Open Plan Offices Kill Productivity. Here’s What to Do Instead.

A new Harvard study revealed that open plan offices have the exact opposite effect on workplaces: they actually kill collaboration and productivity. Researchers Ethan Bernstein and Stephen Turban summarized their findings by stating: “Consistent with the fundamental human desire for privacy and prior evidence that privacy may increase productivity, when office architecture makes everyone more observable or ‘transparent’, it can dampen [face-to-face] interaction, as employees find other strategies to preserve their privacy; Rather than have an [face-to-face] interaction in front of a large audience of peers, an employee might look around, see that a particular person is at his or her desk, and send an email.” Through this data, you can glean insights into your team’s productivity and even monitor your workers – without paying for an office.

Source: readwrite.com