If a team is to fully enjoy the benefits of cross-functional and cross-disciplinary working, everyone will have to make an effort. By Kate Kearins.
Last year, I moved from a nice office to a temporary, open-plan workspace in a building with 17 floors. Not massively tall, but taller than the building I had been in, and with many more floors devoted to employee workspaces rather than classrooms.
I was looking forward to bumping into even more colleagues in the building’s lobby and lifts and finding even more opportunities for cross-functional working.
While such opportunities have played out well across our single-level, open-plan workspace, the same cannot be said around my creating new relationships through impromptu collegial encounters with those working on the other floors. In fact, brief smiles and elevator chats aside, I have hardly met or worked with anyone new.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the approach of ‘stacking’ workspaces on floor upon floor, without knowing who is working above and below you, or what kind of work is being done, impedes rather than encourages cross-functional working and collegial interactions.
“Spreading people across larger floors may well be the better model…
Spreading people across larger floors may well be the better model. I might be at odds with some colleagues, but I love working in an open-plan workspace and experiencing the efficiencies of collaborative working. I find seeing colleagues working alone and together and seeming to enjoy each other’s company, quite motivational, and even, at times, inspiring.
I’m happy to see flexibility increasingly built into our workspaces and colleagues adapting and choosing spaces that suit the work they are doing. I appreciate moving between small and large meeting room spaces and buildings and having a desk available when I need it. I worry a little about hogging the same desk and what might possibly be inferred as a ‘managerial prerogative’ as I notice others seem to defer to my choice of desk.
Reliable, seamless, and user-friendly technology helps. I love what I call the ‘boom-bang’ effect when I attach the meeting room cable to my laptop and what’s on my screen magically appears on the wall for everyone to see – whether in the same room as me or in a remote work location.
Kate Kearins
Recognising individual diversity and respecting colleague’s need for quiet is, of course, more challenging for some of us. I have not seen many colleagues use the privacy screens, which offer visual separation from colleagues; however, the noise cancelling headphones provided as part of our move to open plan are being put to good use. Others choose to work in the dedicated quiet space.
Nine months after we landed in the temporary open space, the 100 or so colleagues on our current floor will soon return to our former space, now refurbished and ready to accommodate another 120 colleagues who have been working mainly from private offices in a different building. No doubt, their move to open-plan working will be most keenly felt.
When our next move is complete, 220 colleagues will be ‘together’ across three floors. Will we get to know each other better and work more collaboratively in this ‘stacked up’ and ‘spread out’ spaces in our new neighbourhoods?
Time will tell. But I have learned that, if we are to fully enjoy the benefits of cross-functional and cross-disciplinary working, we will have to make an effort.
As managers we will need to design ways for colleagues to get to know each other, encourage real ‘connector’ opportunities among our them and maybe even reward those who are great workplace relationship brokers. We can’t assume greater cross-functional working will happen automatically.
Kate Kearins is Professor of Management and Pro Vice Chancellor/Dean of the Faculties of Business, Economics and Law and Culture and Society at Auckland University of Technology.
Office photo by Yolk CoWorking – Krakow on Unsplash
