No hiding place for executives in Citi’s new open-plan headquarters

No doors will mean more interactions, says chief executive.

Michael Corbat, president of Citi, will not have a private space of his own. Reuters

Amid a costly company restructuring that is expected to affect at least 2,000 jobs, senior executives at Citi will move into its renovated New York headquarters next month with a notable feature missing – doors.

The 39-floor tower in downtown Manhattan will be open-plan to save on costs, foster interaction among workers, boost energy levels and improve communication, The Wall Street Journal reported. Most employees will not even get their own desks, and will instead move around different workspaces, the paper said.

The financial group’s chief executive Michael Corbat will also not have a private space of his own. “You’re going to be forced to bump into people. I want people interacting around our business and ideas,” Mr Corbat told the newspaper.

A Fortune magazine story this year said that the main advantage of an open-plan office is that they are cheaper, but rather than foster collaboration, the environment is likely to make people more “irritable and aggressive”. Another feature of open-plan offices is that they can “handle rapid changes in personnel numbers”, Fortune said.

Citi had 239,000 employees as of September this year, Bloomberg reported, compared with 374,000 before the financial crisis when it began trimming headcount consistently, in line with the overall banking industry.

Citi will take a charge of about US$300 million in the fourth quarter to help “resize our infrastructure and our capacity to deal with the continuing low-revenue environment”, it said this month when confirming the latest round of job cuts. For the year, restructuring charges will total $458m, the lowest annual amount since 2010, according to Bloomberg.

According to The National’s Workplace Doctor columnist Alex Davda, a business psychologist and client director at Ashridge Executive Education, Hult International Business School, and based in the Middle East, open-plan offices can create the space for collaboration, communication and creativity.

“It sends some good messages across the organisation and to those new joiners; hierarchies and traditions are of secondary importance to working together to make positive change,” he said.

Mr Davda said: “Wall-less workspace also allows senior people to naturally spot talent, observe real-time behaviour and organically get a feel for their organisation.

“On the flip side, it means people can no longer hide behind their office doors and in meeting rooms.”

However, many people both old and young still find comfort in personalising both desk and office space and experience a sense of satisfaction in the routine and structure that it allows for, according to Mr Davda.

“With this in mind, especially among more introverted employees, I would suggest Citi continue to communicate and collaborate effectively when managing this change, and think seriously about ways employees can still make the space their own, even if it is just for one day at a time,” he said.