Can corner desk increase communication?

In Japan having a desk in a corner is perceived very badly

. People in many other developed nations have described having the same experience. Does this social condition have a rational basis? Should companies combat or embrace this mindset? A group of scientists at MIT made a considerable stride forward in this matter.

In the 1970s, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a professor named Tom Allen performed a milestone study of office layouts. He studied the link between engineer's physical locations in their office and the amount of data they shared. The outcome was the Allen curve, which demonstrates the important relationship between physical distance and communication.

Dr Allen discovered that employees whose work spaces were more than fifty metres apart from each other did not communicate in any substantial way. Those who were located closer than fifty metres talked about seven times a day; those 50 meters or more away from each other talked an average of once a month. Prior to his research, most businesses did not think that office layout was significant.

As the Evening Standard reports, BMW built their headquarters based on the Allen curve, intentionally developing it so that engineers and designers would communicate as much as possible. This analysis is driving many to re-evaluate the stigma attached to being placed in a corner desk.

Many companies do not use corner desks because, as opposed to working in a corner office, there is an irrational cultural negative preconception attached to getting a desk in the corner. At times they go as far as breaking up teams of employees who should be in the same area, only since they want to avoid using a computer corner desk.

Yet this is clearly a bad way of increasing communication. An open work space that can maximize the number of employees exisiting comfortably together is the most productive layout. It both uses spaces efficiently, as well as creating more communication. It might be time to spend money on a corner computer desk.

Can corner desk increase communication?

By: Greg Jacobs

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