I understand the impulse that businesses have for open work environments. When workers know that they can be seen, it makes sense that they are less likely to screw around on the internet or their phones. Synergy is also easier when employees can simply turn around and get answers from coworkers rather than type to them via the internal chat system. However, when it comes to marketing departments in general and my work experience specifically, I can’t see that these benefits outweigh the cost in productivity and quality.
Almost every job I’ve worked after college has been in some kind of cubicle. Some cubicles wrapped around me with high walls while others were little more than desks with low barriers to separate the stations. During almost all of that time, I was performing some aspect of content creation for marketing purposes, like copywriting, blogging, video editing, designing, coding, etc. Looking back, I know that I was most productive when my environment was mostly closed off and I could work in relative peace. Open work environments always made marketing unnecessarily more difficult.
No matter how collaborative a project is, the various parts are always built individually. That means the copywriter, designer, editor, photographer, whomever all work by themselves to produce the deliverable that assembles into the final product. The worst thing a company can do is give these people visual or aural distractions. I know that when I’m trying to find the perfect combination of words that fit the limited space I’m trying to fill in an ad while still being persuasive and on-brand, the last thing I want is to hear other words. In fact, I want to make it as hard as possible for other people to disturb me in any way.
Designers and production artists probably feel the same way about open work environments. I see them struggle to block out light by building makeshift shades around their monitors to get accurate color reproduction. The best creative rooms I’ve seen have always been dimly lit and quiet so that artistic people can concentrate.
That’s not to say that I can’t be productive in an open work environment. My first exposure to it was at a mid-size manufacturing company where Marketing was situated right next to Sales. So, you had one department that needed quiet next to a department that was necessarily loud. To make matters worse, my specific station was directly beneath a loudspeaker, which the owner of the company used very frequently to summon people to his location around the property. When I think about those times, I’m impressed that I got any work done at all. My manager was always impressed with my work, so I certainly wasn’t turning in substandard copy, but I can only imagine how much more I could have accomplished with a better work environment.
There’s also something to be said about illnesses and privacy. I have watched flus and colds run rampant through offices one sneeze or cough at a time. One shrewd boss even sent me home when I was deathly ill so that I could work remotely, because she was worried that I would infect the office. I had just started with the company, and I didn’t think it would look good to call off on the first week. And while I don’t think that high-wall cubicles are a foolproof answer to stopping the spread of disease in the office, they certainly help.
In terms of privacy, not every call is personal. Sometimes conversations about office political maneuvers or other work-related delicate topics need to be had, and forcing workers to leave their desk to find private spaces just seems like wasted productivity. I sit next to the director for my business unit, and I often see him get up and walk for a phone conversation that is several paygrades above me. And this forces him to use his personal cell phone for business matters. Perhaps a high barrier wouldn’t prevent me from hearing his conversation, but at least it would prevent me from seeing his monitor or paperwork or anything else that would give me the context of the conversation.
I’m straying a little bit from the marketing topic, so allow me to wrap up with a relevant anecdote. In one company I worked for, the workspace was broken up into large rooms, so corner workstations – while still rare – weren’t impossible to get. As soon as one opened up, I put in a request to move there. In that space, where no one was walking around me and I could block out the faces of coworkers and their conversations, I was able to innovate for the company, creating a new marketing content process that would lift sales by 4% for every product that used my process. I created this process while making sure my regular duties were fulfilled, of course. It’s doubtful that I could have done the same in a more distracting environment.
After I left the company, I visited them a few months later to discover that large windows had been cut out of every internal wall, destroying the privacy that corner stations offered. I was told that it was a decision by the owner who reportedly said, “When people can hide, they don’t work.” I admit that there is some truth to that, but a low-value employee will always find ways to not work regardless of visibility. Conversely, a high-value employee may be prevented from going above and beyond their salaried duties in the same environment.
So, companies need to decide what goal they want to achieve: encourage workers who are actively working against the company’s interest or encourage workers who are creating new opportunities for the company’s success. Once that’s decided, then the choice of office environment should be a no-brainer.
