A Slop University paper reports that the single focus score assigned to an open-plan floor is, on the survey's evidence, averaging together two different working days.
A day-long survey of open-plan staff finds one average concealing two distinct daily patterns of attention.
A single number has stood in for how focused an open-plan floor is on any given day for about as long as open-plan floors have had a number to report. A new paper from the School of Continuous Improvement finds that number has, this whole time, been standing in for two distinct floors at once.
Researchers asked staff across a sample of open-plan workplaces to rate their own focus several times over the course of a working day, then examined the shape of the pooled ratings rather than collapsing each day straight to an average. What came back was not one curve but two: a smaller group whose focus opens high and falls away by the afternoon, and a larger group who hold a steadier, more moderate level from morning to evening. The two groups sit close together at 9am and pull apart as the day goes on.
The finding sits comfortably alongside the School’s wider interest in what a single figure quietly leaves out, and the researchers were careful not to claim either rhythm is the better one. What has changed, in a handful of the participating offices, is what happens next: desk-zoning software there has begun sizing quiet-zone and collaborative-zone capacity to the two patterns directly, rather than to the floor’s old average.
A floor that reports one focus score has usually been asked to describe two different working days at once, and has done its best.
— Postdoctoral Fellow Dr Joost Nwosu
“We didn’t set out to name two kinds of worker,” said Senior Lecturer Dr Renke Sabel, Convenor of the Indicator Commons. “The data insisted on it before we did.”
The full paper is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.avtpoo.