Open Plan Offices
Business: Juice Online
Product: Various juices which are sold online. The business receives a percentage of profit from all the ‘juicers’ in various locations in exchange for marketing, recipes and licencing requirements. All exchanges between both Juice Online and juicers and between juicers and the customer are online. Assessment Item 1
BSB115 - Management

The article ‘Are open plan offices insane?’ (Featherstone, 2015) raises some key issues surrounding open plan offices. This report explores whether those issues are founded and whether they are relevant to Juice Online. The report will then give a summary of the likely impact of incorporating the open plan style of office to the main office of Juice Online. Open plan offices are those which have all or most employees working in a large single room. Some incorporate low partitions to offer a degree of privacy to individual workers while others are completely open. The idea is to increase communication and collaboration between workers (ref. Pros and cons of open plan and office-based workplaces) which leads to an increase in productivity. The article (Featherstone, 2015) argues that these benefits are offset by three major issues.
These issues can be labelled as background noise, privacy and varying requirements. A recent paper (Roelofsen, 2008) used mathematical models to examine performance losses while working in open plan offices due to background noise, even using different desk layouts. The study utilised information from real-world observations. A study by A. Kaarlela-Tuomaala (Kaarlela-Tuomaala, Helenius, Keskinen & Hongisto, 2009) supports the findings.
The second consideration is a loss of privacy. The article refers to an interview with a CEO in a room that doubled as the staff kitchen. Company image aside, a problem arises with workers being engaged in meetings with little or no relevance to them. Strategy Plus, formerly DEGW, reported their study (Holm, 2011) which found employees were being asked for information or input to the degree that they were unable to focus on their own task.
The final major consideration is that of varying requirements in the workplace. Some employees require an open environment to stimulate thought and innovation. This can be due either to their role in the company or their personality. For the same reasons others may require a space away from the rest of the workforce.

The technical elements of Juice Online are a marketing team, an accounts team and a recipes team. The social processes used by marketing and recipes are both creative and open. These two facets of the business could realise benefits from human resource framework (Bolman & Deal, 2003). The accounts team has a more rigid task and would benefit from a structural framework (Bolman & Deal, 2003). The open plan office structure would likely show some benefit for both the marketing a recipes teams. Increases in communication and collaboration are positively linked with innovation and creativity. The accounts team however would likely show a decrease in productivity due to noise, loss of privacy and varying workplace requirements. If the open plan office can be implemented while keeping the accounts team separate it could yield positive results.

Reference List
Bolman, Lee G., & Deal, Terrence E. (2003). Reframing organizations: artistry, choice, and leadership. Jossey-Bass higher & adult education series. 3rd ed.

Featherstone, T. (2015). Are open plan offices insane?. Sydney Morning Herald.

Holm, John. (2011). Pros and cons of open plan and office-based workplaces. Keeping Good Companies, 63 (3), 178.
Kaarlela-Tuomaala, A., Helenius, R., Keskinen, E., & Hongisto, V. (2009). Effects of acoustic environment on work in private office rooms and open-plan offices - longitudinal study during relocation. Ergonomics, 52(11), 1423-1444.
Roelofsen, P. (2008). Performance loss in open‐plan offices due to noise by speech. Journal Of Facilities Management, 6(3), 202-211.