[technofiend]

My employees love the camaraderie and face-to-face adhoc conversations that come from everyone being on the same floor. However no one likes the new workstation layout our company employs; people are on top of each with other minimal partitioning for those that face each other, and no partitioning at all side to side. It's noisy and hard to concentrate and the fact you have a locker and may keep nothing personal on your desk sends a certain message. A message that is amplified by the fact people at a certain org level get offices with a door.

We're working out how to mix up WFH with WFW to try and get the benefits of both.

[chihuahua]

Those terrible workstation layouts (or the equivalent at my company) are the reason why I find it much easier to talk to people on my team when I'm working from home. I can start a teams call with anyone and have a 1-on-1 conversation with no distractions. When we were still going to the office, it was difficult to have a 1-on-1 conversation because you would have all the noise of people around you talking loudly, plus my own conversation is distracting those other people who are sitting 3 feet away but are not part of the conversation. So we'd have to go to a meeting room nearby, but then you don't have your computer screen available, so you can't talk about the code you're working on. The whole concept of trying to collaborate in the office was ludicrous. Adding insult to injury, the company calls these cramped office spaces "collaborative".