HR professionals devote a lot of energy to fostering efficiency, productivity, and employee engagement. But is the effort from HR a waste if office design makes it difficult or impossible for employees to concentrate? 
Sometimes offices designed with collaboration in mind—large open spaces with few sound-and-sight-killing walls—also invite distraction. So the question becomes how can employers balance an environment that promotes collaboration with the need for space where employees can focus and work in quiet without interruptions and other distractions? The answer to that question is elusive, but various studies show an answer to the dilemma is definitely in demand.
Declining workplace effectiveness
In June, design and architecture firm Gensler released its 2013 U.S. Workplace Survey that claims just one in four U.S. workers are in optimal workplace environments. The survey analyzed responses from more than 2,000 knowledge workers across the country and examined design factors affecting productivity across the four work modes: focus, collaboration, learning, and socializing.
“Analysis of those in optimal environments shows that the ability to effectively balance focus and collaboration via strategic workplace design is the key to innovation and success,” the company said in a statement on the survey’s findings.
The survey found that workplace effectiveness has declined since 2008, and the inability to focus is the cause. “Results show that a lack of effective focus space drags down the effectiveness of all other work modes: collaboration, learning, and socializing, as well as the effectiveness of the workplace as a whole,” the company says.
The survey also found that even though many workplaces are designed to support collaboration, employees report that time spent collaborating has decreased while time spent focusing has increased.
Gensler’s research doesn’t minimize the importance of space conducive to collaboration, but it emphasizes the need to consider tasks that need another kind of space.
“Our survey findings demonstrate that focus and collaboration are complementary work modes,” Diane Hoskins, Gensler co-chief executive officer, says. “One cannot be sacrificed in the workplace without directly impacting the other. We know that both focus and collaboration are crucial to the success of any organization in today’s economy.”
The Gensler survey promotes workplaces where workers can have a choice of environments. “Balanced workplaces where employees have the autonomy to choose their work space based on the task or project at hand are more effective and higher performing,” Hoskins says.
Worker priorities and solutions
Chris Congdon, director of global research communications for Steelcase Inc., a provider of furnishings, products and services for workplaces, commented on the issue in an August 30 post on fastcompany.com. Her company regularly conducts surveys on workplace satisfaction, and she wrote that a whopping 95.3 percent of workers say having “access to quiet, private places for concentrated work” is important. She also noted that over 41 percent of the surveyed workers say those places are lacking in their workplaces.
Congdon says quiet places are especially important for introverts, but even extroverts, who thrive on interaction with others, also need quiet for some tasks. “We need a range of spaces that are created for both group and individual work, some that are assigned and others shared. Some in the middle of activity, and others tucked out of the way,” she wrote. “At Steelcase, we call it a ‘palette of place’ that offers workers control and choice over where and how they work.”
Congdon listed the Skype office in Palo Alto, California, as a workplace where workers have options. She said workers often sit at benches so that they can easily converse with colleagues. But when they need quiet, they wear headphones to drown out sound and as a signal to others that they want quiet thinking time.
Headphones are just one way workers are coping with less-than-private workspaces. A September 10 Wall Street Journal report notes that some workers use yellow barricade tape around their workspace or wear hats or armbands to signal when they’re working on tasks in which they can’t risk losing their train of thought.
Some experts suggest setting certain time periods as quiet times when employees are urged to resist the temptation to interrupt coworkers, although researchers in Germany and Switzerland found in their lab study that the practice actually harmed the performance of both people needing help from colleagues and the colleagues providing help.
Google is one company embracing the idea of giving workers a variety of environments. Christopher Coleman, Google’s director of global design, was quoted in a Bloomberg Businessweek article on innovation and design, as saying workers need diversity of space.
“There are so many ways to work—as a team, solo—and so many kinds of workers, from introverts to extroverts and so on,” Coleman said. “We create many different places so people can be as productive as possible – from formal and informal conference rooms to open spaces to stretching and yoga areas and gyms.”