開放式辦公室不利員工互動

Open office plans are often adopted with the noble intention of increasing collaboration, communication, and fostering team friendships, yet study after study suggests that workers simply don’t like this type of environment.And now, a study by researchers at the Harvard Business School adds further evidence to the value of walls (to hide behind) after finding that employees at two large Fortune 500 companies actually engaged in less face-to-face contact after switching to entirely open workspaces.

現(xiàn)如今，開放式的辦公室常常被采納，其目的是為了增加團隊之間的合作、交流。但研究表明，職員們其實根本不喜歡這種類型的環(huán)境。哈佛商學院的一項研究進一步證明了墻壁的價值，因為他們發(fā)現(xiàn)：在轉(zhuǎn)換到完全開放的工作空間后，兩家世界500強企業(yè)的員工彼此之間的面對面接觸實際上變得更少了。

As described in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, Ethan Bernstein and Stephen Turban sought to conduct a real-world comparison of people’s behavior in different types of offices after a good number of theoretical investigations had concluded that open layouts reduce communication.

正如《皇家學會哲學會刊》所報道的，伊桑·伯恩斯坦和斯蒂芬·特爾班博士試圖對不同類型辦公室中人們的行為進行一次比較。

For their two-part examination, they first recruited 52 employee volunteers from an organization, given the pseudonym OpenCo1, and asked them to wear a device known as a sociometric badge every working day for three weeks before the workspace remodel, then every working day for three weeks after the transition about three months later. The sociometric badge captures when wearers are face-to-face with others (using an infrared sensor that registers contact with other sensors), if a wearer is talking or listening to another using a microphone, and captures spatial location and movement/posture using a Bluetooth sensor and accelerometer, respectively. Data was gathered in 10-millisecond intervals.

為了進行兩部分的測試，他們首先從一個組織中招募了52名員工作為志愿者，要求他們在每個工作日都隨身佩戴一個稱為社交計量徽章的裝置。當佩戴者與其他人面對面交流時，社交計量徽章就會捕捉到這一過程。研究讓志愿者先在獨立且封閉的空間里工作了三周，然后將其工作環(huán)境轉(zhuǎn)變?yōu)殚_放的辦公空間，又跟蹤調(diào)查了三周的時間。

To quantify communication not occurring in person, the participants gave permission for the researchers to review the number of emails and instant messages (IMs) sent during those periods.

為了量化那些非面對面的通信，研究人員審查了志愿者在這段時期內(nèi)接收和發(fā)送的電子郵件和即時消息的數(shù)量。

The second part of the study was a similar assessment of 100 employees at "OpenCo2", yet these subjects were followed for eight weeks before and after open-plan renovations.

研究的第二部分是對另一家公司100名員工的類似評估，只是這些志愿者總共被跟蹤調(diào)查了8個星期。

In both field studies, the data revealed that face-to-face interaction dropped substantially after the switch to un-walled workstations.

在這兩項研究中，數(shù)據(jù)表明：處于開放的辦公環(huán)境之后，員工們面對面互動的次數(shù)大幅度減少了。

“Contrary to common belief,” the authors wrote, “the volume of face-to-face interaction decreased significantly (approx. 70%) in both cases, with an associated increase in electronic interaction. In short, rather than prompting increasingly vibrant face-to-face collaboration, open architecture appeared to trigger a natural human response to socially withdraw from officemates and interact instead over email and IM.”

作者表示：“與普遍的看法相反，面對面交流的次數(shù)反而減少了大約70%，電子交互也相應增加了。簡而言之，開放的辦公環(huán)境并沒有促進日益活躍的面對面協(xié)作，反而使得人們更加依賴電子郵件和即時通訊進行互動。

“While it is possible to bring chemical substances together under specific conditions of temperature and pressure to form the desired compound, more factors seem to be at work in achieving a similar effect with humans. Until we understand those factors, we may be surprised to find a reduction in [face-to-face] collaboration at work even as we architect transparent, open spaces intended to increase it.”

“你可能只需要特定的溫度和壓力這兩個因素就能使化學物質(zhì)結(jié)合在一起成為新的化合物，但是想讓人們結(jié)合得更緊密比這要復雜得多，我們需要考慮更多的因素。”