[Fredslist] Open layout office space - yes or no?

[Michelle Maratto]

I have a question for the group about open layout office space, the pros and cons - please weigh in for me Gotham.

I recently got a great opportunity to lease an additional 11,000 s.f. floor at 26 Broadway.  I am intending on using 3,000 s.f. of it for my law firm.  Here's the catch - the 3,000 sf are one big room.  It's not just any room.  It's John D. Rockefeller's former board room for Standard Oil.  It has gorgeous woodwork, 20 foot ceilings, a working fireplace, big windows that swing open like shutters - light and air on three sides of the room.  It's a great room.  But...it's ONE room.  (Clarification: My partner and I will not be in the big room; Only our 12 staff members will be.)

So my staff is complaining that they don't want to go from private offices to an open layout office space.

Let me be clear before I ask your opinions - I am not doing this in order to stimulate my staff to collaborate.  They collaborate just fine.  Moreover, I am not doing this to get on a bandwagon.  The only effect that the fact that everyone else is doing this has on me is that it gives me "cover" to get away with it.  If it's good enough for Blumberg and Google, it's good enough for me.  But at the heart of the matter is that I am doing this because the deal didn't make sense economically unless I got all the tons of free rent to justify my move, and I couldn't do that without shunning a build out.

I have now read about two dozen recent articles that say that office workers hate open office layouts and that suggest that open layouts harm productivity.  But if you read the articles and blog posts carefully, they are almost never based on any real research.  It's more that the author of such an article will get a few quotes from unhappy workers and that's the article.

The other thing, in addition to research, that is lacking from these articles, is any mention of the following - why the office worker assumes he or she is entitled to a private room in the first place.  I have been thinking a lot about this.  Many people (most) get up in the morning and simply have no privacy all day.  Laborers, police, nurses, retail workers, food service workers, manufacturing workers, school teachers...I could go on all day.  Why does someone who needs to work at a desk with a computer get their own room?  I know the response of many office workers might be this - "Well, I have to concentrate."  But doesn't the sanitation worker driving the 10 ton garbage truck down a busy NYC street have to concentrate?  Doesn't the nurse and the school teacher?  Somewhere along the line, the average office worker decided that they were entitled to a door they could close.  But is that a faulty assumption of entitlement?

There was one article I read that synthesized a great deal of research - "Who Moved My Cubicle?" - Harvard Business Review.  They looked at every study out there to the date of the article.  It says that the studies are pretty much split down the middle about whether open office layouts help or hurt productivity.  It also had some good suggestions that I did not encounter anywhere else.  The Harvard article suggested that designing the desk placement with an eye toward acoustical and visual privacy is important.  I plan to do respect those issues when placing the furniture and equipment.  All my staff will have amazing views from the 21st floor and plenty of natural light.  I am putting 12 people in 3,000 s.f., which is not tight at all.  The room could hold twice that easily.  I also plan to have - in other sections of the floor (not in the big room)  -- a windowed eat-in kitchen, two conference rooms, and a lounge of sorts with living room furniture, and "phone booths".  Thus, my 12 people will have places to escape to if they want to make a personal call or just get out of the big room.

The Harvard article also gives voice to something else I was thinking about - the role of culture and convention in making an open office layout successful.  The 12 people who are with me now are all very quiet and very respectful and they get along.  This layout wouldn't work with a big mouth or a jerk in the group.  I recently had a paralegal who never shut up.  Everything he did he conducted a running monologue on.  With a guy like that in the mix (which causes MANY problems) the layout I am suggesting would not work.  I think for this to work, management (me) has to be accepting of people not being at their desks every moment.  Moreover, I have to make new hires carefully.  I should also put rules in place such as - absolutely no music or streaming video played at the desk absent headphones, and no personal phone calls at the desks.

Finally - I should mention that I really dislike all this new "acoustic" furniture I see all over - like these high backed couches that look like they are mini padded rooms for people who might hurt themselves.  So I am not interested in that solution.

Look - maybe I am just becoming cheap in my middle age.  Maybe I should give the 4 lawyers offices.  But then I can kiss goodbye $6k a month of sub-rental income.  Ugh.  Or, I can be really gauche and carve up the beautiful 1910 Board Room into ugly individual offices.  But that would honestly be a sin.

Any thoughts or suggestions?  All comments will be much appreciated.

Michelle


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Michelle A. Maratto
Partner
Itkowitz PLLC
305 Broadway, 7th Floor
New York, New York 10007
P: (646) 822-1805
F: (212) 822-1401
mmaratto at itkowitz.com<mailto:mmaratto at itkowitz.com>
http://www.itkowitz.com<http://www.itkowitz.com/>

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