My company just moved from a almost completely open floor plan to an open floor plan but plenty of private / huddle rooms. Also we have a very liberal work-at-home options too.
So far, the change has been positive. People are able to, on the fly, pick the type of physical work environment they want to experience at a given point in time.
Also, our management invested in VERY nice noise canceling headsets for anyone who requested one. That technology has done wonders for productivity and has increase the quality of our video conferences.
I see a lot of people giving thanks for 'nice noise canceling headsets' in this thread, but from what I can tell, noise canceling does not work for about 50% of people.
In my office we've tested every single noise canceling headset, from Bose QC, to Sennheiser PXC 550, to B&W PX, and everything in between.
The noise canceling is a weird hiss, increases feelings of ear pressure, and the discomfort manifests as a headache or car sickness after a few hours- and that isn't even taking into account the other pains people feel from prolonged use of over ear headphones.
When you're talking about wearing something for 8 hours a day, there are some real ergo needs that drive the shape and technology of the device. Think about how light typical call center headsets are- that is a professional device.
Not to say it doesn't work for you individually, but noise canceling headsets are NOT a solution that works for an office worth of people. Out of about 500 people in my office, only 20 or so stuck with noise canceling cans as their daily headsets.
Using headphones works very well for me, but the downside is that my brain has completely associated the sensation of headphones with productivity. Even if I'm home alone, it's hard to concentrate unless I have them on.
I have some Bose QC's, and active NC doesn't work well on speech. If anything, it can make it worse as it's filtering out all the ambient noise and just the speech is left.
I work with noise cancelling headsets all the time and they do nothing for cancelling out phone calls or office chat. You could work with them next to a big machine and have a more distraction-free environment than I have right now while my colleague is on the phone and I am on Hacker News instead of in the bowels of my code.
To be clear, these are noise cancelling for your ears AND mic. Most of us have the Jabra 75 (over the ear) pair. It definitely helps on conference calls.
I don't think GP was talking about when they are on the phone. If you're talking on the phone next to me, I can hear you talking, whether I have noise cancelling headphones on or not.
So far, the change has been positive. People are able to, on the fly, pick the type of physical work environment they want to experience at a given point in time.
Also, our management invested in VERY nice noise canceling headsets for anyone who requested one. That technology has done wonders for productivity and has increase the quality of our video conferences.