How hot is the open plan office trend? Increasingly, companies are designing office spaces with no private offices whatsoever — not even for the CEOs.
Here are just a few of the organizations who proudly boast that even their most senior executive shares space with the common folk.
1. Burger King
If you work at Burger King’s corporate offices in Miami, you can have it your way, just as long as your way doesn’t include having a private work space. Everyone sits out in the open at company headquarters, including Bernard Hees, the company’s chief executive officer. Instead of occupying cubicles or offices, employees work at long tables without dividers, an arrangement that facilitates information flow and speeds decision-making, says chief people officer Jose Tomas.
2. Citrix
Citrix Systems is another totally open work place. Based in Fort Lauderdale, the software company offers employees a variety of places to work, from comfy couches to whiteboard tables to, yes, a few open, low-walled cubicles. Workers can even work from home. The one thing they can’t do is leave their stuff anywhere in the office: the place is cleaned out every night. There are lockers for storage purposes, but since most people work on tablets or laptops, there’s not a whole lot of stuff to store. Still, that hasn’t stopped entrepreneurial types from trying to make a buck off of the situation: one worker put a sign on their locker reading, “For rent, $10 a week.”
Mayor Bloomberg has taken a lot of flack for some of his changes. The smoking ban, now almost universally applauded, was controversial back in the mid-2000s. And recently, talk shows have had a field day poking fun at his proposed ban on giant sodas. Less famously, he pioneered a bullpen-style office at City Hall that is definitely a love it or hate it proposition.
New York magazine had a telling quote from an anonymous former bullpen-er: “As a work space, it is something that you do not think that you can ever get used to. But when you see the mayor hosting high-level meetings in clear sight of everyone else, you start to understand that this open-communication model is not [salty language redacted]. And that it works.”
Images: Burgerdoctor, Sun-Sentinel.com, New York magazine
