The Holy Grail of workplace design is “productivity improvement.” If anyone can figure out how to measure the actual impact that a floorplan has on employee performance that person will become an overnight billionaire.
Productivity is the name of the game because if we can make employees more productive then our businesses become more successful at a lower cost. It enables us to do everything better. The issue is that not everyone is productive the same way. Work styles for individual employees aren’t necessarily correlated to job function. Some engineers like daily interaction and distraction, others want to be heads down in a dark quiet room.
Even two companies in the same business will approach it entirely different. For one an open plan environment may encourage greater success, for the other it may destroy morale and work levels.
Productivity is the intersection of individual success, corporate culture and management style. Workplace can impact all three of these areas but in dramatically different ways.
Just something to think about.