Having an open floor plan can suck, but it doesn’t have to

Open floor plans were the wave of the future around 10 years ago. At least, that’s when I encountered my first one. I had been in a cubicle before, with a handful of other people that I could hide my yawns and/or closed eyes from. When I joined the ad agency Rockfish as their second Cincinnati-based developer (first was “Poo” Ridenour), it was a space meant for 50 people and had about 18. It was enormous and enormously open.

It could, and would, be hella distracting. As we grew, added people, added desks, added noise, you could tell productivity was on the decline. The first thing that happened was the top creatives segregated themselves into what had once been a conference room. Then the C-levels in Cincinnati found themselves taking over huddle rooms. And then at some point I quit to join a startup, though not really because of the open floor plan.

I work in an open floor plan now, and it still has plenty of the same problems, but I have seen how they can largely be addressed, so here are my 6 pieces of advice for you to make your open floor plan great for your team.

One: Institute a phyiscal Do Not Disturb policy

We call it the Headphone Rule, which states if someone has their headphones on, you must not interrupt them directly. You may Slack them to ask for something, but never tap them on the shoulder. This could be a placard for people’s desks or something people stick to the top of their monitor or chair, etc.

Two: Set up “quiet hours” every day

We do something like 8–10:30am is quiet time. Focused work happens at this time. No Sonos, no public stand ups, no cross-office shouting, no loud convos in the kitchen about how people don’t know how to load the damn dishwasher.

Three: Let people take a day to WFH

This one has been a harder pill for me to swallow — I truly believe in the power of a non-remote culture — but people truly feel refreshed and productive when they have a day to their own devices. It’s up to them to work it with their product team, but it’s cool. Actually I haven’t told my team about this yet, so keep this under wraps.

Four: Pick a team-wide day for little or no meetings

A previous leader named Stepon actually turned me onto this idea. He wanted us to have No Meeting Wednesday. At the time I thought it was crazy, but now I see the wisdom in it. We get sucked into such meetings of little value. Planning, strategizing, retrospecting, introspecting, circumspecting. Less meetings, more doing. And you’d think they would get pushed to other days, but no. They just disappear, usually.

Five: No taking calls at desks. Ever.

You need to set aside space outside of the open floor for calls. First off, be respectful to the person on the phone. They don’t want to hear your open floor. Second, be respectful to the noise pollution for your teammates.

Six: Buy your people noise-cancelling headphones

This sounds expensive, but it pays dividends for productivity when people can put them on, turn off the office sounds, and focus on work. You can also pair this with paying for Spotify Premium or Google Play music for people. Hell, create some Focus Time playlists and share them out.

Bonus: Put some plants in the office

Get some of green leafy things and put them in pots and let them grow tall. Look at the photo above for an idea.

Use these tools to make life more acceptable in the open floor plan. Most of this just has to do with lowering the general volume in the space, and giving people the ability to work with focus and intention. That’s something that you give up when you get rid of offices with doors that shut. Get it back for your people.

For this to work, however, you need to truly enforce the rules. You also need to exhibit them. If you are a leader or a manager and you believe in the value of the rules, you need to unbendingly obey them yourself. If you don’t believe in the value of the rules — change the rules.