A colleague is sitting two steps away. To ask them a question, you open the work chat.
For a manager, such a scene might look strange. The company removed partitions, seated people next to each other, and created a space for communication. Yet employees continue texting each other—sometimes with the person at the next desk.
It is tempting to explain this by people's habits: they forgot how to talk, became too obsessed with messengers. But it is worth examining another assumption: how comfortable is it to talk in a space where everyone hears you?
In 2018, Ethan Bernstein and Stephen Turban studied the transition of two American companies to a more open layout. Fifty-two employees participated in one study, and 100 in the other. Wearable sensors recorded face-to-face communication, while corporate system data made it possible to track correspondence. The sensors did not record the content of the conversations.
After the workspace change, face-to-face interaction time decreased by approximately 70% in both cases. Electronic communication increased. This 70% refers to the participants' personal conversations; one cannot assess changes in productivity based on this figure.
The study has its limitations: two organizations, a before-and-after move comparison, without random assignment of employees to different conditions. The result shows that the promise "remove the walls and people will start communicating more" might not work.
One possible explanation discussed by the authors is the desire to preserve privacy. In an open space, a conversation gains an additional audience. Messaging allows one to choose who exactly sees it. The mechanism itself was not definitively established by this study.
Imagine that you need to clarify a basic thing that everyone seemingly already knows. Or inform a colleague about a mistake. Or discuss a proposal that you are not sure about yourself yet.
In private, such a conversation could take a minute. In the middle of an open hall, it comes with a different cost: you have to voice a doubt, a remark, or a question in front of people you did not invite into that conversation. In such a situation, choosing chat looks completely understandable.
A similar contradiction is visible in a study by Kim and de Dear, published in 2013. An analysis of office environment surveys showed that the benefits of easy interaction in open-plan offices did not compensate for the drawbacks of noise and loss of privacy regarding overall workplace satisfaction. These are data on employee ratings; on their own, they do not establish the reasons for choosing a communication channel.
For a manager, a practical question arises here: what kinds of conversations should the office support?
Checking in quickly with a neighboring team, discussing a complex project, providing feedback, and conducting a confidential meeting are different tasks. When planning space, it is useful to separately provide conditions for each of them.
Before the next renovation, one could start with something simple: ask employees which conversations they put off, move to chat, or hold outside the office. Are there enough places where two people can talk quietly? Is it possible to discuss work without disturbing those who currently need quiet?
The answers will help formulate what exactly is worth changing. For example, testing whether it becomes more convenient to discuss complex issues once an accessible small meeting room appears. Then, assessing whether people manage to clarify questions and make decisions faster. An increase in the number of conversations alone says nothing yet about their usefulness.
Walls are easy to see on an office floor plan. The discomfort of asking a question, the fear of sounding incompetent, or the reluctance to discuss a mistake in front of witnesses are not marked on it.
If people sit next to each other and still text each other, it is worth asking: what makes speaking out loud uncomfortable?
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