“If you don’t know where you are, you don’t know who you are”

🕒 4 min read

Uptown Studios HQ, Broadway Corridor, Sacramento

“If you don’t know where you are, you don’t know who you are” – Wendell Berry

When negotiating a lease, you have to pay attention to the bottom line. However, you cannot forget about your team.

Open Offices Are Not for Everyone

In the iconic Christmas movie The Grinch, the big green Grinch bounds his sleigh toward Whoville. Then he hears the Whos singing.  This infuriates the Grinch, and he exasperates, “All the Noise! Noise! Noise!” The Grinch may dislike open offices. However, many companies use them successfully to encourage collaboration. But many other functions, say engineering, design, coding, writing,research and stealing Christmas,  an open environment may not the best solution.  A Forbes article from August 2012 explored this topic and presented differing viewpoints.

  • Dr Vinesh Oommen concluded, “In 90 per cent of the research, the outcome of working in an open-plan office was seen as negative, with open-plan offices causing high levels of stress, conflict, high blood pressure, and a high staff turnover.”
  • Craig Knight suggests that traditional office environments may increase individual wellbeing by 32% and office productivity by 15% (The Secret Life of Buildings.)
  • Professors Anne-Laure Fayard and John Weeks point out in their article, “Who Moved My Cube” (Harvard Business Review, July 2011), “Some studies show that employees in open-plan spaces, knowing that they may be overheard or interrupted, have shorter and more-superficial discussions than they otherwise would.”

Facebook’s Formula: Proximity, Privacy, and Permission

Recently, Facebook looked at the office environment this way:

Facebook wants its office design to encourage the right interactions. At the same time, engineers need enough privacy to work without interruptions. Fayard and Weeks suggest it comes down to: Proximity, Privacy and Permission.

  • Proximity: Give people enough space to work comfortably. At the same time, create traffic patterns that encourage chance encounters near shared resources.
  • Privacy: Workstations should provide visual and acoustic privacy. Employees should also be able to see when someone is approaching.
  • Permission: Company culture determines what is permissible. Employees should understand when socializing is encouraged and when interruptions are appropriate.

For now we’ll have to wait to see if Facebook engineers will “like” working in the “largest open floor plan in the world” or whether it will cut their productivity and job satisfaction.

Workplace Design Drives Productivity

Companies can improve productivity by considering an employee’s day-to-day routine.  Can they walk to lunch?  How about shopping?  Parking, Transit, Banking?  Anytime you can provide the employee the time and convenience to tend to personal matters like errands, the employee will be more effective in the office (as long as they deal with personal matters on their breaks and lunch hour.)  Frankly, I believe many companies foster an empowering approach where as long as an employee is “getting it done” there are no defined breaks or lunch hours.  Labor laws tend to get in the way, but there are ways to navigate around the law, while complying.

Employee Turnover is reduced significantly when putting employees well being first.  If you have ever had to hire a new employee or deal with a disgruntled former employee you know how costly it can be.  Spending a little extra to make the workplace special and a welcoming environment results in an excellent ROI.  Inc. Magazine discusses this link.

“An individual is not too distinct from his place. He is his place” – Gabriel Marcel

If you have questions about your lease, I can help.  If you need design advice, I can send you in the right direction.  Please feel free to call me at (916) 761-1202 or email me at tom@baconcre.com.