Re: New Normal?
> Open plan offices have consistently been shown to lower productivity and morale, and promote stress, shallow engagement with work, and poor mental health.
All true and yet even today some companies are *still* inflicting it on people. Over the last few years the place paying me has adopted a new furniture plan with half-height or no-height cube walls and smaller cube footprints. In one building they've also "merged" floors to leave a floor empty (reduce occupancy costs), and got rid of another which was built with hardwall offices.
Think how useful individual hardwall offices would be these days.
The HR types responsible for these bad moves said it was for better "collaboration" and "team building" and similar bollocks. Because uprooting people and moving them around like tetris blocks increases productivity, apparently.
Now the HR types are saying office spaces will have to be re-redesigned for social distancing and employee safety. Back to how they were before, presumably, though almost certainly worse somehow, if history is any guide.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
