The interior of Britain’s UK commercial property is changing; it would appear that the days of rabbit warrens with dark corridors and divided offices are gone. Commercial property office space is on the whole becoming much more open plan; this of course, has its advantages and its disadvantages.
There is a vast amount of research available which supports the move to open plan offices. It generally falls within the sphere of functional and technical performance, operational cost reduction and where appropriate, improved organisational communication and knowledge sharing.
In open plan office space each employee may have a desk in the office space, making that desk and the information on it available for anyone to see. Not every employee can have access to all information in a company, but in an open office space, the probability of someone hearing something which they are not privileged to will increase significantly in an open plan office.
However, many employers overlook this and think open plan office space can lead to an increase in productivity, they believe when employees are placed together they will converse and problem solve collectively.
Robert McClean of Price Waterhouse Cooper, told Property Week, that he wants employees to work in an open plan office space side by side. He said ‘I want to allocate zones to teams, rather than desks to people. We don’t want them to be too territorial.’
It is believed that open plan office will continue to grow and grow, with the younger generation, having in many cases never experienced anything else, being totally at ease with the concept,. Peter Ferrari, managing director for property development at Heron International, told Property Week: ‘If you watch your children and study how they communicate – then you see what they will bring to the workplace. It will have an effect on how we work in the future. We will have more sociable environments to work and interact in.’
It certainly looks like open plan offices are here to stay.
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