Pros and Cons to the Open Office Plan

Photo Credit: JasonParis

Office design has always been a hotly debated issue in the office culture and the way your workplace is laid out can have a huge effect on the morale and overall productivity level of your team.

In recent years, the open office plan has been one of the most popular layouts in offices around the country as employers look for new ways to create excitement and change in the work environment.

While the open office plan has been a popular trend, it is now without its downsides. Here are some of the biggest pros and cons to this office design.

Pros:

Much of the success of the open office plan is directly related to the type of job and the kind of people you have working in your environment. The open office plan is ideal for a team which is highly outgoing, enjoys collaborating on different projects and assignments, and can work with distractions going on around them.

The open office is also ideal for different kinds of jobs and careers, such as team sales or perhaps a marketing agency. These jobs can provide plenty of opportunities for questions and problems to arise, which makes having employers and coworkers quickly accessible, a welcome luxury to many people in this fast-paced, high-pressure positions.

For the company looking to save a little money in the long run, the open office plan is another great option as you can fit more workspaces into a smaller amount of space.

Photo Credit: Juhan Sonin

Cons:

While the open office design has been adopted by many employers today, there are still plenty of cons to this concept and they can be detrimental to the overall morale and productivity levels of a company.

Likely the biggest downside to the open office plan is the presence of easy distractions in the office, potentially at a nonstop rate. If employees are constantly up and about, moving around and talking to one another, this can easily distract other employees who are trying to focus on their work. Many open office plans enjoy playing community music, which can be a problem for others who need more silence in order to focus on their tasks at hand.

The open floorplan can potentially be a much more unhealthy place as well for workers as diseases can spread quickly with the lack of walls and multiple employees working in close proximity to one another. If one worker comes in with a bad cold, it could quickly spread amongst your entire staff.

Where do you stand on the open floorplan for the office? Do you have this design in your office or has your company been considering it? Let us know in the comments below!