A new study from Harvard reveals that open-plan offices decrease rather than increase face-to-face collaboration. Over the decades, a lot of really stupid management fads have come and gone (Six Sigma, Stack Ranking, etc) But open plan offices are worse. Much worse. Why? When employees move from a traditional office to an open plan office, it doesn’t cause them to interact more socially or more frequently. Instead, the opposite happens. They start using email and messaging with much greater frequency than before. In other words, even if collaboration were a great idea (it’s a questionable notion), open plan offices are the worst possible way to make it happen. This leaves companies with only one justification for moving to an open plan office: less floor space, and therefore a lower rent. If this is the situation, we have to use the overwhelming evidence against open plan offices to lobby for a more work-from-home so that the company can expand without adding office space. Read all the article: