I was fascinated to read on the Oracle AppsLab blog that they’re experimenting with a bullpen-style layout in Building 300, where I used to work. My greatest day at Oracle was when I achieved my own office. Cubicles were bad enough, but bullpens? Personally, I want more separation and privacy than that.
I wrote it up on Web Worker Daily this morning because as you may know, you don’t have to work from home or a cafe to be a web worker. Lots of web workers are traditional employees and go to an office every day. But they can still take advantage of the web to reach out inside and outside their company.
It’s strange to me that the solution to improved communication in this time of ultraconnectedness is to change the physical space rather than molding and improving the virtual space. There are tons of ways that you can help teams communicate better that don’t take individual team members’ privacy and quiet away:
- Team chat room. This can be like a Twitter for the team. People say when they’re in and when they’re out, what they’re working on, and what they’ve finished. If they are wondering about something they can issue a question and whoever knows the answer and has a few moments to discuss it can do so.
- Internal blogs. Team members can share what they’re working on and what they’re struggling with.
- Wikis for shared documentation. Teams need to have a shared understanding of processes and procedures and this can be developed on a wiki. You can also use wikis to record the basic foundational knowledge that teams work off of — for example, for a software development team why the software was designed the way it was, what gotchas in the code to be aware of, etc.
- Internal social network platform. Oracle’s AppsLab is working on one right now. Clearly, you have to do something different than Facebook because poking your coworkers is out. But giving employees a way to informally connect and then navigate the ad hoc relationships they’ve made could be a key step towards more innovation and better problem-solving inside big businesses.
Apparently Google, which is a huge fan of open-style workspaces, doesn’t use these sorts of Web 2.0 (well really, Enterprise 2.0) tools. I was told they use email, IM, and mailing lists to communicate virtually.
Oracle’s no stranger to distributed work and online communications — they have an India Development Center and I know that individual employees can arrange remote work situations with their managers. I did it myself when we moved from California to Virginia to be closer to family. I imagine Google’s the same, though I don’t know what support they offer to employees who want to work from home (or from an entirely different state) or whether they have teams in other countries.
I think there’s a better way than reconfiguring office space to encourage communication and collaboration — a way that allows people to work where they want with the level of quiet and privacy they need. What do you think?
2 Comments
I’ve worked in open plan offices for the past… ohh quite a few years.
There are times when they are a real boon, as a technical author we rely on information so the more we can get, the better. If that comes from word of mouth or an overheard conversation then so be it.
However it does have an impact on productivity on those days when you just need to get your head down and get stuff done. So, for those days, I work at home.
On average I work at home maybe 3 days a month, some months it will be more, some less but without that quiet time I couldn’t keep up.
We have a Wiki that is heavily used for any and all information and collaboration (something I’m exploring further for an upcoming conference slot) and most of us are on MSN during the day (we have a development office in Jakarta, we are in the UK). We are about to launch our first internal blog within the development group.
The idea of a social network is intriguing. We have a large number of staff out on-site, many of whom rarely make it back to HQ very often and, largely, communication is via email. I do like the idea of creating a social network to help manage those relationships. Interesting.
It’s funny, Anne. I think we’re the same age (I might be a year older), but I always come off as the old-school stick in the mud. Still, while risking that label, I don’t know that I agree with your overall point here. One key element missing from your premise is that different individuals work best in different environments. Just as we all learn according to individually-preferred modalities - visual, auditory, kinesthetic - we also tend to favor certain communication styles, too.
That’s not to say that a bullpen would serve you best (you strike me as a visual learner), but your auditory and kinesthetic colleagues might gain immensely.
I think another way to look at this is that companies shouldn’t force a specific style on its workers, assuming that one style drives optimum productivity for all its workers. Instead, an ideal workplace should allow opportunities for every worker to find the space that best serves their style.
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[…] cubicles to open plan spaces to aid communication, and proffers some suggestions in her post titled Mold the virtual space, not the office space “Lots of web workers are traditional employees and go to an office every day. But they can […]
[…] Anne Zelenka: Mold the Virtual Space Not the Office Space - “It’s strange to me that the solution to improved communication in this time of ultraconnectedness is to change the physical space rather than molding and improving the virtual space. There are tons of ways that you can help teams communicate better that don’t take individual team members privacy and quiet away.“ […]