Pick ten people at random and ask them to describe their vision of a productive work environment. You will probably hear the same answers: stress-free, quiet, lots of teamwork, happy employees, good morale, room to work, places to concentrate, etc. Now ask the same ten people how to design an office that best creates this environment and you will suddenly notice more discord than agreement. To some, working in a somewhat isolated office setup is akin to being cooped up in a cage or a comfortable prison cell. But to others, this same setup allows them to focus more easily without getting distracted by things going on around them.

Some workers elevate their game when they can see their co-workers clearly and when they know that asking a question anytime will get them an instant response (quite possibly followed by a lively discussion). But others get stressed out in this same environment by the constant noise, lack of privacy, and inability to concentrate. Hence the classic debate: is the most productive office one that is open, where employees sit together eyeball to eyeball; or closed, where employees are more isolated?

The debate is not a new one. It began with the advent of the first office many decades ago and has carried over into the 21st Century. What is new, and evolving all the time, is the nature of today’s business climate and changing workforce (increasingly team-based and collaborative). Over the past decade, the European market has weighed in pretty clearly on the side of open office design and this trend has slowly started to migrate to the U.S. Many companies, here and abroad, are now embracing the open office concept and touting its many benefits including cost effectiveness, team-building potential and positive environmental impact. And these things are all very real. But if the answer were really this simple, there would never have been a debate in the first place. Detractors are quick to point out the negatives of an open office design: loss of privacy, potential health problems, too much noise, not enough personal space, and visual monotony.

Smart companies are beginning to realize that both sides are right. And they are adopting creative measures to bring closed-office benefits to open-space designs. A blog by Mishkin Bertieg describes the 8 important elements to consider when designing an effective work space. Some of these elements need special attention in an open environment. Here are ways that companies are addressing the most important areas proactively so that their open space designs will lead to higher productivity:

Personalization

One of the main drawbacks of going open, especially for companies that are switching from a long-entrenched closed model, can be a perceived loss of individual identity among employees who feel that their personal space is being taken away from them. Many companies are realizing that an employee’s workspace can be open while at the same time still be highly personalized. And they are being careful to allow every employee a relatively large amount of personal work space within the open setting and to build a large dose of flexibility into their planning so that employee work areas can be modified by their occupants to accommodate photos, plants, posters, and other incidentals which define their space as their own. A large component in making this happen is the right kind of furniture (e.g., adjustable chairs, desks, etc.). Some firms have implemented component and accessory options that were not only personalized but also modular and somewhat portable, allowing workers to take them along in case their work location changed.

Privacy

Hand in hand with the issue of personalization is the issue of privacy.  An open workspace doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for privacy and lack of privacy can not only make workers uncomfortable, but can hurt their morale and productivity. Every employee needs to be able to get away for short amounts of time. Firms are realizing this, and are not implementing an open design without allowing employee access to enclosed rooms or isolated areas where they can have privacy for personal phone calls, individual meetings, or sensitive business when needed.

Acoustics

Noise is probably the biggest drawback to an open office design. Research has shown that even low levels of noise generate high levels of worker stress. Research such as this longitudianal field study cite excessive noise as one of the leading employee gripes about working in an open office. Fortunately, there are several ways of dealing with this problem and companies have had success mitigating most of the negative effects. There are numerous sound-masking systems on the market and some of them have been shown to work quite well when properly installed and tuned. Another measure that many firms have adopted is to locate many of the principal noise-making sources (e.g., printers, scanners, photocopiers, etc.) into a single room which is at least partially soundproofed. Some companies even hand out noise-dampening earphones to employees who want them.

It is not escaping the eye of corporate America that open office design brings with it lower costs, greater team collaboration, and potentially higher productivity. So it is no mystery that the open model is being adopted and embraced by several large firms as well as many smaller ones. But companies are also seeing that there are some aspects of open office design that tend to dampen productivity and are taking active measures to deal with them. What is resulting is a heavy dose of the good mixed in with smaller and smaller doses of the bad. And slowly but surely, that ideal vision of a productive work environment is starting to become a reality.

This guest post is from Dean Stier. Dean is Vice President of National Business Furniture, one of America’s leading providers of office desks, office chairs, and office-space design to businesses, government agencies and other institutions.