I agree with the person who said small groups of like positions may benefit from sharing space. We have a few offices that have 2 people of the same position in each, and they find it very useful for training and collaboration. Several of our positions have their own office, however, for several reasons: 1. Conference calls or meetings with sponsors, faculty or administrators are loud and distracting, and 2. We often discuss confidential information including salary and COIs. We also frequently have conversations where faculty want to talk about administrators or vice versa (for good or bad), and in order to effectively manage the research enterprise, those conversations are crucial to have. I doubt anyone would want to have them in the middle of a cube farm. Additonally, any supervisor should be required to have their own office so that they can discuss HR issues and not have to schedule a conference room for privacy.

My two cents :)

Thanks,
Jennifer

Jennifer Barron, MBA
Director, Office of Research Administration
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
615 N. Wolfe Street, W1600
Baltimore, MD 21205
p: 410.614.1856
f: 410.955.0258
xxxxxx@jhsph.edu

        

-----Original Message-----
From: Research Administration List [mailto:xxxxxx@lists.healthresearch.org] On Behalf Of Natasha Stark
Sent: Friday, January 17, 2014 3:10 PM
To: xxxxxx@lists.healthresearch.org
Subject: Re: [RESADM-L] Central Office Floor Plan & Work Environment

Hi Diana,

As a Director have you found that having your staff in a private office has in any way hindered collaboration among your employees?  One of the arguments being made for proposing this configuration is that it will foster collaboration among the 14 of us who comprise the pre- and post- award staff.  And are there any circumstances or conditions under which you would want to have everyone sitting in the open looking and listening to each other (the space as presently proposed would either have no walls or very low walls that would allow us to both see and hear each other on a continuous basis).

Thanks!

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 Instructions on how to use the RESADM-L Mailing List, including
 subscription information and a web-searchable archive, are available
 via our web site at http://www.healthresearch.org (click on the
 "LISTSERV" link in the upper right corner)

 A link directly to helpful tips:  http://tinyurl.com/resadm-l-help
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