More small businesses adopting 'open plan working'

Date: 24th August 2011

Over the past few years there have been more small businesses adopting open plan working practices, one expert has observed.

Highlighting the changes in office behaviour over the years, Matt Oakley, chairman of the British Council for Offices, noted that there are fewer cellular offices with their own separate doors in modern-day office buildings.

This, he explained, is partly to do with the cost of having personal offices, but is also a reflection of a less hierarchical workplace.

"It is also a reflection that the whole point of the office and the workplace was about sharing ideas and trying to create new products and new ideas and ways of doing things, and you don't get that by shutting people away," he remarked.

The expert also observed that businesses are now more interested in having break-out areas for their staff and that almost half of a business' space consists of social areas and formal meeting rooms, not just rows of desks with PCs.

Mr Oakley's comments come after the Federation of Small Businesses said that having a London postcode on company correspondence gives businesses "a certain gravitas".

Posted by Thomas Fletcher