New York City was utterly transformed by a number of
the projects begun or completed under former three-term mayor Michael Bloomberg (pictured): the High Line, a rebuilt World Trade Center and its surrounding
Lower Manhattan neighborhood, Hudson Yards, East River Park in Manhattan and
Brooklyn Bridge Park in Brooklyn, Long Island City in Queens, 400 miles of bike
lanes throughout the five boroughs.
No mayor has left such an imprint on the look of America's largest city since Fiorello LaGuardia (with the help of Franklin Roosevelt’s New
Deal) in the Great Depression.
Bloomberg supporters fervently wished he might have similarly
altered the landscape of The Wall Street Journal if he had successfully
achieved his rumored interest in purchasing Dow Jones. (The
Washington Post had also reportedly caught his eye.) That hope was dashed (at least for now) when a Bloomberg spokesman quickly tweeted that he had no such interest.
If Bloomberg could only get his mitts on Rupert Murdoch’s most
influential business print publication, the thinking in some quarters surely went, maybe he could return the Journal to something like the separation of news and opinion
that largely held sway before the Australian media baron bought the company
from the Bancroft family in 2007.
I won’t comment on the political change that
might occur under such a scenario. What
I’m concerned with here is a physical environment far different from what he left Gotham: the office space that
would become part of his media empire. My apprehension arises because few other American corporate titans have trumpeted open-space offices as tirelessly as Bloomberg.
I don’t know if the Murdoch family follows this office model. Maybe they consider it an outgrowth of Bloomberg’s
hated RINO outlook.
Judging by the impact Hiz(former)zoner has had on
American office design in general, I’m afraid he’ll exert a baleful influence
on the health and creativity of any Dow Jones workers that could come into his
fold.
I don’t always agree with David Brooks’ views on
politics, but his analysis of the controversial and crazy American corporate
embrace of Bloomberg’s “open office” is spot on. I just wish the Times
columnist would have mentioned Bloomberg by name in the article, so that the
debate on this could get the thorough airing it deserves.
In his otherwise excellent piece, Brooks notes the dangers that open-space offices pose to employee health, but dwells on one aspect (stress) without mentioning the one that’s become ubiquitous since late-winter 2000: airborne illnesses like COVID-19.
Even urging workers to stay
home if they feel something coming on is not likely to be helpful if they have
insufficient sick days. (And COVID—not to mention a COVID rebound—can exhaust
that supply quickly.)
Brooks rails against cubicles, but I’m afraid those
units have long since become staples of the modern workplace. At least they
could, at their best, provide a modicum of physical separation from adjacent workers.
But I am aware of at least one employer, just before
the COVID outbreak, which implemented a renovation that did away even with
that. Instead, workers were herded together in triangles, with no partitions
between.
Did I mention that this design model became obsolete within
just a few months after the COVID outbreak?
How much do you think that America’s C-suites have
invested in up-to-date ventilation systems? Your guess is as good as mine. As Liz
Szabo’s article nine months ago from Kaiser Health News noted, the
American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers
published updated recommendations in 2020 not only for limiting indoor odors
and dust but control viruses like COVID-19.
But, because those guidelines are voluntary, there’s
no way of telling how closely the business world is adhering to them—anymore than
we know right now they are following up on the White House’s initiative (again,
voluntary) encouraging schools and workplaces to improve ventilation.
Companies’ best-laid plans for a return to the office—and,
let’s be frank, a return to traditional top-down control—keep getting upended
by a disease that evolves and adapts to new environments far faster
than corporate heads ever have done.
The move towards a more open environment often rests
on the contention that it fosters creativity and managerial transparency. That
would send great—if corporate heads were willing to accept ideas other than their
own, let alone dissent.
But, before Elon Musk started going seriously off the
rails with managing his new toy, Twitter (like firing janitors, thus
forcing workers at two locations to bring their own toilet paper to the
office!), more than a few other CEOs were not only rooting for his
return-to-the-office mandates but implementing their own.
Employers are anxious to herd their workers back to
the office. If various Amenities of the Month can’t lure them back, then diktats
from Human Resources will have to do.
Unfortunately, the types of layouts in Bloomberg L.P. that
have been copied elsewhere don’t inspire workers to rush back to their
cubicles—and, if those employees find any kind of alternative arrangement out
there in the market, they will seize it.
I suppose that if there’s any good outcome from the
turbulence that has roiled American politics over the last several years, it’s
that Mike Bloomberg never won a Presidential election so he could implement his 2019 plan to make the East Room of the White House into another showcase for theopen office model he followed in his own company.
(The image accompanying this post of Bloomberg, speaking
with supporters at a campaign rally at Warehouse 215 at Bentley Projects in
Phoenix, Ariz., was taken by Gage Skidmore on Feb. 1, 2020.)
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