The Bookseller.com

17th May 2008

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Open-plan office politics

16.11.07 Joel Rickett

On Monday, some 160 Penguin staff will be waving goodbye to Brick Lane and moving back to their refurbished 80 Strand headquarters. They'll notice one glaring absence: walls. Everyone from global c.e.o. John Makinson down to the lowliest work experience lackey has a desk out on the floor for all to see. The much-vaunted open-plan revolution is finally here.

Penguin is not the first publisher to decide that personal offices are an outdated relic. Less than a mile along the Thames, Little, Brown is just settling into its own modernist, open-plan space. For 127 staff there are just 25 doors—including the toilets. Even the meeting rooms have only three sides.

When Penguin first mooted its open-plan move, there was a minor furore. Directors and editors flapped, gossipped and even drummed up a petition in protest. Months of consultation ended with a concession that senior editorial staff would retain personal offices. This compromise was rejected as unworkable, owing to the air-conditioning ducts at the art deco landmark. So open-plan it is.

But the anxieties still hold true. Critics say open-plan offices lack privacy (for sensitive discussions), erode individual identities (of both imprints and editors), and are too noisy and distracting for reading manuscripts or writing.

It is easy to mock these concerns as precious. After all, most other publishing departments—from sales, marketing and publicity to operations and finance—generally work in open-plan formats. And even in editorial teams, you spend many years slaving out on the floor until promotion finally wins you those four sacred walls.

But one senior publisher says the flaws are serious. "This is a business driven by creativity, and circumstances need to be put in place for creativity to flourish most effectively. There have been extensive studies on open-plan spaces, which show they are not the way to get the best out of people."

Those managers overseeing the current moves profoundly disagree. At Little, Brown, c.e.o. and publisher Ursula Mackenzie says that open-plan will enhance creativity by encouraging teams to work together: "Publishing is essentially a very collaborative business," she says.

Mackenzie believes that having editors around shared desks will combat the "meetings culture" that eats up time. "Literary agents constantly complain they can't get hold of us because we're always in meetings. That's because the [traditional] layout has us all in little cubicles, so we have to schedule meetings to communicate."

Instead, she hopes people will naturally pick up on relevant information, and have informal conversations about projects. "Meetings will just be to capture and distill those discussions, and make action points." At Penguin, group marketing and publicity director Joanna Prior talks of "fluidity", with more spontaneous and "democratic" decision-making.

To foster this further, both publishers have increased shared office spaces, and created communal areas with high-sided booths for these informal meetings. Little, Brown staff walk to shared photocopier/printer points, and low seating is dotted around next to desks.

To give editors and others solitude, both companies have built quiet, library-style reading rooms with sofas and desks. They are also using tricks such as sound dampeners for "acoustic privacy".

But Mackenzie says that staff will also adapt to a busier environment. "It's a myth that you need four walls to focus," she says. Andrew Lock, partner at Vitra, the Swiss consultancy that designed the new space, adds: "You can create a sense of privacy without a door."

They also point out that editors will continue to get through a great deal of reading at home, often on evenings and weekends. Yes, sceptics say, editors will simply avoid their new desks much of the time. "My guess is that [open-plan] will lead to less communication because people will actually be there less," one predicts. But Prior is adamant that editors will adapt: "Working in the open with distractions is a learning curve."

For private conversations there are wireless phones, or calls can be routed through to meeting rooms. "You have to give people the ability to walk away from their desks," Mackenzie says.

Yet how much do people really tune in to each others' conversations in an open space? Experience in other industries, such as the media, suggests people become adept at screening out "white noise"—and that listening to one side of a conversation is deeply unrewarding. "People just need to be less self-conscious," Prior says.

To retain imprint identities and woo authors, both publishers have created "boutique" imprint rooms, with walls clad in their books. Whether this will replace the fiefdoms editors' offices can become—strewn with manuscripts, keepsakes and strange gifts from authors—remains to be seen. "It all sounds a bit impersonal," sniffs one rival publisher.

Visibility builds teams

Much opposition to open-plan schemes comes from those who believe corporate structures should take physical form. Mackenzie recalls how people told her she "must" retain a personal office; she agreed, until she heard from new Penguin UK c.e.o. Peter Field that he was going open-plan along with his team. "I thought, do I really want to be the kind of chief executive who is so different [to their staff] that they need four walls and a door? No. That's the last message I want to send out." So she took a desk alongside her senior team—who "know everything [I do] anyway".

But she and Field can retreat into private rooms behind their open-plan desks. And at Penguin, editorial directors have been given "studies"—with shelves, second tables and three-quarter-height walls. Another sceptical observer says: "There's a touch of ‘all are open-plan, but some are more open-plan than others'."

At many publishers an office is seen as a reward for a senior editorial role, but Prior says that the idea of a "hierarchy based on occupancy" is outdated: "In publicity and marketing we got rid of that [culture] a long time ago."

Andrew Lock of Vitra is convinced that teams are pulled together if they work in open spaces. "Visibility is a great glue," he says. At LB, even the main meeting room is open-sided, running alongside the canteen. "We wanted to challenge what people think a meeting room is about," he adds.

If everyone is in the open, more junior staff can learn by observation and osmosis, Prior believes. "Editors haven't thought of themselves as nurturing, mentoring figures. But that's part of all our jobs." There's also "more opportunity for young, bright people to get noticed".

Home from home

There's no doubt that both publishers have invested heavily to ease staff into the new layouts. There's stylish furniture, soft lighting, and even free coffee at Little, Brown. Penguin has opened up views of the river previously monopolised by top brass, and dotted its art collection around. Both want the office to feel as comfortable as—or nicer than—home. It's a way of encouraging the long hours that make publishing tick.

Little, Brown will write the costs off across the next decade, while Penguin—which has struggled with astronomical overheads at 80 Strand-—expects a three-year payback from reducing its occupancy by one floor (saving a rumoured £2m a year).

Environmental concerns have come to the fore. Both have banished personal litter bins, forcing staff to take rubbish to central recycling points. At Penguin, the lights and computers switch off automatically overnight to save energy.

Another advantage of the new spaces is that they fit more staff and can be quickly expanded or contracted for hirings, firings, sell-offs and acquisitions. Staff no longer have "comfort zones" in which to moonlight, maliciously gossip or look for new jobs.

A compelling critic of open-plan culture is American sociologist Richard Sennett. In The Fall of Public Man, he argues that such layouts actually make people less collegiate: "When people are all day long visually exposed to one another, they are less likely to gossip and chat, more likely to keep to themselves. When everyone has each other under surveillance, sociability decreases."

Furthermore, Sennett argues that this is actually the aim of corporations. But perhaps this can be taken too far. Satires of office life often depict lines of cooped-up workers, isolated from each other while bosses divide and rule. Whichever way they go, companies can never beat such critics.

More pertinent is the risk of alienating staff. If prominent editors feel ill at ease, it may hasten their departure to other publishers or into literary agenting. But Penguin and Little, Brown are confident that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts; if anything, they expect movement to be the other way, as rivals want a taste of the good life.

Finally, there's a reality check: will these slick, designer spaces slowly be cluttered up and modified out of all recognition? Jacqueline Graham, group publicity director of Pan Macmillan, recalls that Penguin went to a "revolutionary" open-plan layout at its Harmondsworth offices in the mid-1970s. "It was state-of-the-art and deeply exciting. Then people started to put up screens, and the partitions got higher and higher . . ."

Flagship Feature Joel Rickett Open-plan job