Your desk is there, next to the pink one
Fast start conversation: Open-plan office space. All the rage. Well, this office space plan may cause a genuine type rage far greater than human resources and property managers realize.
A recent Inc.com article calls the open office toxic. Within Inc.com’s Open-Plan Offices Make the Workplace More Toxic, Geoffrey James, points out that not only does an open office have a negative impact on productivity, the design can make a normal workplace toxic. Not bad enough? The plan can make a toxic workplace even worse.
The following are points raised:
- Open-plan offices make bad bosses inescapable.
- Open-plan offices spread communicable diseases.
- Open-plan offices drive introverts crazy.
- Open-plan offices create visual pollution.
- Open-plan offices increase gender inequality.
- Open-plan offices can literally result in brain damage.
- Open-plan offices stimulate dangerous hormones.
When you sit with your back exposed, your body constantly produces the stress hormone cortisol, which negatively affects your weight and immune system while creating a greater risk of chronic disease.
Toxic Workplace
From communicable disease to brain damage. Hmm, and I thought only certain parts of my organization had brain damage. Seems open plans magnify brain damage to all.
What is the solution? Cubicles and corner offices? The entirely virtual company?
Seems some take co-location value as a financial savings for the facility budget.
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