Workspace satisfaction: The privacy-communication trade-off in open-plan offices Jungsoo Kim * , Richard de Dear Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning, Wilkinson Building G04, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia article info Article history: Available online 29 June 2013 Keywords: Indoor environmental quality (IEQ) Office layout Open-plan Privacy Satisfaction Post occupancy evaluation (POE) abstract Open-plan office layout is commonly assumed to facilitate communication and interaction between co- workers, promoting workplace satisfaction and team-work effectiveness. On the other hand, open-plan layouts are widely acknowledged to be more disruptive due to uncontrollable noise and loss of privacy. Based on the occupant survey database from Center for the Built Environment (CBE), empirical analyses indicated that occupants assessed Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) issues in different ways depending on the spatial configuration (classified by the degree of enclosure) of their workspace. Enclosed private offices clearly outperformed open-plan layouts in most aspects of IEQ, particularly in acoustics, privacy and the proxemics issues. Benefits of enhanced ‘ease of interaction’ were smaller than the penalties of increased noise level and decreased privacy resulting from open-plan office configuration. Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction There exists a large body of literature looking at how physical environment influence occupants’ perception and behaviour in office buildings. As office layout has transitioned in recent decades from conventional private (or cellular) spatial configuration to modern open-plan, the impacts on occupants and organisations have been extensively studied from a variety of perspectives in disciplines as diverse as architecture, engineering, health and psychology. In addition to tangible economic benefits of open-plan offices such as increased net usable area, higher occupant density and ease of re-configuration (Duffy, 1992; Hedge, 1982), the open-plan office layout is believed by many to facilitate communication and interac- tion between co-workers by removing internal walls, which should improve individual work performance and organisational produc- tivity (Brand & Smith, 2005; Kupritz, 2003). However there is not much empirical evidence to support these widespread beliefs (Kaarlela-Tuomaala, Helenius, Keskinen, & Hongisto, 2009; Smith- Jackson & Klein, 2009). On the contrary, a plethora of research pa- pers identify negative impacts of open-plan office layout on occu- pants’ perception of their office environment. For example, some longitudinal survey results have demonstrated a significant decline in workspace satisfaction (Sundstrom, Herbert, & Brown, 1982), increased distraction and loss of privacy (Kaarlela-Tuomaala et al., 2009), and perceived performance decrement (Brennan, Chugh, & Kline, 2002) after relocation of employees from enclosed workplace to open-plan or less-enclosed workplace. Moreover, the occupants in these studies didn’t adapt or habituate to the change in spatial layout (Brand & Smith, 2005; Brennan et al., 2002; Virjonen, Keränen, Helenius, Hakala, & Hongisto, 2007), and many researcher draw the causal link between declining environmental satisfaction and dete- riorating job satisfaction and productivity (Sundstrom, Town, Rice, Osborn, & Brill, 1994; Veitch, Charles, Farley, & Newsham, 2007; Wineman, 1982). Still other research studies attribute escalating Sick Building Syndrome (SBS) symptoms such as distress, irritation, fatigue, headache and concentration difficulties (Klitzman & Stellman, 1989; Pejtersen, Allermann, Kristensen, & Poulsen, 2006; Witterseh, Wyon, & Clausen, 2004) to open-plan office layout. An extensive research literature consistently identifies noise and lack of privacy as the key sources of dissatisfaction in open-plan office layouts (Danielsson & Bodin, 2009; de Croon, Sluiter, Kuijer, & Frings-Dresen, 2005; Hedge, 1982). Firstly, studies based on either occupant surveys and laboratory experiment report that noise, in particular irrelevant but audible and intelligible speech from co-workers, disturbs and negatively affects individual perfor- mance on tasks requiring cognitive processing (Banbury & Berry, 2005; Haka et al., 2009; Smith-Jackson & Klein, 2009; Virjonen et al., 2007). The loss of productivity due to noise distraction esti- mated by self-rated waste of working time was doubled in open- plan offices compared to private offices, and the tasks requiring complex verbal process were more likely to be disturbed than relatively simple or routine tasks (Haapakangas, Helenius, Keekinen, * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ61 2 9351 5927. E-mail address: jungsoo.kim@sydney.edu.au (J. Kim). Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Journal of Environmental Psychology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jep 0272-4944/$ e see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2013.06.007 Journal of Environmental Psychology 36 (2013) 18e26