Closed-Door Policy

(Read the original HR Innovator article here.)

HR Innovator, April Issue 2005

The debate over cubicles vs. offices may go on, but one Midwestern high-tech firm has come down firmly on the side of private office space for productivity's sake.

Milwaukee's Northwoods Software Inc. has a closed-door policy. That is, its software developers have offices with doors and are allowed to close them in order to work uninterrupted. For Northwoods, the policy marks a departure from the typical "open workspace," maze-of-cubicles approach under which most software developers--and countless employees at countless companies--labor.

In the ongoing debate between proponents of cubicles versus offices, Northwoods CEO Patrick Bieser weighs in firmly on the side of offices.

"If you give developers an office, you get a 20 percent increase in productivity," Bieser said. "They can get into a zone. If you can allow a developer to focus, it's like when (Green Bay Packers quarterback) Brett Favre gets into a zone and nothing can stop him."

Getting into a zone may be just the thing for the Northwoods staff. Programmers for the software engineering/Web development firm create advanced applications, such as the Titan CMS Web content management system, that allow non-technical users to maintain high-end Web presences. The company's client roster--including corporate heavyweights like Briggs & Stratton, Snap-On Tools, AIG, and others--relies on Northwoods' tech gurus to find simple ways to accomplish complex tasks like creating web-based executive dashboards and intranets, or automating updates to immense sites with thousands of pages.

In the summer of 2004, Northwoods moved its offices a mile north, from roughly 9,000 square feet in a local bank building to a space roughly five times that size in a former drug rehabilitation hospital. Not only did developers that formerly had shared offices get their own spaces, but as former hospital rooms were converted they had the option to retain the bathrooms in each unit.

"It was cheaper to leave the bathrooms in than it was to remove them," Senior Project Manager Cedric Parish said. "I opted not to have a bathroom because I knew I wouldn't clean it."

Senior Architect/Developer Jim Conigliaro chose to have a bathroom in his office. "I kept the bathroom more for the novelty than anything else," Conigliaro said. "It's one thing to tell someone you have your own office. It is something else entirely to say you have a private bathroom."

The developers also feel productivity is enhanced by eschewing cubicles for offices. "It is unbelievable the amount of work you can get done when you have a work area you can control," Parish said, adding that he had worked in cubicle environments in the past. "People may say that cubicles enhance communication, but that's not communication, it's noise. In a cubicle setting I had to come in after hours to get much done, or come in at a time when I could wear headphones."

Sometimes, communication can actually be enhanced in a closed-door office environment, according to Conigliaro. "If you can shut the door and talk to someone, you can say things that need to be said about a particular piece of code someone worked on without offending anybody," Conigliaro said.

When it comes to decorating their spaces, offending people is the one thing the developers are not allowed to do, according to Parish. Apart from that, they get free reign.

"Anything you can fit through the door as long as you don't offend anyone," Parish said in describing what was allowable.