开放式办公室的弊端
BBC米歇尔·古德曼(Michelle Goodman)(2023年9月3日)
Influence & Co是一家位于密苏里州哥伦比亚市的通信公司，开放式办公室一直以来都是他们引以为豪的特色。
该公司创办至今只有2年，拥有70名员工。身为他们的出版总监，梅兰妮·贾尼斯(Melanie Janisse)说：“我们没有给员工指定办公桌，首席执行官与实习生都在同一间办公室里工作。”
从积极的方面来看，这样做可以提升透明度，提振员工士气，还能加强合作。
但职场民主也要付出一些代价。
“没有人为一团乱麻的办公桌负责，”贾尼斯说，“咖啡杯和纸张总是乱放一气。”
该公司对卫生状况的放任还影响到了摆放在办公室各个角落里的垃圾桶。
“垃圾桶满了也没有人管，”贾尼斯说，“只有当苍蝇肆虐时，才会有人把它倒掉。”
这就是全新的协作式办公的弊端。
在世界各地，随着越来越多的公司采用开放式办公室，那些零距离合作的员工们也获得了更多令彼此抓狂的机会。凌乱的桌子和恶臭的垃圾只是个开始，还有其他一些颇具争议的问题，例如有的人喜欢大声喧哗，有的午餐味道浓烈，有的同事体味难闻，有的人霸占桌子却并不使用，甚至还有人把用完或损坏的订书机放在桌子上，等着其他人来处理。“很多都像是幼儿园小孩子干的事情，他们似乎完全不知道顾及他人的感受。”凯特·李斯特(Kate Lister)说，他在总部位于加州的国际职场咨询公司Global Workplace Analytics担任总裁。
但李斯特表示，要成功部署开放式办公室，就必须设计完善的规定，从公共卫生到整理桌面，从安静时间到员工教育，必须事无巨细。无论是借助面对面的对话，还是通过网络视频或手册来传达，只要能对所有受此影响的员工进行培训即可。
“必须强制落实规定。”李斯特补充道，“否则就会有人把衣服挂在桌子上，对所有的规定视而不见。这会令其他人大为恼火。如果有一个人不守规矩，其他人也会纷纷效仿。”
把不守规矩的人扼杀在萌芽里
规定越详细，员工和管理者在使用和维护开放式办公室时的误解就越少。e-Work.com可以通过互联网为世界各地的组织提供开放式办公室培训，该公司全球开发副总裁凯特·诺斯(Kate North)表示，人们需要知道什么时间可以使用哪个房间或工作台从事何种活动。
“如果在你所处的环境中，有很多同事都在埋头工作，那或许就不适合在这里召开在线会议。”诺斯解释道。
类似地，如果企业不告诉员工如何使用技术工具来实现数字化存储，那就不能奢望他们放弃固定办公桌和各种各样的存储空间。“如果人们还要受累于纸质文件，他们就会抢占办公桌。”诺斯说。
国际音频技术公司Plantronics欧洲和非洲后勤经理乔治·考芬(George Coffin)采取了“早教育、常提醒”的模式，以此确保员工遵守规定。
考芬负责的部门共有120名员工，当他们两年前搬到英国的一个开放式办公室的时候，他要求员工要么亲自打扫卫生，要么在需要打扫卫生或有设备损坏时汇报给后勤人员，由他们进行清理和维修。当然，并非所有人都能遵守规定。
例如，有一组人离开时经常忘记打扫和整理咖啡杯、废弃的纸张和用过的白板。一天下午，考芬发现这组人离开会议室时又是一片狼藉，但他们还预订了第二天早上继续使用这间会议室。于是，考芬让晚间清洁小组不要打扫这间会议室。这组粗心的员工第二天早晨来到会议室后，纷纷抱怨糟糕的卫生状况。这时，考芬提醒他们，这一切都是他们自己造成的。
“从那以后，这组员工再也没有犯过同样的错误。”考芬说。
同事施压
诺斯认为，如果同事能够施加适当的压力，便可最大程度地规范员工们在开放办公室里的行为。
DoSomething.com的诺米·希拉巴亚什(Naomi Hirabayashi)也认同这一看法。为了能营造一段安静的时光，让员工们可以在每个周末前专心致志地从事项目，这家热闹而充满活力的非营利组织推出了“沉思星期四”(Thoughtful Thursday)活动。每周四下午1:30之后，DoSomething.com当天剩余时间都会进入静音模式。在这段时间内，不能交谈，不能当着同事的面接打电话(会议室除外)。“必须要有一段时间让所有人都静下心来。”希拉巴亚什说，他是这家组织的首席营销官，他们的总部位于纽约市，共有70名员工，主要帮助年轻人参与对他们重要的事业。
因为聊天而分散精力的情况在Influence & Co更为严重，但受影响的不是该公司自己，而是与之共同租用同一处办公空间的其他小企业。“我们公司的人都很健谈。”贾尼斯说，“办公楼的管理员现在规定每周三早晨是‘安静时间’，以便所有人都能集中精力完成工作。我敢肯定这都是因为我们公司。”
Influence & Co也在解决卫生问题。贾尼斯的老板本周宣布了一个名叫“清洁之王”(The King or Queen of Clean)的项目，要求所有员工每周轮流清理公司的办公室。(他并未透露这个项目是否是应办公楼管理员的要求推出的。)为了给员工施压，Influence & Co还规定了罚款政策。贾尼斯说，只要卫生不达标或者存在不顾及他人感受的行为，就必须往存钱罐里放入1美元，所有罚款都会用做公司的娱乐基金。
Plantronic的考芬完全赞同让员工相互监督，但他不会当众提出批评。相反，当他收到关于大声喧哗或不讲卫生的投诉后，就会与投诉对象的管理者沟通，但他不会直接透露违规者的姓名，而是让这位管理者向整个团队重申公司的规定。
这种方法的确很奏效。考芬表示，多数情况下，员工都很愿意相互监督，也都为能够保持办公楼始终如一的整洁而自豪。“我们从2011年开始就在这栋楼里办公，”考芬说，“我敢跟你保证，如果现在走进去，你会以为我们是上周刚刚搬进来的。”
Rubbish, chatter, squatters: The open office dark side
“There are no assigned desks,” said Melanie Janisse, director of publications at the two-year-old, 70-employee company. “Our chief executive officer has the same office space as our interns.”
On the plus side, transparency and morale are high. So is collaboration.
But workspace democracy comes at a price.
“No one claims responsibility for the mess on the desks,” Janisse said. “There are constantly coffee cups and papers everywhere.”
The company’s laissez-faire attitude toward cleanliness has extended to the garbage receptacles throughout the office, too.
“Trash cans would overflow,” Janisse said. “Only when the fruit flies got bad did someone finally take it out.”
Welcome to the dark side of the brave new collaborative workplace.
With more companies around the globe moving to shared workspaces, there’s more opportunity for employees working in close, wall-free proximity to drive each other mad. A messy desk or stinky trash can is only the beginning. Other contentious issues: loud talkers, smelly lunches, smelly officemates, colleagues who hoard unassigned workspaces they don’t even use and co-workers who leave empty or broken staplers on the desk for the next person to deal with. “A lot of this seems like it ought to be kindergarten ‘How to get along with others 101’,” said Kate Lister, president of Global Workplace Analytics, an international workplace consulting firm based in Carlsbad, California.
But for open office floor plans to succeed, firm ground rules on everything from cleanliness to desk hoarding to quiet hours and employee education are essential, Lister said. It doesn’t matter whether it’s an in-person orientation, an online video or a written manual, so long as all affected employees get trained.
“It has to be mandatory,” Lister added. “Otherwise, you’re going to have that guy that hangs his jacket on the desk and ignores all the rules. And that’s going to tick everybody else off. If one guy’s getting away with it, then the others are going to try.”
Nipping rule breakers in the bud
The more specific the ground rules, the less misunderstandings employees and managers will have about using and maintaining open office space. People need to know which rooms and work stations are available to them at what times, and for which type of activity, said Kate North, vice president of global development at e-Work.com, a company that creates web-based training for organisations with open office spaces worldwide.
“If you’re in an environment where a lot of colleagues are doing head-down work, it may not be appropriate to do a webinar in that space,” North explained.
Likewise, a company can’t expect employees to forego permanent desks — and all the storage they provide — without training them in the technological tools available for digital storage. “If people are burdened down by paper, they’ll start claiming desk space and start squatting,” North said.
George Coffin, Europe and Africa facilities manager at international audio technology company Plantronics, takes an “educate early and remind often” approach to ensuring his staff mind their manners.
When Coffin’s 120-person division moved to an open office in the United Kingdom two years ago, he asked staff to either clean up after themselves or report their messes — and for that matter, any broken equipment — to facilities personnel, who would then clean or fix accordingly. Of course, not everyone followed the rules.
One group in particular regularly left a trail of used coffee cups, discarded paper and marked-up whiteboards when they left a space. Late one afternoon, Coffin discovered the group had left a mess in a conference room that group had reserved for another meeting the following morning. Coffin asked the evening cleaning team to leave the room untouched. When the careless confab arrived for their meeting the next morning and complained about the sloppy state of the conference room, Coffin reminded them it was their mess.
“Since then, that team has never given me another problem,” Coffin said.
The power of peer pressure
A healthy dose of peer pressure can keep open office workers on their best behaviour, North said.
Naomi Hirabayashi of DoSomething.org agrees. To ensure a stretch of quiet, focused time to wrap up projects before each week’s end, the lively, energetic non-profit has instituted “Thoughtful Thursdays.” At 1:30 p.m. each Thursday, DoSomething.org goes into silent mode for the rest of the day. No talking. No taking calls in the presence of co-workers (conference rooms are okay). “It’s important to have that time where everybody is hunkering down,” said Hirabayashi, chief marketing officer of the 70-employee, New York City organisation, which helps young people get involved with causes important to them.
Distracting chatter has been more of a problem at Influence & Co, not for the company itself, but for the handful of other small businesses sharing the large coworking space the company occupies. “Everyone in our group is very talkative,” Janisse said. “The building manager has now established ‘quiet time’ on Wednesday mornings so that people can actually get some work done. I'm positive it's because of our company.”
Influence & Co is working on its cleanliness issue, too. This month, Janisse’s boss announced a programme called “The King or Queen of Clean,” which would require all employees to take a weeklong turn straightening up the company’s workspace. (No word on whether this policy was prompted by the building manager, too.) To turn up the pressure, Influence & Co also uses a “jerk jar.” Anyone caught leaving a mess or being inconsiderate must put $1 in the jar, with all money going toward the company’s happy hour fund, Janisse said.
Plantronic’s Coffin is all for peers calling each other out, but he’s not keen on public shaming. Instead, when he receives a complaint about a loud or messy employee, he talks to that person’s manager without naming names and asks the manager to reiterate the guidelines in question to their entire team.
The strategy is working. For the most part, Coffin said, employees are happy to police each other and take pride in keeping the building as immaculate as it was on day one.“We’ve been in this building since 2011,” Coffin said, “and I can honestly tell you that if you walked in now, you would think we moved in last week.”