Dan Petrie: Fix open plan offices and people may come back to the CBD

Loud talkers, smelly food and flatulence — who in their right mind would want to return to the workplace? If bosses want employees back, changes are needed, writes Dan Petrie.

Dear bosses of Queensland, the taste of freedom that comes with remote working is something we are not giving up and if you don’t like it, we will take our skills to organisations that embrace it.

From co-workers cutting toenails, rank food smells, flatulence and in my case, an office neighbour who ate ice cubes for 10 hours straight, the open plan office can be a living hell.

No wonder remote working has become so popular. Who in their right mind would want to return to the workplace where your movements are monitored, ears are blasted with inane conversations and you are then corralled into a meeting room to work on ‘synergies’ and discuss the latest cause the CEO is involved with?

Even worse, after logging on to employment website LinkedIn in the vain hope you may have a message from a recruiter offering respite, you find instead a post from your firm’s employee-communication-liaison-inclusion-officer providing photos of yet another office fit out. Nonsensical images of rooms with fake plants and the CEO goofily making cappuccinos against a backdrop of a wall splashed with fluoro paint talking about the company’s new found street edge is the stuff of comedy. Oxford Economics in its excellent research paper called ‘When the walls come down’ reported that 30 per cent of respondents cited noise and distractions as major issues in the workplace. The findings are simple: productivity, or the ability to get on with it, is better than free food and bean bags. Space, privacy and serenity are the solution.

Interestingly, when open plans become the norm, communication shifts to email. According to a study by the British Psychological Society in 2018, 73 per cent of employees spent less time in face-to-face conversation and opted for email after the introduction of an open plan seating arrangement.

A visit to any number of office buildings around Australia will show that larger companies will spend more to provide optimum employee comfort while medium sized firms simply need desks and space that is affordable.

The Harvard Business Review found that the space per square feet per employee in US offices had gone from 225 square feet (20 metres) in the 1990s to 190 square feet (17 square metres) today.

In the US, 13 per cent cite the open plan office as a reason for leaving a job. Space invading is certainly happening and personally I can never recall a time in my life being overjoyed about boarding a plane at full capacity.

Changes are needed to lure employees back from working from home. Picture: iStock.

However, there is a flip side to such dilemmas. Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner addressed national cabinet only two weeks ago about the impact working from home has had on the economic output of Australia’s central business districts.

“If we’re going to get Australia’s economy firing on all cylinders again, we have to get people back into city centres and using public transport,” Mr Schrinner said.

This is a challenge confronting cities all over the world, but technology and the digital revolution has changed the game.

Maybe cities and workplaces have to evolve and be places where people want to go, not have to go?

There is also the unintended consequence of entrepreneurship that is also reshaping the central business districts of Australia.

This is a good thing as it means there is a privatised form of decentralisation happening and it is towns and suburbs across the country that are benefiting.

I work in Brisbane’s outer western suburbs and a short commute from home. No silly meetings, morning teas that have nothing to do with me and no need to wear ribbons, hats, ties and capes to be part of the latest cause. Harsh but true. The numbers reveal what many of us already know, we hate the open plan office and are fighting for dear life not to go back.

Dan Petrie is the Chief Information Officer of data analytics firm, Grafa and a former Economic Data Editor at Bloomberg LP who also goes by the name of Data Dan – do you have a data question? Email [e-mail]