Airbnb’s European Operations Hub in Dublin / Heneghan Peng Architects. Image © Ed Reeve

为什么开放式办公无法达到预期的效果？
Why Open-Plan Offices Don't Work (And Some Alternatives That Do)

由专筑网李韧，杨帆编译

原文最初由Amar Singh发表，名为“你在错误的地方工作”。

最近我在家完成了自己的所有工作。我会尽可能地不去办公室，因为在家里，我拥有自己能够控制的环境，并且能够任意选择自己的休息时间。

而我一来到办公室，整个环境就变了。周遭有太多的干扰，比如同事们的交流、楼下的犬吠、临时的会议，甚至还包括一些庆祝活动。好不容易进入的工作状态随时会被打破。在所有我工作过的地方，办公室的工作体验是最糟糕的。

This article was originally published by Amar Singh on Medium titled "You're working in the wrong place."
At my most recent job, I did all of my best work at home. I would actively try to avoid the office for as long as possible. At home, I had two desks and complete control over my environment. Distractions and breaks were choices.
Once I went into the office, the environment changed. There were constant distractions, from other employees, dogs barking (for the record: puppers were a net positive), impromptu meetings and birthday celebrations. It was very difficult to get into flow states and incredibly easy to be broken from them. Of all the places I could work, my desk at the office was often the worst option.


My home office is a fortress of productivity. Image via Amar Singh on Medium

当我置身拥挤的空间时，我的思路也变得局限起来，周围的一切都有可能对我产生负面影响，相反，当我所处的空间较为自由时，我能够理解自己的想法与构思，思路也变得非常清晰，思想品质会大大提升。

我意识到自己不喜欢开放式办公这种工作环境。

开放式办公的兴起

“我们鼓励人们处在开放的空间，因为我们相信人随时需要接受新事物。”——Jack Dorsey

理论上这是很棒的想法。大办公室的工作环境可以使人员更加紧密地配合。项目中的市场营销、设计、机械工程以及产品销售中的错误能够立刻被发现，并且这样的大环境可以使人员的沟通更加得高效。

目前，80%的办公室都运用了开放式布局。一些传统企业也逐渐开始采用这种布局方式。

听上去都很正确是吧？但是其中存在一些问题：

开放式办公并无作用

我认为，开放式办公存在着许多问题。我的性格较为外向，当遇到问题时，我会选择与同事们争论。

因此，处于开放式办公环境中的员工常常会受到各式各样的影响。1997年，某石油与天然气公司的一项研究表明：

“心理学家分别对员工们在更换办公室之前、更换办公室一个月后，以及六个月之后对于办公环境的满意程度进行了评估，并综合考量了他们的受压能力、工作表现和人际关系。然而数据证明，员工的表现并不如人意，新的办公空间让他们产生压力，而不是让他们倍感亲密，同事们甚至因此疏远，导致整体生产率的下降。”

面对工作效率的问题，开放式办公具有更多不可控的因素，从而降低员工的工作效率。同时，研究也表明，开放式办公环境甚至会引发反社会行为。

“虽然曾经的研究表明，开放式办公空间能够提升员工之间的沟通与合作，但实际上，相比起独立办公，这样做反而降低了人们的工作效率。”

开放式办公的噪音问题不可避免，同时员工们也缺乏隐私，因为适当的私密性能够提高人们的工作效率。

总而言之，开放式办公并不是明智的选择。这在心理学上是个失败案例，但如果要了解为什么开放式办公在目前如此普遍，那么我们必须去了解和学习心理学理论，其中的证明过程展示如下：

自发性创造力的过度集中

• 论点：让人们在一个大办公环境中能够提升他们的创造力与合作精神。
• 反驳：这些时刻发生的次数并不多，即使真是这样，公司的各种资源是否能被有效地利用？这种说法优化了项目的前进过程，也付出了一些代价，因为许多员工很难专注于工作。
  

碌碌无为与高效生产力

• 论点：当人们处于同一个空间，他们可以看到别人的工作进程从而调整自己的工作效率。
• 反驳：这种方法较不可取。如果公司领导需要通过这种方式来衡量员工的价值，那么这是因为他们的管理能力不足。如果你需要通过别人的繁忙程度来判断他们的价值，那真是多此一举。
  

成本效率

• 论点：让员工们在同一间办公室里工作能够减少建造成本。
• 反驳：是的，这样的话你需要花费大量的金钱去培养一位杰出的工程师和设计师，然后让他们在一个会不断分心的环境中工作。
  

开放式办公会让员工们感到自己时刻被监视着，无论是消极或是积极的工作状态，一切尽在领导眼中。这是在逼着员工们让自己看上去忙碌一些而已。

我们看上去很忙碌，可是效率却异常低下、身体状况也不尽如人意，甚至连沟通都受到了影响。这样的做法并不明智。

其他的选择

我们应该努力创造有意义的工作环境。事实上，这里还有许多可替代的概念，例如：

沟通与交流

事实上，人们处在不同的环境中益处良多，如果需要沟通与交流，可以单独设立这样一个空间，人们可以分别从自己的办公室通过走廊或单独的入口进入。

员工们应当有权利选择自己是否与别人进行合作，而沟通交流空间则设有大型区域以及走廊，用于引导员工的交流欲望。

When I’m in a crowded space my thoughts also get crowded. I feel overwhelmed by stimuli and the inability to escape them. In contrast, when I have space (mental & physical), I’m able to challenge and understand both my thoughts and assumptions. The quality of my thinking goes up significantly.
I realized I kind of hated open offices.

The Rise of the Open Office
“We encourage people to stay out in the open because we believe in serendipity—and people walking by each other teaching new things.
(Jack Dorsey — pg. 49, Deep Work)”
It sounds great in theory. Have an office with everyone in one room you’ll get more synergy than you can dynamically optimize. Marketing and Design will work side by side on skunkworks projects, Engineering and Product can knock out questions and bugs immediately, and communication will flow through the organization naturally.
80 percent of all offices now have an open floor plan. Traditional companies have moved towards open plans to inject some much-needed creativity and serendipity into their offices, just like the cool start-ups.
Makes sense, right? There’s one big problem:

Open Offices Don’t Work
Before I continue, I would like to call out that I am part of the "problem" with open offices. I’m extroverted and when faced with the choice of diving into a deep, complex problem or shooting the shit with my coworkers, I too often choose the latter. I’m not alone in this.
Workers who are in open office environments suffer by almost every measure. One study of an Oil & Gas company in 1997 showed that:
“The psychologists assessed the employees’ satisfaction with their surroundings, as well as their stress level, job performance, and interpersonal relationships before the transition, four weeks after the transition, and, finally, six months afterward. The employees suffered according to every measure: the new space was disruptive, stressful, and cumbersome, and, instead of feeling closer, coworkers felt distant, dissatisfied, and resentful. Productivity fell.”
When comparing performance to regular offices, open office employees experienced more uncontrolled interactions, higher levels of stress, and lower levels of concentration and motivation. Research also shows that open offices often lead to anti-social behaviors.
“Although prior researchers have claimed shared work spaces can improve social support, communication and cooperation, our results indicated that co-worker friendships are of the lowest quality in hot-desking and open-plan arrangements, when compared to those with their own offices or who share offices with just one or two others.”
The addition of noise inevitable to the open offices was seen as a large obstacle to productive focus. Physical barriers also instill a sense of privacy—and a sense of privacy at the office has been shown to boost job performance.
Open offices are bad architecture. They represent a failure in psychology as much as design. In order to understand why the open office is so pervasive, we have to understand the underlying psychology and rationale. The most common arguments for the open office are outlined below:

Spontaneous Creativity over Focus

• Point: Having people in one large office naturally increases the amount of spontaneous collaboration and creativity.
• Counterpoint: How often are these serendipitous moments actually happening? And even if they are, does your company's structure allow for them to be utilized effectively? You’re optimizing for a long tail event at the expense of something every single employee will benefit from—focus.
  

Busyness as a Proxy for Productivity

• Point: When everyone is in the same room, people are motivated to work more because other people can see what they’re doing.
• Counterpoint: This is a terrible way to judge performance. A manager who values the physical location of their employees does so because they have no real way or ability to measure output. If you’re judging the value of someone based on how busy they appear, good luck.
  

Cost Efficiencies

• Point: We save money by not having to build everyone their own office.
• Counterpoint: Cool, you’re going to spend a fuck ton of money on talented engineers and designers and then put them in an environment where they’re constantly distracted. Airtight plan.
  

Open concept offices also give workers the knowledge that they are constantly being watched, whether passively or actively. It encourages us to look busy and productive.
We look busier, but we’re less efficient, take more sick days and our communication and happiness suffers. It’s not a smart trade-off.

Alternatives
We should strive to create better environments for meaningful work. There are numerous concepts proposed, my favorites include:

Hub and Spoke
Potentially the best of both worlds. Hub and Spoke spaces feature a singular entryway into common spaces and hallways that spoke out to different individual offices.
People have the ability to choose to collaborate or to ensconce themselves in their offices. Hub and Spoke spaces have large, central spaces and hallways that need to be navigated that encourage conversation.


MIT Building 20 Aerial View. All those offices and one central entrance. Image via Amar Singh on Medium

麻省理工大学的20大楼便是一个典例，这座建筑因其墙体内部的创新设施而闻名，其中的独特之处同时也来源于建筑的特有结构。走廊和楼梯常常能够激发人们的思想碰撞，而不只是单纯地走过、路过。

Eudamonia机器

Eudamonia机器的概念来源于希腊，意思是“在这里你能够获得你的全部潜能”，我从“Cal Newport的深度工作”中了解到这个概念。

Eudamonia机器由以下五个空间组成，在这里你能够更加主动地集中注意力，从而专注于工作：

展览馆

“你进入的第一个房间便是展览馆，在Dewane的计划中，这个房间包含有许多深度工作的实际案例，其目的是刺激用户，从而形成‘积极、健康的压力文化’。”

沙龙

“沙龙的目的是创建一种‘介于好奇与争论’之间的氛围，这是讨论的场所，通过深度的思想碰撞你将能获得更多工作灵感。”

图书馆

“除了沙龙，你还可以去往图书馆。这个房间保存了以往的工作记录，以及在工作中需要使用的书籍与资源。”

办公室

“接下来便是办公空间。这里设置有一个标准会议室，其中还有办公隔间与小白板。这个办公室主要用于低强度的工作。”Dewane解释说。

深度工作区域

“这是最后一个房间，这里也是Dewane口中的‘深度工作区域’，每个区域尺寸为6英尺*10英尺，周围环绕着厚实的隔音墙体。‘深度工作区域’的目的是让员工们进入完全集中的工作状态。”

总的来说，对于Eudamonia机器的概念我非常喜欢，希望它能够得到广泛的普及。

作者的建议

也许你所在公司的管理理念较为教条，亦或是当前状况下的你不适合做出过多的调整。然而，如果对环境失去控制，工作会变得更加低效。

你仍然应当将工作做好

你可以像作者一样，尽力去寻找让你最高效的工作场所。也许是咖啡馆、图书馆，甚至是你家后面的洗衣房。一定有让你高效工作的专属场所。

你的解决策略

先了解自己，找到最适合自己的学习与工作方式。这个步骤很重要，因为我们常常会做一些看似合乎逻辑但却适得其反的事，你应当花时间去深度了解自己。

在开放式办公环境中，你是否有过最佳工作效率呢？


补充部分：

在建筑设计的策略中，许多营销软文都会通过大篇幅来表达某个项目的开放空间，这并不是说开放空间不好，但是，人们是否真的需要大面积的开放空间呢？人们需要交流，但有时也需要内心的自我沉淀，尤其是在工作中，有的人需要一个封闭的环境才能达到最高的工作效率，此时的开放式办公区就显得并不恰当。

上文中的Eudamonia理念便是一个很好的替代品，其中既有封闭空间，也有沟通场所，这样可以为员工提供更多的选择，从而不必拘泥于一种单纯的办公环境，最终达到提升效率的目的。

在建筑设计中，我们也应该由此反思，并不是所有高大上的理念都具有普遍性，建筑设计还是应当以人为本，遵循适度的原则，从而达到理想的状态。

M.I.T.’s Building 20 is a famous example of the Hub and Spoke approach. Building 20 was famed for the amount of innovation facilitated within its walls. Some of this has been attributed to the unique structure of the building. The hallways and staircases were the sites of creative collisions, not people sitting with three feet of each other.

Eudamonia Machine
Eudamonia is the Greek concept for “a state in which you’re achieving your full human potential.” I learned of the Eudamonia Machine (a brainchild of David Dewane’s) from Cal Newport’s Deep Work.
In the Eudamonia Machine, there are five spaces that get progressively more focused on concentrated, focused work:

Gallery
“The first room when you enter when coming off the street is called the gallery. In Dewane’s plan, this room would contain examples of deep work produced in the building. It’s meant to inspire users of the machine, creating a ‘culture of healthy stress and peer pressure.”

Salon
“The salon is designed to create a mood that ‘hovers between intense curiosity and argumentation.’ This is a place to debate, ‘brood,’ and in general work through the ideas that you’ll develop deeper in the machine.”

Library
“Beyond the salon you enter the library. This room stores a permanent record of all work produced in the machine, as well as the books and other resources used in this previous work.”

Office
“The next room is the office space. It contains a standard conference room with a whiteboard and some cubicles with desks. ‘The office,’ Dewane explains, ‘is for low-intensity activity.’”

Chamber
“This brings us to the final room of the machine, a collection of what Dewane calls ‘deep work chambers.’ Each chamber is conceived to be six by ten feet and protected by thick soundproof walls... ‘the purpose of the deep work chamber is to allow for total focus and uninterrupted work flow.’”
A more in-depth exploration of the Eudamonia Machine. I’m a big fan of the concept, although the branding could be a bit more accessible.

Writer’s Cabin
Perhaps you work at a dogmatic start-up or your situation won’t allow you to make any significant adjustments to your work space or structure. Not being in control of your environment will make it harder to get work done.
You still need to get work done.
Find your equivalent of the Writer’s Cabin. Figure out a place where you can do serious, uninterrupted work. It can be a coffee shop, library or laundry room in the back of your house. Your ‘cabin’ is your space in which you get work done.

Your Solution
Audit yourself and figure out how when you’re most efficient and reaching flow states. Audits are helpful, because we often do things that seem logical, but are actually counterproductive. Looking at the outcomes is a worthy investment of your time.

Do you get your best work done while in an open office?

        
出处：本文译自www.archdaily.com/，转载请注明出处。