The open office is definitely having a moment. One of many workplace trends that’s made its way from Silicon Valley to offices everywhere, it’s meant to fuel collaboration and productivity, increase visibility and knock down hierarchy. But Lindsey Kaufman, a creative director in NYC and the Washington Post author of “Google got it wrong. The open-office trend is destroying the workplace,” would beg to differ. Join us as we discuss the downfalls of the open-office layout and the tweaks that could make things better for everyone.

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MP3 File Run Time: 22:00

Brandon: Welcome to the HR for Small Business Podcast, this is your host, Brandon Laws. Today I’m with Lindsey Kaufman. She works in advertising and lives in Brooklyn, New York, which is currently under a blizzard right now!
Her personal essays have appeared in the Washington Post and several other publications. Today’s discussion will be about her article, Google Got It Wrong. The Open-Office Trend is Destroying the Workplace, which was published in the Washington Post on December 30th, 2014.
Lindsey, it’s awesome to have you!
Lindsey: Thank you! It’s great to be here!
Brandon: So, you started the essay by talking about it as a personal experience. You had to trade in your private office for a seat at a long, shared table. Describe how that situation came about. What were the leaders of the company thinking when they went to an open office environment?
Lindsey: Oh, I think they were thinking about money, 100%.
Brandon: How to fit more people in the office, basically?
Lindsey: Yeah, exactly. Let’s get more people in a smaller space. We were an agency that had been around for a long time, had kind of been through several iterations, and it was kind of almost inevitable. I knew it was going to happen and then it did. You know, it was a very difficult transition for probably most of us.
Brandon: You, at the time – and maybe you still are – you were a senior writer for this particular organization, so having a private office probably was really helpful in your creativity and just being able to sit down and focus on your writing.
Lindsey: Well, I never had a private office, we work in partners – creatives usually work in teams of copywriters and art directors. No one ever is ever used to complete privacy, that’s not going to happen, but having only two people in a room, it was significantly different because you could put your head down and get to work. Creatives are notoriously attention deficit nightmares, so having to get work done is hard enough in a normal scenario. When you add this open fish bowl thing, it was a jungle.
Brandon: Yeah, I’m sure sharing an office or even having a private space, you probably figured out how the other person works and you could figure out a way to get in the zone. But when you’re sharing a long table, open office, could you describe all the distractions that you probably had? Noise and staring at people or just worried that other people are looking at you – what kind of things went through your head?
Lindsey: Oh yeah, all of it! I thought everybody was looking at how many times I go to the bathroom a day, what time I was leaving to go home, what time I was coming in – because creatives like to roll in kind of late.
Brandon: I actually laughed at the section of your essay where you talked about how you’re a frequent water drinker so naturally you’re going to go to the restroom a lot and people, at least in your head, you were thinking, Oh, they’re tallying how many times I’m going to the restroom today. That then sticks in the back of your mind and how do you get back in the zone? It seems hard.
Lindsey: I don’t know that I ever was in the zone, that’s probably what happened. The thing about creatives is we’re all really social animals and we all really liked each other, so by the time you come in, you have your coffee, talk about last night’s episode of The Walking Dead— because you can just see everybody! It was like gasoline and dynamite. It was terrible.
Brandon: Did you feel the immediate impact when you went from cubicles or at least some privacy where you’re not staring at people to the open space? Did you see an immediate shift in how people behaved?
Lindsey: I personally saw how much less productive I was, and I know that I wasn’t an anomaly. I remember talking to another guy who was a very, very senior person at that time, been around forever, older dude. He was like, I’m depressed. I was like, I feel depressed. I get it. I understand what you’re saying! You need that kind of visual and spatial separation sometimes to just recharge your battery.
Brandon: You mentioned that this is a trend. Back in 2014 it was starting to become a trend. Business leaders were saying, Hey, maybe we need this open office concept. I think they put it under the guise of It’s going to be more collaborative and you’re going to have a tighter culture and all those things.
Did the trend really start with that in mind? You alluded to the fact that it was maybe more about money or just trying to get more employees in the same space. What do you think it was?
Lindsey: Personally I think it’s a money thing, and that’s the thing. I think the C-suite is always going to tell you that it’s collaborative. People don’t need help collaborating. People can collaborate. Let’s call a spade a spade. I get it, like listen, I can shove all these people into one space for like half the amount of money and hooray! Times are tough, I totally get it. It’s happening to every business, they’re trying to keep the overhead lower.
But I really hate when people try to say, Oh, it’s collaborative. Nobody ever needed help with that before. We know how to collaborate. You need the ability to collaborate and then separate.
Brandon: Do the leaders of that particular company, did they ask the question of you? Like hey, do you want this? Were you involved in that process or was it just like Hey, we’re doing this and you came in the next day and it was an open space all of a sudden?
Lindsey: We knew it was coming but, no, no, no. We were never included. I know the people at the top were and maybe they fought for it and then they were the ones who helped design it. But there was definitely no employee input, which I guess I understand, too, because like god help you if you open up that can of worms.
Brandon: Totally, yeah. You’re going to hear a bunch of different answers from people.
Lindsey: I just think – I mean, well, we can get to it later – but I have opinions. The open office, I think, is inevitable. I think it’s going to become a staple, but I just think there are different ways to do it. The way that mine was done was not the way that I think is optimal.
Brandon: You did mention this is a trend. Do you think it started with a few companies? A lot of businesses, especially technology companies, look up to the Googles of the world and if they see, Hey, they’re going to an open office trend and they’re so successful. Maybe we should do this too! Do you think there’s a little bit of that, too?
Lindsey: I think possibly. I think it started with tech, for sure, because tech started in – you know, the first open office, a garage! Look at where Apple started and look at all those companies in Silicon Valley. I think the title of the article is a little bit clickbaity and I didn’t write it, actually, and I don’t think Google got it wrong. I think Google got it right for Google. But Google is not the same as an advertising agency, it’s not the same as a publishing company, it’s not the same as et cetera, et cetera. I think that model started for certain companies that knew they would survive, if not thrive, in that environment.
Then everybody else kind of was like, Oh, look what they’re doing over there. That’s kind of great, getting a lot of bang for not that much buck and that’s how everybody started coming to the party. I don’t think it was because it made great sense for the individual businesses.
Brandon: After your essay came out, did you get any feedback from either employees who have experienced an open office environment or even leaders of companies who were like, I was thinking about going this route, but maybe I’m going to change my tune and kind of shift back to the private work space environment?
Lindsey: That’s a good question. I have to say that this is a different kind of article for me, I like to write personal essays. But I had this in me and it needed to come out and when you write anything, when you put anything out there in the world, you are obviously opening yourself up to trolling.
Brandon: Absolutely.
Lindsey: And I will say that this is the only thing I’ve ever written that was so overwhelmingly supported. There were just no mean comments! Even people who didn’t agree with me were like, Well, it’s fine for me, but I do understand, opposed to the other things I write, they’re like, You’re stupid and this is terrible!
This was such a different thing and it was so interesting how it really touched a nerve. So I’m not sure that anybody who was thinking of doing an open office changed their mind, but I think it might have made some people rethink how they were doing it, and I think at this point, that’s all that we can hope for. I really want to write a follow-up on that, about how we can get it right. Because we can sit here and cry over spilled milk, but the open office is here to stay. It makes perfect sense.
Brandon: It’s economical, absolutely.
Lindsey: It’s economical. How are we going to come back from this? I don’t think that we are, I don’t see it going the other way around. Like Oh! Let’s put fewer people in more space! That’s not going to happen. But how can we really make the space work for us instead of against us? I think what’s really interesting is I’m a creative director now and I’m freelance, which is a new thing. I went freelance about a year after I wrote that article.
What’s interesting and unique about that is that it put me in a lot of different offices. I’ve almost become like a secret shopper, where I’m kind of the inner office inspector, so now I’ve seen a lot of different office space arrangements. I actually have to say as much as I hated my original open office, it’s kind of not that bad compared to some others which are really terrible. And as a freelancer, you basically sit in like the custodian closet. Like they don’t care where they put you.
Brandon: They will just put you somewhere. It’s usually a private spot, right?
Lindsey: No, no.
Brandon: Oh, it’s not?
Lindsey: I think it was in the kitchen at one job.
Brandon: Oh!
Lindsey: You don’t care that much because you know you’re not a permanent fixture. But it’s interesting, the different ways that different places have done things, and you can really see what’s working and what’s absolutely not working.
Brandon: When I was looking at your article, I actually started flipping through some of the comments and you’re definitely right. A lot of people are supportive of it and last I looked, you had like 700 or 800 comments. So you definitely struck a chord with this article.
Lindsey: I think they like shut it off, they cut off the comments.
Brandon: It’s crazy. I don’t know if you ever looked through some of the comments, but what are some of the common themes that people were saying in response to it?
Lindsey: It was a lot of, I agree. My productivity is down. I can’t get anything done unless I come in earlier or work from home, which is exactly how I felt. Or, people say, Thank God my office hasn’t done this yet. The day that this ever happens, I will die! I fear the day this happens. A lot of people are saying stuff like that or, I have an open office and I like it, but I’m in a different field than you. It’s not the same for everybody. So like I said, it was shocking how nice everybody was because if you’ve ever published anything that could be subjective on the internet—
Brandon: You’re going to get some backlash.
Lindsey: Yeah. It’s like stand there, open your arms, and wait for the daggers to fly. But that was what was so interesting about this and it had a lot of research behind it. There were real facts and substance and things that made people go, Yeah, I get that. I feel that way.
Brandon: Personally, in our company, we used to have a pretty outdated office environment. We had really old-looking cubes. They were really tall, though, so there was some privacy. Then we went to a modern look and we lowered the cube levels so you can see people and noise travels a lot more. I think people had a hard time adjusting at first but we’re human beings, we can adapt to pretty much anything.
In your experience, did you guys adapt? What sort of things did you do to adapt to that new, open space?
Lindsey: You adapt because you have no choice, right?
Brandon: You have no choice, exactly.
Lindsey: For me, I realized that I needed to put myself into one of those rooms when I could. If I really had to get some stuff done, there were rooms we could use. Of course, they all had glass windows and I could see everything and they were like a fight to the death to try to get into. But if I could just separate myself visually, especially from the people that were my close friends. Because I had also worked at this agency for like nine years, so these people were like my family. Can you imagine trying to work with your family around. I mean you have kids, right? No one is going to respect that you’re trying to do things because they can see you!
Brandon: Yeah, exactly.
Lindsey: I thought buying like bright blue headphones in an obnoxious color would help, but mouths were still moving. I was like, Oh my god, people are talking to me. I can’t hear them. They’re talking to me. There’s no door to knock on. Nothing was a sign to just come back later. You know what I mean? Whereas when we had an office, if we ever did close the door, people respected that.
Brandon: Yeah.
Lindsey: There’s something about a closed door that you respect or a door with a note on it that says, On a conference call, come back at X time, even if we weren’t on a conference call. But it was like, Come back, and there’s just really something to be said about that.
Brandon: I imagine you get to know people pretty well with the open environment. You were joking about The Walking Dead, like people just coming in and chatting about the latest episode. If you see a couple of people standing around talking about it, you can overhear it because it’s an open space. Now a couple of other people are listening in and they want to join in the conversation. So I imagine there is a certain level of discussion or collaboration. I mean, that’s not work-related, but I imagine it happens a little bit more because you can see them. So maybe personal relationships got a little deeper? Did you notice a difference in that?
Lindsey: This did happen to me years ago in another office where we went from not open to open, though it was designed a little differently. I did forge a relationship with a woman who was older than me, I was in my 20s. She actually became a mentor to me, and I’d never talked to her before when we had offices. That’s the kind of thing I would say was a benefit, but it absolutely did not outweigh the other things, for me. Also, people got sick a lot more.
Brandon: Yeah. Germs travel a little bit easier I bet.
Lindsey: I did some research on it because I was a speaker at a conference and I put together a whole presentation on this and apparently open office employees take 70% more sick days than non-open office employees. And 50% of common services were contaminated – desktop, cell phones, copiers, elevator buttons, just disgusting. So it’s not without concerns in other ways, too.
Brandon: You ended your article by giving some tangible takeaways, like this trend is not going away, but here’s what we can do as employees or here’s what HR people and company leaders can do to help minimize distractions and maybe even sickness. What are some of those things that you learned along the way in your research that make the open office spaces better?
 
Lindsey: This would obviously be kind of a starting from scratch thing, but for me it’s all about the design and the thoughtfulness that goes into it. Hachette Publishing, which I referenced in the article, they’re a publishing company and publishing companies obviously are notorious for having rooms and offices because they have to read all day long. They were one of the first to move to the open office because they couldn’t afford their office, but they were so thoughtful about the way they designed and thought about their new space. Even though it was open space, they made sure that the barriers on the cubicle were at a higher height.
Like you said, they lowered the barriers for you, which is nice for being social but not good for getting work done when you can see people. So they made them the right height, they piped in pink noise through the speakers which is white noise set to human voice frequency. Meanwhile my office played music, like Maroon 5, blasting.
Brandon: All day?
Lindsey: Some days, yeah!
Brandon: I could handle that for like maybe an hour.
Lindsey: Everyday at 3:00pm it was like the death metal hit list and I was like, I can’t. I don’t want to hear this!
Brandon: Who is making this playlist?!
Lindsey: Our bosses! I love music but I need to hear it when I want to hear it. The idea that they had this pink noise piped through so you can’t hear everything everyone is saying, it’s kind of an ambient thing, I thought that was so brilliant. They made rooms that were “quiet cars” as they called them where it was almost like the library. You go in there and you don’t talk.
You could fit a lot of people in them, too. That was the problem with our private rooms is they were like a one person kind of a thing whereas if you could have a great, big room that everybody went into but knew that you were not allowed to talk, be on the phone or whatever, they did things really thoughtfully and I think that that’s just the best solution. With your design, with your furniture, with those little touches that really do actually make a very big impact, to me, that’s everything.
Brandon: Yeah, those are good ideas. You also briefly touched on working from home. I think that’s a trend that you’re going to see more and more of just because of technology. It’s just easier to do work at home. Whether or not employers are going to be able to trust their employees to be on and be working all the time kind of remains to be seen and maybe it’s a case by case basis. But do you see that playing a role in how to fix this open office environment thing?
Lindsey: I do. I mean, I think it’s hard because it depends on the kind of company. Some of them you really need to be face-to-face. As a freelancer, I do a lot of work from home now and some of the companies I work for, like nobody is there. So it’s great because nobody expects anybody to be there and if you have meetings on a Google Hangout, if you need to talk or Skype or whatever, everybody emails or Slacks or does whatever and it works pretty well.
But there are certain environments where you do all need to be together in a room. So I’m not sure if it works for everybody all the time, but I think trusting your employees and giving them that option if you are in the kind of environment where you don’t have a lot of space for people to go and they need it, I think it’s a nice thing to do. If somebody abuses it, well obviously then they’re not a good employee. My sister works for a tech startup in Denver and they have unlimited vacation days and what they found with that kind of thing is that people actually take less than they normally would.
Brandon: I’ve heard that same thing, yeah.
Lindsey: So it’s interesting. If you put some trust in your employees, you might be surprised by what they do. I think people need to be allowed to work in the way they feel is going to behoove them and make them the most productive versions of themselves because at the end of the day, if somebody isn’t reaching their potential productivity, what’s the point?
Brandon: I think that’s all really good advice and I really appreciate you for one, jumping on the podcast, but also for writing that article and kind of shedding some light on this from an employee’s perspective.
Really what I hear you saying is that for leaders listening into this podcast or even HR people who have some influence, if you’re going to go this route, be thoughtful about how you design your workspace, especially if it’s inevitable that you’re going to go to an open office environment. And just show some trust in your employees to work from home if they need to or even just shift their work habits. I loved all the tips that you provided.
Anything else you want to say before we wrap up?
Lindsey: You covered it! I mean this is good inspiration to write a follow-up article.
Brandon: I would love to read it!
Lindsey: Yeah! We will get back and chat about it.
Brandon: Sounds good. Where can listeners read your work and follow up on what you’re doing?
Lindsey: I have a Twitter handle which is @TheOpinionStore. I have my personal website which is LindseyKaufmanWriter.com, all my articles, and advertising work is up there if you are so intrigued. That’s pretty much it. You can find me on all the normal internet web channel kind of things.
Brandon: Fantastic. Lindsey Kaufman, thank you for joining the podcast! I really appreciate it.
Lindsey: Thanks so much for having me.