-duty storage walls and comfy chairs, as shown in this RoomSketcher concept, it’s simple to create a pleasant break area.
If you don’t set aside one or more of these spaces in your original concept, conference or breakout rooms will most likely become mixed-use areas. This may be workable in a small workplace, but as your company grows, it may become a hindrance to productivity and professionalism.
Include a break room or kitchen area in your open office plan—and make it enticing, not an afterthought—if you want to maintain your conference and work-oriented breakout areas neat and ready for action. Seating and standing dining are both supported by comfortable bar-height tables. Access to free coffee, tea, water, and snacks throughout the day enhances energy and productivity while also making employees feel valued.
Are You a Good Fit for an Open Office Layout?
Now that you know how to create an open office floor plan that handles the most prevalent issues, the next question is whether it’s ideal for your company. An open office environment, when done correctly, may accommodate a variety of workgroups, but it is certainly not the best option for all employees and enterprises.
Open office layouts, according to experts, maybe true productivity killers if they aren’t built with major pain points in mind. According to research conducted by the University of Sydney,
- Nearly 60% of open office and low-partition cubicle employees claim that others may hear their discussions or that neighboring noises distract them.
- The second main concern is visual privacy; more than 30% of open office and low-partition cubicle employees are unhappy with open site lines.
- More than a quarter of employees are affected by noise — Nearly 30% of open office and low-partition cubicle workers say that excessive noise is a disruption to their productivity.
This isn’t the only research that backs up these claims.
“Open-plan offices may have short-term financial benefits, but these benefits may be substantially lower than the costs associated with decreased job satisfaction and well-being,” according to a report co-authored by Tobias Otterbring, Ph.D., of the Service Research Center at Karlstad University in Sweden. As a result, rather than concentrating exclusively on cost-effective office layout, flexibility, and productivity, decision-makers should examine the impact of a certain office type on personnel.”
To see whether an open office plan is right for your team, weigh the advantages and downsides listed below.
Pros of Open Office Layout
When it comes to open office workspaces, the cost is at the top of the list of benefits, thus the major proponents are the ones who pay the bills.
- Lower Construction Costs – Compared to a walled, or “cellular,” environment, open office layouts need less construction.
- Open office layouts have fewer issues in terms of air ducting, electrical, and lighting than enclosed office designs.
- Open office settings that are furnished with transportable components may be entirely rebuilt with no construction expenditures, downtime, or permission restrictions.
- Open Collaboration – For highly collaborative teams, open office workplaces offer a productive atmosphere.
Cons of the Open Office Layout
To ensure that your open office design concept is a success, avoid known issues by applying the tactics and professional advice we covered above. To recap, the primary Cons of the Open Office Layout include:
- Excessive Noise — Compared to cellular office spaces, an open office workstation is louder.
- Lack of Privacy & Security – Conversations, computer screens, and work products are less private and secure in an open office layout.
- Open office floor patterns may be highly distracting for some personalities and jobs, resulting in lost productivity.
Another significant disadvantage to consider is:
- Health & Wellness – Stress and the spread of germs both contribute to increased employee illness—and lost productivity from sick days—in open office settings.
There are evident advantages and disadvantages of switching to an open workplace structure. However, if you follow the steps outlined above, you may adopt an open concept workplace that eliminates the majority of these drawbacks right now.
Alternatives to the Open Office Layout
You still have open space choices if an open office environment appeals to you but isn’t feasible after analyzing your workforce demands. Many businesses blend open and enclosed features to create a place that fosters cooperation while still providing the privacy and sound control that employees want.
Three options are shown here that combine the best of both worlds.
Zone Design with High Barriers Using Shared Desks
Collaborative flexibility is provided by carrel-style shared workstations, but privacy is provided by desk workspace separators and moveable demi-walls between workgroup zones.
If visual privacy is a major priority in your company, high separators between individual workspaces and workgroup zones might be used. According to workplace research conducted by Gensler, this strategy combines the flexibility and collaborative aspect of an open office layout while yet providing vital privacy to employees.
“We discovered that the most efficient open workplaces employ shared workstations with high barriers—high enough that you must rise to view your deskmate,” explains Janet Pogue McLaurin, Principal, Gensler’s Workplace Leader. “As the height of the barrier decreases, so does the efficacy of the workplace.”
Cubicle Office Layouts in a Shared Space
Using cubicle-style separators, large enclosed rooms may be separated into many semi-private work zones.
You may turn bigger enclosed areas into semi-private shared offices if some workgroups demand more noise control or privacy than others. These rooms may be assigned to teams or tasks, and this option is simple to implement into an open office architecture.
Designs for Hybrid Offices
To meet the demands of various workgroups, a hybrid office design mixes open, enclosed, and shared space layouts.
To meet the demands of various workgroups, a hybrid office design mixes open, enclosed, and shared space layouts.
Designs for Hybrid Offices allow business leaders to combine the best features of open, enclosed, and shared spaces within one plan. A hybrid office concept incorporates more enclosed spaces than an open office layout and uses these spaces in a number of ways.
Enclosed sections in a hybrid design may be used as private offices, shared office spaces, team spaces, reservable breakout spaces, and so on. Flexibility, like an open office architecture, is a trademark of the hybrid approach. Large enclosed areas, moveable separating walls, and open spaces may all be utilized as required.
Conclusion
For small and fast-growing businesses, an open workplace setting is appealing. It creates a lively, collaborative environment for a fraction of the cost of a complete build-out. Open office layouts that are badly organized, on the other hand, have been shown to be harmful to productivity in studies.
Excessive noise and a lack of privacy are the two most frustrating aspects of working in an open office setting, according to employees. Your transition to an open office environment will be a success if you address these critical challenges upfront and include covered areas or hybrid solutions as required.
Frequently Asked Questions
How can we design an effective office layout?
The layout of an office is a matter of personal preference. There are no unique formulas that would dictate this process and each company’s needs will vary.
What is an open-plan office layout?
An open-plan office layout is a type of workspace where the employees have their desks spread out in an area that they share with other people.
What are the three types of office layouts?
The three types of office layouts are open plan, with cubicles and central work stations; semi-open plan, which is a mix of both the open-plan layout and fixed rows of cubicles or desks; closed offices.
