When the walls come down

Open-plan offices are meant to encourage collaboration and contribute to a collegial workplace culture, but they also come with serious drawbacks like noise and distraction. Oxford Economics conducted a survey of more than 600 executives and 600 employees to better understand what works for employees—and what doesn’t—about open-plan layouts, and to test for disconnects between workers and their managers. The results show that threats to productivity and worker peace of mind are bigger issues than most executives realize, and most do not have the technology or strategies in place to deal with the problems.

Download the executive summary.