5 Reasons to Eliminate the Open Office To Boost Your Productivity

Should I go for an open office, or shall I eliminate an open office? The topic is quite debatable now, although people earlier thought the open office plan would only have benefits for their employees. The small open office design was expected to attract office workers and increase the social interaction between employees, but over the years, we have seen some big changes in the work trends and preferences. Therefore, what was first thought desirable is now something you must avoid and eliminate.

No matter how much someone tells you that a particular office plan is not good for you, you are unwilling to leave the discussion unless you have some concrete reason. So, we thought of sharing the reasons to remove an open office in this article to help you out.

As you read further, you will find the most concrete reasons to eliminate open offices from your office plan. Knowing them will also help you understand how to delete open offices orhow to remove open offices and shift to a more reliable office plan.

So, let's learn more about why you should eliminate the open office.

5 Reasons to Eliminate the Open Office

1. They Could Deteriorate Your Working Relationship & Team’s Productivity

This might be a little surprising for you, but the open offices can deteriorate your working relationship. The employers usually only mention that the open offices are there for better collaboration and coordination between workers. However, you must be aware that such a setup helps you better check on how the employees work.

You can easily point out which worker is using their mobile and how long they are spending on work. What you don’t realize is that your employee notices this extra surveillance too. Therefore, they show that they are giving all their time to work. You may think that such surveillance gives you an upper hand and increases your team’s productivity, but what it actually does is the exact opposite.

Your employees may work half-heartedly due to surveillance, and the present distractions like the typing sound and little chats in the working area would impact their productivity. So, what was thought of as a collaborative way to work, deteriorates your relationship with your workers and reduces productivity. 

2. They Can’t Make People Work Together

People always expect open offices as a means for increasing collaboration and helping people work together. Nevertheless, it is seen that only removing the walls between workers cannot make them work together.

What the open office actually does is that it increases tension between office workers. Imagine your colleague has a nail-biting habit, and you find it annoying. If you were in separate cabins, you would have never noticed it and worked at peace. Since you are in an open office, you will have to bear with them.

Some open office workers even complain that their coworkers are too loud and that they can't work in their presence. In this situation, you don't feel like sharing opinions and ideas with them as you think they would disturb you. So, the less you know your coworkers, the better for you and them.

If you are too tired of tolerating them, you are more likely to get yourself some headphones or noise-canceling devices. Doing so will help you avoid them, but then the purpose of collaborating will remain unmet. Therefore, it won't be wrong to say that the open offices do not serve the purpose of collaboration. 

3. An Open Office Promotes the Spread of Illness

Ever since the world has faced the pandemic, the work trends have changed. That’s why people like taking health precautions at work. Such a situation gave birth to the hybrid work environment. That’s why people usually prefer having an office that limits the spread of illnesses.

Even if you add privacy panels, you won't be able to achieve the structure of a cabin office setup, and the risk of the spread of any illness would be there. Since germs can easily spread out in such a case, you will have to install some hand sanitizers around. Yet this is not a permanent solution to this problem. 

4. There is Too Much Noise Pollution in an Open Office

Chit chats of coworkers, typing sounds, murmurs, heel taps of people walking in the aisle, etc., are all those noises that are among the common distractions at work. All that makes an open office quite noisy and distracted. So, working with all these distractions makes it all a challenging task for you. 

5. Open Offices Are Smelly

The basic reason for introducing the open plan office was to reduce the operational cost at the employer's end. However, some employers go so far in attaining this that they try cramming in as many workers as they can.

Such a work environment means people with different scents and perfumes are sitting in space. If you have ever worked in such an environment, you would have noticed how stuffy and smelly such places can get. That's why it is reasonable to eliminate the open office. 

Wrapping It Up

Knowing the reasons to eliminate an open office is enough to make up your mind to work on a new office plan. That's why the next question that often pops up in people's minds is how they can do that. The simple solution is the hybrid workplaces and home offices in modern times. That means you will need a bulk supply of ergonomic office furniture to plan your all-new office layout.

Things like an ergonomic office chair and an adjustable standing desk would be among your priorities in that regard. The good news for you is that we have the Autonomous Employee Purchase Program designed especially for such employers. Our purchase program has multiple bulk sale deals that help you attain bigger discounts. All you need to do is sign up for this program using your corporate email. Doing that will open up our deals page, and you can conveniently place bulk or individual orders from there.