Just in case you weren’t yet convinced, there is new evidence from a study of more than 40,000 workers in 300 U.S. office buildings that open-plan office layouts don’t improve productivity. The results, published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology,came to the following conclusion:
“Enclosed private offices clearly outperformed open-plan layouts in most aspects of IEQ (Indoor Environmental Quality), particularly in acoustics, privacy and the proxemics issues. Benefits of enhanced ‘ease of interaction’ were smaller than the penalties of increased noise level and decreased privacy resulting from open-plan office configuration.”
To be perfectly clear, here’s what the paragraph says: “Open-plan offices aren’t worth it.”
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