{"id":2278,"date":"2017-11-14T10:00:17","date_gmt":"2017-11-14T15:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.steelcase.com\/?post_type=article&p=2278"},"modified":"2026-02-17T12:47:03","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T17:47:03","slug":"privacy-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.steelcase.com\/research\/articles\/topics\/privacy\/privacy-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"The Privacy Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

In organizations all over the world, people are facing brand-new problems that require sharing information and putting knowledge together in new ways. For all the right reasons, collaboration has become the big engine for progress and innovation. Although workplaces today make it seemingly easy for people to collaborate, most leaders remain dissatisfied with the pace and frequency of breakthroughs. Uncertain of what to do next, they hire new talent, carve out trendy group spaces, add technology or step up team training efforts\u2014but still don\u2019t see the gains they desire.<\/p>\n

Paradoxically, most efforts to fuel more successful collaboration are only making it worse. New Steelcase research has revealed that, while togetherness at work is vital for value creation, in excess it\u2019s a killer.<\/p>\n

Throughout the world, too much interaction and not enough privacy has reached crisis proportions, taking a heavy toll on workers\u2019 creativity, productivity, engagement and wellbeing.<\/p>\n

Without question, successful collaboration requires giving coworkers easy access to each other. But it also requires giving each individual the time and places to focus and recharge, and too many workplaces today aren\u2019t delivering on privacy as a necessity<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cThe need for privacy sometimes\u2014at work as well as in public\u2014is as basic to human nature as is the need to be with others,\u201d explains Donna Flynn, director of Steelcase\u2019s WorkSpace Futures research group. \u201cThe harder people work collaboratively, the more important it is to also have time alone\u2014to be free from distractions, apply expertise and develop a solid point of view about the challenges at hand. People also need privacy to decompress and recharge.<\/p>\n

\u201cA key takeaway from our study is that the open plan isn\u2019t to blame any more than reverting to all private offices can be a solution. There is no single type of optimal work setting. Instead, it\u2019s about balance. Achieving the right balance between working in privacy and working together is critical for any organization that wants to achieve innovation and advance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Desperately Seeking Privacy<\/h3>\n

More than ever before, workers are going public with complaints about their lack of privacy at work. Blogs and online chat rooms are chock-full of soliloquies about what everyday life in an open-plan workplace is like: how easy it is to be distracted, how stressful the environment can be and how hard it is to get any individual work done. Many say they literally can\u2019t hear themselves think. Seeing the opportunity, one high-end headset brand has started advertising its products as a way to hear your favorite music or simply to hear the sound of silence instead of your coworkers. But what the ad doesn\u2019t say is that wearing headsets cuts people off from hearing and engaging in conversations that could be valuable for their work, thereby eliminating a potential advantage that open-plan workspaces are intended to provide. And audio distractions are only part of the problem.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, beyond the chatter of cyberspace and advertising, other strong signals have been\u00a0mounting that workers\u2019 lack of privacy is a problem that needs C-suite attention ASAP.<\/p>\n

\"Privacy<\/p>\n

Gallup\u2019s recent report on the State of the Global Workplace found only 11 percent of workers around the world are engaged and inspired at work, and 63 percent are disengaged\u2014unmotivated and unlikely to invest effort in organizational goals or outcomes. But slicing the data shows that, at\u00a0least in the United States, those who spend up to 20 percent of their time working remotely are\u00a0the most engaged of all workers surveyed. This finding suggests that these engaged workers are\u00a0able to balance collaboration and interaction with colleagues at the office and are working remotely\u00a0to achieve the privacy they need for some of their individual work. And yet, many business leaders recognize that sending people home anytime they need privacy isn\u2019t efficient and it can threaten versus strengthen innovation by diluting the cultural \u201cglue\u201d that inspires workers and keeps them connected to the organization\u2019s goals.<\/p>\n

Moreover, a recent Steelcase study of the workplace conducted by the global research firm IPSOS of more than 10,500 workers in Europe, North America and Asia confirms that insufficient privacy in the workplace is an issue throughout the world. The survey results show that being able to concentrate, work in teams without being interrupted or choose where to work based on the task are frequently unmet needs.<\/p>\n

Yet the 11 percent of workers who had more privacy and were more satisfied with their workplace overall were also the most engaged. Conversely, employees highly dissatisfied with their work environment were the least engaged. This study confirms observations by Steelcase researchers: The workplace has a very real impact on employee engagement.<\/p>\n

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Workplace satisfaction bolsters employee engagement<\/h3>\n

A Steelcase survey conducted by the global research firm IPSOS shows a strong correlation between employees\u2019 satisfaction with their work environment and their level of engagement.<\/p>\n

Only 11 percent of respondents were highly satisfied with their work environment; they were also the most highly engaged.\u00a0These respondents agree their workplace allows them to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
98%<\/strong><\/td>\nconcentrate easily<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
97%<\/strong><\/td>\nfreely express and share ideas<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
95%<\/strong><\/td>\nwork in teams without being interrupted<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
88%<\/strong><\/td>\nchoose where to work within the office, based on their task<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
95%<\/strong><\/td>\nfeel relaxed, calm<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
97%<\/strong><\/td>\nfeel a sense of belonging to their company and its culture<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\n

Cost of disengagement<\/h3>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
USA<\/strong><\/td>\n$450 – 550B<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Germany<\/strong><\/td>\n\u20ac112 – 138B<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Australia<\/strong><\/td>\n$54.8B<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
United Kingdom<\/strong><\/td>\n\u00a352 – 70B<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

2013 State of the Global Workplace Report, Gallup<\/em><\/sup><\/p>\n

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An Epidemic of Overwhelm<\/h3>\n

One condition that impacts workplace satisfaction and thus engagement is when employees have\u00a0no choice but to work in environments that are saturated with stimuli. According to Susan Cain,\u00a0author of the bestseller, “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can\u2019t Stop Talking,” many people perform best without others around them constantly. Despite this, she contends, teamwork is often elevated above all else. The result can be a psychological phenomenon that has been coined as \u201cgroupthink\u201d\u2014people\u2019s natural inclination to succumb to peer pressure and go along with others rather than to risk being isolated by contributing a differing point of view.<\/p>\n

The way forward, according to Cain, is \u201cnot to stop collaborating face-to-face, but to refine the way we do it.\u201d Instead of providing only open-plan work settings, Cain urges organizations to \u201ccreate\u00a0settings in which people are free to circulate in a shifting kaleidoscope of interactions,\u201d and then\u00a0be able to disappear into private spaces when they want to focus or simply be alone.<\/p>\n

David Rock, a performance management consultant and author of \u201cYour Brain at Work,\u201d points to the latest findings from neuroscience. Most workers, he says, are suffering from \u201can epidemic of overwhelm\u201d due to huge increases in the amount of information we\u2019re expected to deal with every day and a significant increase in the distractions that come our way. Science has shown that the human prefrontal cortex, where most knowledge work processes take place, is small, energy-hungry and very easily distracted, Rock notes. Many researchers\u2019 work has proven that any belief that people can successfully multitask is essentially wishful thinking. Humans can give controlled, full attention to just one thing at a time. When we try to pay attention actively to any two memory-dependent tasks at once, we\u2019re easily distracted and end up doing neither one well. Given this reality, achieving peak performance in today\u2019s work environments has become much more challenging than it was even just a few years ago.<\/p>\n

\"Coworkers<\/p>\n

\u201cAs we got better at sharing information and building software and techniques and tools for collaborating, we\u2019re leveraging the fact that information travels literally at the speed of light\u2026 And so with all this efficiency of information flow and of communication, we\u2019re hitting up against the final bottleneck, which is our ability to pay attention and make decisions. In the average morning download of emails, many people have to process in a half hour what your brain probably needs a day or two to process at the right kind of pace\u2026 We\u2019re definitely stretching our capacities in some challenging ways,\u201d says Rock.<\/p>\n

Office workers are interrupted as often as every three minutes by digital and human distractions. These breaches in attention carry a destructive ripple effect because, once a distraction occurs, it can take as much as 23 minutes for the mind to return to the task at hand, according to recent\u00a0research done at the University of California.<\/p>\n

The problem, Rock explains, is that the network in the brain that controls impulses \u2014known as the brain\u2019s braking system\u2014is easily tired. This means that once we\u2019re distracted by something, it\u2019s harder to stop ourselves from being distracted by something else. He makes the comparison of\u00a0using your foot as a brake on a motorcycle. \u201cYour foot is very effective until you start to move. It\u2019s a\u00a0little bit like that with distractions. Before you\u2019re distracted, you can stop yourself from being\u00a0distracted. But once you start being distracted, once you start moving, your brakes don\u2019t work very well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Overexposed?<\/h3>\n

Spatial perceptions have played an important role in the survival of the human race, and significant\u00a0implications from our evolutionary past remain rooted in our psyches today.<\/p>\n

\"360<\/p>\n

\u201cWe prefer landscapes that give us a clear view of what\u2019s happening around us \u2014open places that offer a broad vantage as part of a group \u2014 as well as ready refuge places where we can hide if needed,\u201d explains Meike Toepfer Taylor, a Coalesse design researcher. In other words, while the watering holes and caves of our ancestors have been replaced by gathering places and private\u00a0enclaves in our offices today, people\u2019s needs for both types of settings are basic and instinctive.<\/p>\n

“External distractions \u2014things like sound or what we see\u2014 can be controlled in the environment, but it\u2019s really up to each individual to figure out how to control internal distractions. A big insight from our research was that the way each person controls distractions is very different.”<\/p>Donna FlynnDirector of Steelcase's WorkSpace Futures<\/span><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n

For many companies, it now appears that there is too much emphasis on open spaces and not\u00a0enough on enclosed, private spaces.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of businesses are now struggling with the balance of private and open spaces,\u201d says Flynn. \u201cThere\u2019s mounting evidence that the lack of privacy is causing people to feel overexposed in today\u2019s workplaces and is threatening people\u2019s engagement and their cognitive, emotional and even physical wellbeing. Companies are asking questions like, \u2018Have we gone too far toward open plan\u2026 or not done it right? What\u2019s the formula? What kind of a workplace should we be creating? \u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

As a human issue and a business issue, the need for more privacy demands new thinking about\u00a0effective workplace design, says Flynn.<\/p>\n

Most people think about privacy in terms of other people bothering us, but it\u2019s really about control, say Steelcase researchers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Steelcase started looking into privacy in the early 1980s, our researchers were primarily exploring spatial properties, especially the analytics of sound management. By the early \u201890s, they had synthesized a solid understanding of four mechanisms that regulate privacy in the physical setting: acoustical, visual, territorial and informational. In other words, privacy in any setting is determined by what you hear, what you see, how you define your boundaries and\/or what kind of information is revealed and concealed.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut now we live in an online world as well as a physical one. At the same time that it\u2019s brought us closer, technology has invaded people\u2019s privacy, exacerbating concerns and sensitivities. We wanted to know more about current human needs for privacy and the types of privacy experiences that are important to workers today. We realized we needed to look deeper and apply a new lens,\u201d explains Melanie Redman, a member of the Steelcase WorkSpace Futures team that recently researched privacy by surveying, interviewing and observing workers in North America, Europe and Asia.<\/p>\n

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Privacy in Physical Settings<\/h3>\n

According to Steelcase research, people instinctively evaluate four, often-overlapping mechanisms that determine if a space can provide the type of privacy experience they seek:<\/p>\n

Acoustical privacy:<\/strong> Undisturbed by noise and\/or able to create noise of your own without disturbing others.
\nVisual privacy:<\/strong> Not being seen by others and\/or freeing yourself from sight-induced distractions.
\nTerritorial privacy:<\/strong> Claiming a space and controlling it as your own (olfactory privacy is a subset).
\nInformational privacy:<\/strong> Keeping content (analog and\/or digital) and\/or a conversation confidential.<\/p>\n

\n

As a result of their work, the Steelcase researchers framed the basic psychological context for individual privacy into two spheres: information control\u2014what others can know about us\u2014and stimulation control\u2014managing distractions. They found patterns that were consistent globally: Today\u2019s workers repeatedly shift between revealing and concealing themselves, and between seeking stimulation and blocking it out.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most surprising thing to us was how universal the need for privacy is in today\u2019s world. We expected that in countries like China, which has a very collectivist culture, privacy might be less of a need than in countries like the United States, where individualism is prized. But what we discovered is that people all over the world want privacy at times. In different cultures, they may seek it primarily for different reasons and in ways that are permitted in their culture, but the need for privacy sometimes\u2014at work as well as in public\u2014is as important to people as is the need to be with others,\u201d says Wenli Wang, who conducted Steelcase\u2019s privacy research in China.<\/p>\n

People in Western countries seek privacy at work most often in order to manage distractions, whereas in China the primary motivation is to keep information and one\u2019s self outside of others\u2019 sight, explains Wang. \u201cIn China, people don\u2019t think about individual privacy in the same way that Westerners do. In the Western world, it\u2019s more often about stimulation control. Being distracted isn’t as much of a talking point here in China. It\u2019s more about information control, keeping personal information from others and getting away from other people watching you. That\u2019s challenging at work because workstation density is fairly extreme and there typically aren’t options inside the workplace for taking a personal call or having a personal conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Regard\"<\/p>\n

Privacy: A Timeless Issue<\/h3>\n

The clamor for privacy at work isn\u2019t new. In fact, office design concepts have been oscillating around it for decades. Open-plan systems furniture, developed in the late 1960s to accommodate a burgeoning office workforce, was envisioned as a way to provide more privacy than the rows of desks in large rooms where non-management people had typically worked in the past. Of course, it optimized real estate and reduced costs, too. Over time, the approach continued to evolve. In North America many organizations intentionally migrated to cubicles as a way to flatten hierarchies, break down functional silos, improve collaboration and create a more team-driven organization.<\/p>\n

To better understand changing needs and expectations for workplace environments, Steelcase commissioned the opinion research firm of Louis Harris and Associates, Inc. in 1978 to conduct a pioneering study of the attitudes of office workers, corporate office planners and professional office designers toward their offices. The results showed that privacy-related considerations were very important to office workers and were, in general, the least satisfactory aspects of their work environments. Though privacy remained an issue, another study in 1991 revealed that changes were underway: Office workers were spending more than half of their time working alone, but organizations were beginning to respond to the growing need for faster, better and more efficient work outputs, and getting to those goals required more collaboration. More workers in 1991 reported there were areas where they could get together to meet and talk informally than two years previous (51 percent vs. 46 percent in 1989), while 57 percent said specific project areas were available.<\/p>\n

Throughout the \u201890s collaboration got stronger and the pendulum began swinging away from privacy. Based on an another survey that Steelcase conducted in 2000, nearly half of workers (48.9 percent) wanted more access to others in their work environment, compared to just 27 percent that said there was too little privacy. What\u2019s more, one in every 10 respondents (9.6 percent) said their organization\u2019s work environment had too much privacy.<\/p>\n

The value of collaboration has become so recognized since the early \u201890s that, especially in the tech sector, creative industries and countries with egalitarian cultures such as The Netherlands, even executives have chosen to leave their private offices in favor of open plan settings that offer the reward of sharing information more easily for better, speedier decisions.<\/p>\n

Today an estimated 70 percent of office spaces in the United States have some form of open plan, according to the International Management Facility Association. Over time, these workstations have become more open and considerably smaller. In North America, the amount of space allotted per worker has decreased from an average of 500 square feet per person in the 1970s to 225 square feet in 2010 to 176 square feet in 2012, says CoreNet Global, and it\u2019s predicted to drop as low as 100 square feet by 2017. At the same time, panel heights have gone down from a standard of 5-6 feet to four feet\u2014or less. And in many offices today, panels have disappeared altogether in favor of open
\n\u201cbullpens\u201d or benching work environments, often used on a shared \u201chot desking\u201d basis versus individually assigned.<\/p>\n

Although technology has made work more mobile, the majority of workers worldwide are still doing most, if not all, of their work in workplaces with still-shrinking personal space and few, if any, accommodations for privacy. Meanwhile, the work they do has become more complex and fasterpaced to meet the imperatives of creativity and innovation that rule today\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere really is no one-size-fits-everybody-all-the-time solution. Privacy encompasses many different needs and behaviors.\u201d<\/p>Melanie RedmanSenior Researcher, Steelcase<\/span><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n

How people use space as an extension of culture has been studied in-depth since the early 1960s. An American cultural anthropologist, Edward T. Hall, coined the term proxemics (the study of human spatial requirements and its effect on communication, behavior and interactions) and established it as a subcategory of nonverbal communication. Hall investigated spatial zones based on the amount of distance between others and ourselves: intimate space, personal space, social space and public space. Each is considered appropriate for different situations, and personal space is where people feel comfortable working with others. While the specific distances vary some, each national culture has spatial norms for each of the four zones. In North America, for example, intimate space extends 18 inches from the body, while personal space extends out to 4 feet, social space to 12 feet, and the public zone is beyond that.<\/p>\n

Some of the stresses of today\u2019s work environments can no doubt be traced to the fact that people\u2019s personal space is being compromised. Many are working in environments that routinely bring coworkers close to or even within intimate range, says Taylor. This invasion is not only occurring in physical space. It\u2019s also happening digitally when people make video calls on their mobile devices, which puts the other person less than an arm\u2019s length away. In contrast, a videoconferencing configuration that situates distributed team members \u201cacross a shared table\u201d makes for a much more natural and comfortable exchange among peers.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs someone who grew up in the U.S.\u2019s deep south and now living in Shanghai, I\u2019m fascinated by how much people are different and how much they are alike.\u201d<\/p>Wenli WangSteelcase<\/span><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n

Though there are culturally based differences regarding privacy and acceptable ways to achieve it, Steelcase’s work with global companies has shown that organizational protocols usually trump nation-based norms fairly quickly, says Redman. \u201cIf a company places a high value on collaboration and designs an open, collaborative environment in a location where the local culture doesn’t support those behaviors, it may wonder why those local employees don\u2019t like their new office,\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n

Within any given culture, the researchers emphasize, privacy is always ultimately contextual to the individual. This means that the privacy that each person seeks depends on personality, state of mind at the moment and the task at hand. \u201cWhile a particular environment may provide the stimulation necessary for creative work on one day, that same environment may provide only distraction the next day,\u201d says Redman. Moreover, says Wang, Steelcase’s research underscored that mental privacy and physical privacy, though often related, aren’t necessarily synonymous. \u201cPeople talked about having their own \u2018space\u2019\u2014i.e., their own headspace, with the freedom and safety to do and think whatever they want without judgment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Gesture\"<\/p>\n

Five Privacy Insights<\/h3>\n

\u201cWhen people say they need some privacy, it can mean very different things. By diving deeper into\u00a0the experiences that people seek out for privacy, we were able to identify five key insights,\u201d says\u00a0Redman. \u201cAs an output of our research, we coded these five key insights into a set of principles for\u00a0experiencing individual privacy. Examining each of the five principles on its own is a pathway for gaining a deeper understanding of human privacy needs.\u201d<\/p>\n

By synthesizing findings from academic studies with their own primary investigations, Steelcase\u00a0researchers identified and defined these five privacy experiences:<\/p>\n

1. Strategic Anonymity: Being Unknown \/ “Invisible”<\/strong>
\nThe ability to make yourself anonymous is a key aspect of privacy, in that it frees you from the restraints incurred through normal social surveillance. Being unknown allows people to avoid interruptions, as well as express themselves in new ways and experiment with new behaviors.\u00a0The key is that it\u2019s strategic\u2014individuals choosing when and why to make themselves anonymous.\u00a0For instance, when people go to a caf\u00e9 to get focused work done, they are often seeking to block the social distractions of the workplace. The low-level vibe of strangers can be just right to stimulate thinking without attention becoming diverted.<\/p>\n

Examples:<\/p>\n