Workers dissatisfied with open plan offices

17 September 2013 - Most people are dissatisfied with having to work in an open plan office, University of Sydney research has found. PhD candidate Jungsoo Kim and Professor Richard de Dear from the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning found many feel open plan offices are disruptive to productivity. "Open plan office layouts have been touted as a way to boost workplace satisfaction and team effectiveness in recent years," Mr Kim said. "We found people in open plan offices were less satisfied with their workplace environment than those in private offices. "The benefits of being close to co-workers in open plan offices were offset by factors such as increased noise and less privacy," he said. Based on a survey of more than 42,000 office workers in the USA, Finland, Canada and Australia, Workspace satisfaction: The privacy-communication trade-off in open-plan offices , was published in the latest edition of Journal of Environmental Psychology. The University of Sydney researchers analysed the Center for the Built Environment at the University of California, Berkeley's database which measured Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) in office buildings.