Chicago Tribune (July 19)
“A cubicle-free workplace without private offices is supposed to force employees to collaborate. To have them talk more face-to-face. To get them off instant messenger and spontaneously brainstroming about new ideas.” It’s not happening. A recent study found that after a move “to open-plan offices, workers spent 73 percent less time in face-to-face interactions. Meanwhile, email rose 67 percent and IM use went up 75 percent.”
Tags: Brainstroming, Collaborate, Cubicle, Email, Employees, Face-to-face, Ideas, IM, Open-plan offices, Workplace
The Economist (March 19)
“Companies are abandoning functional silos and organising employees into cross-disciplinary teams that focus on particular products, problems or customers. These teams are gaining more power to run their own affairs. They are also spending more time working with each other rather than reporting upwards. But the transition to “a network of teams” in place of conventional hierarchy has hardly been smooth. Managing teams is “hard” and research routinely uncovers lapses. And even when teamwork is well managed, things can be taken too far. “Even in the age of open-plan offices and social networks some work is best left to the individual.”
Tags: Cross-disciplinary teams, Customers, Employees, Functional silos, Hierarchy, Individual, Network, Open-plan offices, Problems, Products, Research, Social networks, Teamwork
