How to be productive in open space

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

A life hacker figured out how to stop office battles when it is stuffy for some, while others are blowing, minimize noise and turn open space into a pleasant place in which to work effectively.

Why open space is bad

Open space offices have been known since the days of Henry Ford's engineers and are still one of the most popular types of planning. Numerous studies prove that this format has outlived its usefulness: work efficiency is lower than in cabinet-type offices, and employees get tired faster and do less work.

The main problems with open space:

1. The noise that people and machinery make.
2. The risk of spreading the infection if one of the "responsible" colleagues comes to the office sick.
3. Failure to reach work flow state due to frequent interruptions and meetings.

If you work best in the morning or in the evening, when most of your colleagues are not at work, and in two hours you do what you did not do in the other six, take a closer look at our recommendations.

Leaving the office

Flexible working hours

If the format of your work allows, use a flexible schedule. It is better and more convenient for some to work in the morning, when most of their colleagues are not yet at work, while others wake up in the late afternoon.

Follow your biorhythms.

It can be difficult to agree on such a schedule with your superiors, but it is worth at least giving it a try. If the task is completed, then what difference does it make in what period of time?

The practice of the publishing house where I worked has shown the effectiveness of this approach. Only employees who were tied to customer service and salespeople had a clear start and end of the working day. The editorial, promotion and other departments formally began working at 10:00, but even within one department there were distinctions for owls and larks.

Transition to partial remote

The experience of 37Signals, which consists almost entirely of remote employees, has proven that it is important for people to work effectively to cross four hours a day online. The other four hours people worked on their schedule.

This allowed the US-based company to bring together programmers from Hong Kong, Russia, Denmark, Sweden and various US cities in its team. You can read more about this in the book “Remote. Office is optional,”written by the owners of the company Jason Fried and David Hensson.

We do not suggest that you leave the office and completely switch to telecommuting, since such a schedule will be very difficult to coordinate with your boss.

But, for example, before the delivery of a project or before some responsible deadline, it is quite possible to agree on a couple of days of work from home in order to maximally focus on the task at hand.

If presence in the office is still necessary

We negotiate with colleagues

One of the most annoying things is non-business conversations, which are listened to by all colleagues who happen to be around. Bring discussions to a conference room or kitchen.

Transfer the appointment of meetings and discussion of other working issues, information about which concerns only a part of people, to e-mail, Skype, Telegram or any other messenger convenient for most employees.

In offices where flexible working hours are adopted, there is still a prescribed start of the working day. Agree that after the official 9 am, all those who entered after do not greet the whole room and do not distract already working colleagues.

Make it a rule to switch your phone to silent mode and leave the room when you receive a call.

Do not come to work sick and thus do not put your colleagues at risk.

Danish scientists conducted a study of 2,403 employees working in different types of offices, and came to the conclusion that people from open space get sick 62% more often than employees who have a personal account.

Set a schedule for airing, then you will avoid dissatisfaction that blows on someone again. Walking out into the hallway and stretching for 10 minutes is good for both your eyes and your productivity.

If these rules are spelled out in company policies and job descriptions, no one will be offended when you tactfully remind them of them.

Buying noise canceling headphones

Get rid of the intrusive hum with noise canceling headphones. It is of two types: active and passive.

Passive noise cancellation is achieved by blocking external sounds with dense ear pads or "plugs". And here, when choosing a single recipe, there is no one. It is necessary to measure many pairs in order to choose what will be comfortable specifically for you and will like the sound.

Headphones with active noise canceling are more effective at dampening extraneous sounds, but they are also much more expensive. Their principle of operation is based on the fact that an additional microphone is installed on the headphones, which picks up external noises and reproduces them in antiphase.

The rhythmic hum of computers, ventilation and printers will go away completely as soon as you put on your headphones. To stop hearing and conversations, it will be enough to turn on the appropriate music.

For some people, wearing active noise canceling headphones can cause dizziness or headache. And the point here is not in the quality of the performance of the headphones themselves, but in the anatomical features of a particular person and his vestibular apparatus.

In order not to waste your money, ask friends who have such headphones to borrow them for a couple of days, or ask the store about the return options before buying if the headphones do not work for you.

According to the Consumer Protection Law and Article 502 of the Civil Code, you can return a good quality product to the store within 14 days from the date of purchase. But the store may insist that these headphones are technically complex items that cannot be returned or exchanged.

We are engaged in redevelopment

Look critically at the layout of the place in which you work. Do you have a dedicated space for the kitchen and what is it: a separate room, a fence or a table in the middle of the room with a kettle and coffee maker?

The coffee maker and other noisy household appliances should be isolated as much as possible from the main room. If there is a separate fence, then try to negotiate how to bring it to the ceiling and separate the kitchen from the common area with a door.

Printers and coolers should be located as far away from workplaces as possible.

The office should be divided into noisy and quiet areas. Bringing marketers and programmers together is a bad idea for both departments.

Organize your workplace in such a way that it is pleasant for you to be there, because we spend most of the day at work. A comfortable workplace is a balance between openness and personal space. You can fence yourself off from colleagues with flowers, a partition or a locker without leaving the common space.

We save time

The danger of open space is that every employee is almost at arm's length. So the advantage of such a layout turns into a curse, because you are constantly distracted. At the same time, what may be an urgent and important task for your colleague turns out to be non-urgent and unimportant for you.

When making appointments, adhere to the rule of highlighting mandatory and optional participants, at the end of the planning meeting, send everyone a protocol with final decisions and deadlines for completing tasks.

Set aside time that will only be yours to complete your tasks, when none of your colleagues will distract you with their questions. Notify your colleagues in advance that you are preparing for an important deadline for the whole team, so ask them not to bother you on a certain day or hour.

Working in open space is a series of compromises. Start the changes with yourself and your immediate environment, then gradually the rest of your colleagues will catch up to the new standards. Even if you are not a manager, but an ordinary employee, you can change the life of your office for the better. It is enough to take an active position and promote your ideas.