Why the door is closing on the open-plan office

A disturbance every three minutes at our open-plan desks makes us worse workers, conference told

Open-plan offices will be consigned to history because they are bad for productivity, according to an expert in emerging technology at BT who said open plan offices meant workers were easily interrupted – and suggested more work would be done in cafes and public places.

THEY were supposed to generate a sense of camaraderie, enhance teamwork and encourage an open flow of ideas between colleagues after decades of segregation in booths. But openplan offices will soon be consigned to history because they are bad for productivity, allowing workers to be constantly interrupted by distractions, a futurologist at BT has warned.

Dr Nicole Millard, an expert in data, analytics and emerging technology, said traditional offices are inefficient, especially for introverts who work better when they are not disturbed.

Instead, she has predicted that employees in the future will become “shoulder-bag workers” carrying their offices in backpacks and collaborating in small teams in coffee shops, which she dubbed “coffices”.

Many firms believe large, open-plan workspaces help collaboration. But Dr Millard said that unless staff were in close proximity “you might as well be in Belgium”. However, research has shown that when workers are too close together they communicate poorly.

“Open-plan offices are a one-sizefits-all model which actually fits nobody,” Dr Millard said at New Scientist Live in London yesterday. “We’re interrupted every three minutes. It takes us between eight and 20 minutes to get back into that thought process. Email. We get too much. Meetings, colleagues. It’s all distracting. So we will become shoulder-bag workers. Our technology has shrunk so we can literally get our office in a small bag. We are untethered, we don’t have to have a desk anymore.”

However, Dr Millard said that offices are still important, if only for socialising. “We need a balance between ‘we’ and ‘me’,” she added. “We need to give people options of how they can work. I think we will start to embrace ‘the coffice’. I need good coffee, connectivity, cake, my Wi-fi wings to fly me into the cloud. I like company. The ‘coffice’ could be a coffee shop or a hotel lobby.”

Dr Millard said the ageing workforce will also change how offices work, because older people will no longer want to work nine to five or commute for long distances.

She said: “We have an older workforce, which is fantastic because they have accumulated experience gained over many years but they are probably not going to work nine to five, or commute into work.”

She also said that it was unlikely that robots would take most jobs.

“These technologies won’t replace us. They will help us do the dirty, dull and dangerous jobs that we don’t want to do. It’s very difficult for robots to replicate humans. They don’t have the dexterity, the empathy, the gut feelings. I think the rise of the droids is a positive trend and can make us feel more valuable as human beings.”