The best collaborative spaces also support solitude. Privacy in a workspace does not compromise collaboration but can nurture it.
Not so long ago, the corporate world was of the opinion that the open office was a good idea. It nurtures a culture of collaboration, encourages learning and development, and promotes harmony and camaraderie. Research shows that there is a natural rhythm to our work pattern. We focus alone or in small groups to generate ideas or to process information, and then come together to build on them. Thereafter, we again go our own ways to take the next steps. Paradoxically, a collaborative task requires individuals to punctuate collective action with private time to think, function, or recharge alone.
In the 1980s, 85% of US employees wanted to own their private spaces in the office to concentrate without distractions. 52% said they lacked such spaces. Thus the corporate landscape came to be dominated by thousands of high-walled cubicles. By the 1990s, the tide had turned, and the walls were broken down, as it were, to comply with people’s demands to have easy access to other people and promote interactions. That the pendulum had swung too far came to the fore as people started to complain of flaws in the open area work space – distractions, lack of privacy especially for confidential work, reduced individual space so essential for coping with the intensity of today’s complex and demanding work environment.
Increased collaborative work leaves us with little windows of ‘alone’ time to be on our own, and again the ubiquity of mobile devices and that we must be available 24×7 leaves us with little option but to be accessible at all hours. In the light of these pressures, people who are finding it difficult to concentrate and work optimally are increasing significantly, and 74% people are stating that they are more concerned about their privacy now than they were even 10 years back. This compels us to rethink our basic assumptions about a professional’s privacy. Choosing to work from home or meeting in coffee shops isn’t the solution to the above – at least not for the long term. While this can work occasionally, it comes with its set of perils – decreasing engagement, diminishing knowledge transfer, increasing interpersonal disconnect, and a host of newer distractions. And it goes without saying, any job that pivots around or builds on collaboration fails to take off or bear fruit.
Researchers and architects traditionally categorize privacy at work in physical terms – acoustics (can we listen to each other?), visual (can we see each other?), and territorial (do we have places that are earmarked solely for each one’s use?).To understand what workplace privacy is all about or how it plays out we must study it on two dimensions.
Information control: Employees today tend to fret about the ways and means to protect and manage access to their personal information – from who could genuinely need access to one’s files, to what people would think on being spotted reading an article or taking a quick look at Twitter feeds. Technology, social media in particular, has further challenged our sense of personal sovereignty. We are always ‘findable’ either in the real or virtual space.
Stimulation control: The second dimension of privacy, or stimulation control, encompasses the noises and distractions that break concentration. While one person’s distraction may be another’s white noise, it is helpful to understand that Neuroscience research identifies three basic modes of attention. The first is controlled attention for working on tasks that require intense focus, forcefully avoiding external stimuli. The second is stimulus-driven attention or consciously switching focus when something catches our attention. Performing routine tasks like responding to emails or engaging in administrative work allows this mode, when we may tolerate interruptions or distractions. The third mode, rejuvenation, refers to periodic breaks or respites from concentration that we need for both our brains and bodies. We require a variety of workspaces that afford more or less privacy to switch among the three modes of stimulation control.
It goes without saying that the need for privacy is universal, but the way it is experienced vary depending upon national cultures, organizational practices, individual personality type and preferences, and the nature of work. Some people seek privacy to do focused work in the midst of strangers such as in a café (strategic anonymity), others choose to reveal or hold back information depending upon who matters or who doesn’t (selective exposure). Some seek out people and dedicated spaces for private/critical discussions (entrusted confidence) in highly open workplaces, for instance to conduct performance reviews, others resort to preempt feeling ‘violated’ when they think they are being watched or eavesdropped (intentional shielding). Another effective shielding tactic (purposeful isolation) is to choose solitude intentionally and separate oneself from a group in order to concentrate or to avoid group think.
Employees can push to establish boundaries, but they must belong to a culture that respects and supports the need for privacy. Organizations can choose two primary design approaches for accommodating employees’ privacy needs in the physical workspace – (i) the distributed model where spaces supportive of stimulation control are blended into areas for both individual and group work, making it easy for people to shift quickly between modes of work (ii) the zone model, where certain places within the larger workplace are identified as quiet private hubs insulated from noise disruptions. Organizations can also implement a range of strategies that articulate and enforce permissible behaviors, operating procedures, and protocols.
Superior work environment allows for a range of spaces, an ecosystem, that help people choose where and how they can work best. Design and allocation of space must also transform from being hierarchy-based to being needs-based. Moving between group time to individual private time, or drawing energy suitably from within and without creates a rhythm that is essential to both the organization and its foremost asset, the human resource.
