Open offices are as bad as they seem—they reduce face-to-face time by 70%

removing physical dividers may, in fact, make it harder for employers to foster collaboration and collective intelligence among their employees

Many companies have waged a so-called “war on walls” to try to create such vibrant workspaces, the authors Ethan Bernstein and Stephen Turban of Harvard wrote. But, “what they often get—as captured by a steady stream of news articles professing the death of the open office—is an open expanse of proximal employees choosing to isolate themselves as best they can (e.g. by wearing large headphones) while appearing to be as busy as possible (since everyone can see them).”

After the open redesign, the employees spent 72-percent less time having face-to-face interactions with each other. The raw numbers shook out to an average of 5.8 hours of face-to-face time per day per person before the redesign, but only 1.7 hours of face-to-face time per person per day afterward. Meanwhile, electronic communication increased; workers sent 56 percent more emails to their colleagues and 67 percent more instant messages.

Executives for the company also shared in qualitative terms that productivity among employees—measured by internal, confidential metrics—had also fallen. They did not disclose the magnitude of the productivity decline.