There’s not many beneficial outcomes from the current COVID-19 crisis but The New York Times suggests one possibility: the end of open plan offices. The Times doesn’t say that open plan offices will go away because of the pandemic but does note that they are no longer tenable in their present form.
As Irreal has preached repeatedly, open plan offices are a monstrous scam perpetrated on luckless employees—but somehow never their bosses—in the name of all sorts of fairy tail benefits but are really about saving money. COVID-19 will make it difficult for management to maintain the fantasy that such arrangements are a net benefit. What will happen instead?
No one knows, of course, but the Times says that at a minimum workers will be isolated by “sneeze guards” (tall translucent barriers between desks) that look an awful lot like cubicles. Another, better, alternative is to institutionalize working from home for many or most employees. That has the benefits of reducing the number of people crowded into an office and also saves money on rental space. The transition to work-from-home hasn’t been entirely smooth but for most it’s shown remarkably good results. Many, if not all, employees like it and feel more productive and efficient. There’s every reason to hope that work-from-home will be continue to be popular with companies after the current crisis and that the detestable open plan offices will fade into oblivion.