Are extroverts or introverts more productive in Singapore offices?

The debate about collaborative office space v’s private office space is all the rage in workplace design Singapore circles. With the amount of new offices being designed specifically to improve productivity increasing everyday to meet Singapore’s unique workforce and to justify a company being based in Singapore this debate is getting fiercer.

Is it better to have people altogether sharing and collaborating on ideas or is it better to have silos so that people can focus on tasks without too much interaction with other people? Can you achieve both with clever office design? When Singapore started out competing on the world stage for companies to place themselves here in the 70’s this was not even a question. It was silos all the way.

As Singaporean workers have becoming increasingly sophisticated with what they want from a job and a company they have become more demanding. The question of how a workplace looks and how productive it is to work in and how productive it makes teams  have become deciding factors for many people in choosing both Singapore as a business location and for employees to choose a company.

1)      This is very much depends on the industry you’re in. If you’re in a creative industry which relies on working with colleagues from the same or sister departments’ then collaboration spaces overcome many communications barriers. If however you work more in financial or legal businesses that are more task orientated and need more attention to detail then silos work better.

You may be a bit of both, everyone needs time to focus on their revenue projections or strategy away from the noise of an open place space. Ironically Starbucks makes a killing from such needs. The ultimate collaborative space you might argue!

2)      The answer also depends on your function. Are you a leader driving your team forwards? Or are you in the background happy to be invisible at work? Clearly open collaborative spaces are great for sales and media environments.  Everyone has seen films like Boiler Room or Wall Street for the ultimate in open place spaces that spark with energy and adrenalin.  But that doesn’t work for the accounts teams who need quiet and less interaction to be productive. An office designed to cater for both can work if designed well.

3)      It also depends on your personality type. Open plan collaborative spaces suit extroverts happy to connect with people and engage on an hourly basis. Specific collaborative spaces where people can see what you’re doing all the time also benefits this personality type. Silos suit more introverted people who prefer to have a million things cluttering up their desks in a bid to create a wall between them and their co-workers! They also like conference rooms with walls rather than glass.

Many organisations wish to create a world where people can work and play from anywhere productively. This means enabling remote collaboration and empowering people to work from any location. But it also means supporting the many different work styles of today's workforce. Fostering a more collaborative culture that involves less over-the-wall processes, fewer silos, more and earlier collaboration, and better integration of design into the product development process of any company is surely a mutually beneficial way of working. Employees and employers become more productive as a direct result.

Instead of being closed-off and secretive many of these collaborative areas have glass walls. The rest of the office can see the action happening and to see how people work. The spaces often cannot be booked like a regular conference room, since having to make reservations kills the spontaneity. Anyone can drop in anytime and create their own working space and bring other people in from other departments and other disciplines to increase creativity and also enhancing team work ethic.

Ultimately headphones have changed every workplace in Singapore. Many people wear them. So you may start in a collaborative space but with headphones you can create your own silo. Calm in the eye of the storm! Anti-social they may but they enable engineers, technical people and designers especially to focus away from the noise of the office and in some cases the office music/radio too!

Which do you prefer? Collaborative or siloed? Which works best for you and your company?