If you could boost employee productivity, creativity and satisfaction while improving communication across your office, would you do it?

You can. All you have to do is let go of the open office plan. Open offices are just awful. There’s no other way to say it. They reduce face-to-face interaction, stress employees out, and make meeting rooms the only safe haven for someone who wants to make a sales call without disturbing everyone on the floor.

Just ask Faith Salie from CBS Sunday Morning:

And Salie isn’t the only one who thinks so. Over the last few months (not to mention the last few years) researchers have built a pretty compelling case why the best thing you can do for your business is put up some walls.

According to a survey of more than 42,000 office workers in the USA, Finland, Canada and Australia, the enhanced interaction of an open office plan does not make up for the noise and privacy loss.

That’s assuming that enhanced interaction actually happens, which is far from guaranteed. A Harvard research study found that when a business moved to an open office plan face-to-face interactions decreased by 70 percent while email use increased by between 22 and 50%.

Need more reasons?

In the Staples Workplace Survey more than 50% of employees said their open office layout was distracting.

And…

A Danish study found that the more people you have in an office, the more sick time employees take. People in an open office plan took 62% more sick days than those who had their own office.

So to summarize, employees in an open office are more dissatisfied, communicate less, get distracted more easily, and spend less time at work.

Why, then, do open offices still exist? The short answer is, they’re cheaper. In simple terms, the fewer walls you have, the lower your construction costs. But businesses are starting to see that paying a little extra up front might be worth it in the long run.

If you are one of the many businesses that operates out of an open office, you might think you’re stuck with it. Remodeling your whole office is expensive and the landlord might not take kindly to it.

Fortunately, College Park Executive Suites is here to help. We have a range of offices in Virginia Beach available to rent. Every office comes fully furnished, including the most important furnishing of all, a door that closes.

Make your employees productive again. Contact Jackie Gilmartin today and you’ll be in your office tomorrow.