Anyone work in open office enviroments?

I would say mine is open office, although we have two floors in our cardiff office, the upper floor is quite large, but is seperated in to two sides, one side of the office being the technical pod teams and the ops bridge, the other side being some tech teams, sales, marketing, service and account managers, change team, finance etc


I dont mind it, its a little loud but then we work in pods so thats why its structured like that and then a 24/7 opsbridge station with a team who talk calls and emails from customers and have the big monitoring screens and means you can easily talk to people without having to go in to other offices, or talk to them on lync
 
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Doesn't bother me really. Easier to chat to my team. If I need to concentrate I just shove my earphones on.

Since I'm around engineers the conversation isn't too bad and I like to be able to pick up on what's going on. There are only about 6 people close enough to hear anyway.
 
Have always worked in open office.

Can be a real laugh, and it's easy enough to put headphones in if you need to block out all the usual drivel!
 
I've worked in a few, the advantages of being able to quickly talk and listen to the team are obvious, but the problems come when you are forced to listening to other teams which have nothing to do with you at all. I work next to a lot of civil servants on the current project and the noise levels are almost painful, I find it very difficult to concentrate at all, even with my noise cancelling headphones.
 
Open offices are fine as long as the furniture / desking systems have been purchased and laid out with the environment in mind, there are sound-absorbing features etc. And you don't work with a bunch of children.

I was talking to a friend of mine and they've just done an office move into a barren floor where the support staff who spend all day on the phone aren't separated from anyone else, and haven't been given anything other than the cheapest headsets that the employer could find. I think I'd struggle not to bring an axe to work in that sort of environment.
 
Yep. My department got the short straw when we moved buildings too so we're effectively in a corridor. People walking/running past all the time. Not the best for concentration.. especially when it gets to 2/3/4/5PM and everyone is on calls to the states. However, I don't think I would like being secluded in cubes. I actually end up doing a lot of work that requires deep concentration at home!
 
I love working in an open plan office. It's very easy to communicate with people without a great deal of effort, and people chime in with their opinions, which can be good and bad.

The chap I sit next to is very good at his job and is very nice, but when he's on the phone I want to murder him. He's old, and seems to think that distance is important over the phone. ****ing annoying.
 
I've never found noise to be much of an issue at work and most conversations are work related so, i tend to learn from what they are talking about (I'm an intern). For none work related conversations I tend to easily ignore them.

The only issue that I've had with open office plan is that there is a group/section of workers the other side of the office (100-200m) who always seem to have a reason to clap. During the final weeks before Christmas they were clapping nearly twice a day.

Judgeneo said:
, I find it very difficult to concentrate at all, even with my noise cancelling headphones.
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I'm pretty sure that noise cancelling headphones aren't very effective when it comes to sound from talking? I think you would be better off with something that just blocks out external noise.
 
Yep, nothing wrong with it. Usually isn't too loud, mind. Can sit wherever I want but tend to sit in the same area most of the time as I like the people that do the same.
 
Our office here is open whereas in Houston, everyone has their own offices. The consensus is that our open office environment is better as you can chat to your team mates more easily and you can overhear important/useful information. It's also much easier to ask for help and get a response.

Chit-chat is almost non existant as well as we use Lync for that.

The great thing is I'm in the corner so I can have OCUK open all day :).

If it starts getting loud, I just wear my earphones.
 
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We recently moved into a new office and one of the challenges was going from a mostly closed over 5 floors to a single open plan area. We were concerned by the prospect of all the noise so invested some 20k into over 100 small speakers and a noise canceling system which pipes white noise into the working areas. Since the install I have shown people around and its amazing how well the system works, turn it off and within a few minutes I will have people asking me why their working area is so noisy.

I must admit i was a skeptic at first and thought that the system was more of a selling point to keep fee earners happy but it really has worked and when tuned properly can even mask conversations that are being had only 6 feet away. We have a QT600 - http://cambridgesound.com/products/qt-600-2/ along with the individual speakers that can be individually tuned by -2/+2 db.
 
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^ That and those crazy speakers that let you have a TV on with the volume up but as soon as you take a step outside the area that the noise was designed to be in it becomes practically silent. Stuff's magic.
 
We have half and half in my office, there's a group of us in an open area then the MD and a few other mangers have their own offices. The open layout makes for a much more pleasant working environment than some grim cubicle farm.
 
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