Most owners need clarification on closed and open-plan spaces when deciding on the best office layout for their business. However, the best office plan layout depends on company requirements, employee roles, and many other factors. Open-plan offices are more inclined towards work that needs flexibility and collaboration, while closed office spaces are perfect for those who need additional privacy and concentration to accomplish their business goals.
Recently, most offices have demanded a dramatic shift in the ways a renowned office interior designer in Noida designs the workplace. The concept of open and closed-plan offices has become increasingly well-known among them.
Open-Plan Office Layout
Open-plan offices include large rooms with numerous desk rows. Here, the employees can sit close to one another with little separators and partitions. These designs incorporate spaces like open kitchen segments, no-break seating areas, and couches where the team members can congregate.
Open-plan office layouts assist employees in decreasing stress, unwinding, and improving their overall well-being.
Features
- Desks rows that allow the team members to find their neighbors with ease
- Engagement areas for casual conversations, such as lounge segments and break rooms
- Rooms with more natural lights to create a pleasant working environment
- Few or no room dividers, floor or desktop standing screens
Benefits
- Improved Communication
When there are no physical and visual barriers in an office, employees of the company can work together as a team and communicate better with one another. Naturally, better communication will improve collaboration and performance.
It is perfect for people who are looking for co-working spaces or for freelancers. This layout includes high interaction chances, which is exceptionally beneficial for their respective businesses and their skill sets. This method is known as culture collision. Many businesses and startups in co-working spaces have been formed in this way.
- Cost-effective and inexpensive
An open-plan office layout saves investment on furnishing individual cubicles and other office fit-out costs like AC units, doors, partition walls, and more. With employees working together at shared desks, businesses also have to spend less on IT equipment like copiers, scanners, and printers.
Thus, open-plan office layouts are both cost-efficient and inexpensive to maintain and set up compared to closed-plan office layouts.
- Highly Flexible
Since open-plan office layouts are highly flexible, you do not have to commit to a single layout. More employees can accommodate this design. The best advantage of this layout is that you can rearrange or modify the workplace whenever your team expands.
Moving the furniture and changing the desk’s location from time to time can always keep the workplace visually interesting and fresh.
Closed-plan office layout
In a closed-plan office layout, individuals and teams often get additional privacy and space. The office interior designer in Noida implements fixed walls and screens to create separate spaces. This is a traditional way of working in an office.
Each department gets its separate rooms and space in a closed layout. Nowadays, modern offices incorporate meeting pods, acoustic phone booths, pods, and others to create a closed-plan office.
Features
- Separate office for every employee, including individual rooms or cubicles
- Screens dividing the space to decrease noise and maintain privacy
- Room dividers are used for separating the space into tiny sections
- Low communication between the team members
Benefits
- Private and Quiet Workplace
Closed-plan office layouts offer private and quiet spaces to employees for completing work that requires more concentration and fewer distractions. They permit team members to control the workplace volume, which is most difficult in an open-plan office layout.
Some roles need privacy for access to confidential files and knowledge. Thus, those like HR personnel or senior managers who have to hold numerous meetings and have several private conversations will reap more benefits from closed-plan office layouts.
- Hierarchy and Organizational sense
The closed-plan office layout reinforces an incentivized employee and office hierarchy. Whenever employees move up in their ranks and positions, they get better workplaces, like private offices or cabins with bigger windows.
- Lesser Distractions
People will never interrupt someone while navigating around the floor-standing screens or walls to solve their queries from the manager or team leaders. Thus, closed-plan office layouts have fewer interruptions and distractions every day compared to open ones.
- Customization and Storage
A closed-plan office layout offers more storage to the employees with overhead bins and drawers. This will help them keep and store their personal belongings, such as ornaments or family photos. In other words, this layout makes the team members more comfortable with customizations.
What to select: open or closed plan office layout?
Just like different aspects of workplace design, there is no one-size-fits-all solution for this question. Since every business is different, its approach to office layout is also unique. But nowadays, most businesses are mixing open spaces with some private offices, which is the best combination of both layouts.
According to research, it has become the favorite of business owners as employees get a different working environment within the same office space. It is known as an agile working environment, as the employees are not fixed or bound to a specific desk and can move from one place to another during their office hours. Team pods and collaborative work tables support this agile layout.
Conclusion
Before selecting the option of open or closed space office, it is important to consider how your business operates. But you can always go for the hybrid of the two layouts as each company’s employee requirements and their roles are varied and different. Since both the planned layouts come with their advantages and disadvantages, thoroughly asses your business before finally making up your mind.