A new study published in The Royal Society indicates that open office workspaces (you know – the ones we thought were so cool, hip and trendy and made us work so much better together) create the exact opposite effect to what they are intended to do:

“In short, rather than prompting increasingly vibrant face-to-face collaboration, open architecture appeared to trigger a natural human response to socially withdraw from officemates and interact instead over email and IM.”

Important read for anyone kitting out their new office space.

Full study here: The impact of the ‘open’ workspace on human collaboration