Large Open-Plan Offices Carry a Bigger Focus Cost Than Many Boards Assume

For cognitively demanding work, smaller open-plan offices appear less harmful than larger open-plan offices, while cell offices are not automatically the strongest option.

That matters because workplace decisions still often collapse into a crude debate: open plan as the engine of collaboration, or cellular space as the obvious route to focus.

A Swedish study by Aram Seddigh and colleagues points to a more useful conclusion. When performance on demanding cognitive tasks was compared between quiet baseline conditions and normal working conditions, larger open-plan offices showed a bigger performance drop than smaller open-plan offices. At the same time, cell offices did not perform as straightforwardly as many would expect.

That does not mean open plan always fails or cell offices are a poor choice. It means organisations need a more precise decision logic for how office type should support actual work.

What did the study show about open-plan offices and cognitive performance?

The study examined how performance on demanding cognitive tasks changed between quiet conditions and normal working conditions across different office types: cell offices and small, medium-sized, and large open-plan offices.

The most useful conclusion was that larger open-plan offices appeared to create a bigger performance drop than smaller open-plan offices. That is already a strong corrective to the assumption that openness can be discussed mainly in terms of communication or space efficiency.

The second conclusion is more surprising. Cell offices did not emerge as a simple best case. The authors themselves say replication is needed, and that is exactly why the result is so valuable. It forces organisations away from office ideology and back toward the question of what the work actually requires.

Why are larger open-plan offices especially risky for focus work?

The larger the open-plan office, the higher the probability of irrelevant stimuli, parallel activity, and distraction competing for attention. For work that depends on memory, concentration, and cognitive precision, that environment becomes harder to manage.

That does not make every larger open-plan office a mistake. But it does mean organisations should not choose large open-plan solutions mainly because they look efficient in density or property terms. The performance effect may be harder to see in the spreadsheet, but it can still be commercially important.

This is where many workplace decisions weaken. Workspace cost is easy to calculate. Performance loss is much harder to quantify, but it may matter just as much when the environment does not fit the work.

Why are cell offices not automatically the answer?

One of the most important aspects of the study is precisely that cell offices did not behave like an uncomplicated benchmark. The findings suggest that cell offices may also have negative effects on performance comparable to those of large open-plan offices.

That is not an argument against cell offices. It is an argument against using them as a symbolic answer. An office decision should not be built around the assumption that closed always means focus and open always means collaboration.

The better conclusion is that office type needs to be chosen against task demands, distraction patterns, work styles, and the mix of settings the organisation actually needs.

Which mistakes do organisations make when they choose office type?

The first mistake is treating office types as identities rather than work tools. That turns the decision into a statement for or against a concept instead of an analysis of what the business needs.

The second mistake is letting density or space efficiency outweigh task fit. A larger open-plan office may look rational in the property calculation while being weaker in everyday work if employees regularly need to perform demanding cognitive tasks.

The third mistake is making layout decisions before the organisation has defined which settings are actually needed. Once that happens, the debate about open versus closed becomes too blunt and too late.

What does a stronger decision base for office design look like?

It starts by distinguishing between types of work. The organisation needs to understand when the workplace must support concentration, when it must support coordination, and when it must manage both at the same time.

It then needs to analyse how distractions actually arise in the current environment, which groups are affected most, and which alternatives are realistic within the organisation’s constraints. Only then can it decide whether the right answer lies in smaller open-plan settings, more enclosed environments, better zoning, or another combination.

For decision-makers, that is the real value of office design analysis. Office type should not be treated as a matter of preference. It is a question of how the physical workplace affects concentration, performance, and the ability to deliver work under normal conditions.

Which questions should you answer before choosing between office types?

Before moving ahead, the organisation should be able to answer at least the following:

• Which work tasks are most sensitive to distraction and irrelevant stimuli?
• Where might larger open-plan offices create performance loss that never appears in the property calculation?
• Which parts of the work require privacy, and which need easier access to colleagues?
• Is the office type decision grounded in workplace analysis or in assumptions about what should work?

If those questions remain unanswered, the office decision is likely to become a design choice without enough workplace logic behind it.

Source

Source supporting this article: Journal of Environmental Psychology, “The association between office design and performance on demanding cognitive tasks”, published 2015-05-09. URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2015.05.001.