Relive the Open Office Plan by Syncing
Open offices are a hellish hole in a freak show. They can make collaboration easier, and they can help your boss get more employees in a smaller space, but they allow you to hear every sound your coworkers make. (They can be seen and felt, too!) The most obvious coping mechanisms — headphones, telephone booths, conference room shelters — rely on closing this openness. But one strategy, from the Fast Company podcast ” Secrets of the Most Productive People,” involves actually interacting with your coworkers.
“If you can’t escape the chatter and distractions, try to synchronize them,” says Anisa Purbasari Horton of Fast Company. Talk to your team about your daily schedule and find consensus on “talk time” and “rest time”. If your group can agree with this, you can even build an hourly schedule: 9-9: 30 – chat and email times; the rest of the morning is quiet solo work; lunch is a social hour; then work quietly until 4:30 when we all chat again. You may even have a preferred hour for scheduled phone calls, an afternoon cacophony wave that will make your office feel likean officein the Boiler Room .
This is also a good time to form some expectations about online idleness. Not in the strict manner of “checking Facebook only at lunchtime”, but in “yes, we admit that we can all see each other’s screens, and that we do not judge each other for shopping at noon.” “
And if you’re planning a new office layout, consider a more enclosed space. If you really want your employees to talk to each other all day, start them all in Slack .