Is working in a cafe in Singapore more productive than in the office?

Your office is now less and less likely to be your place of work even if you have one.  More and more people are adopting café culture to have meetings even if they have meeting rooms in their office. There are many reasons.

Socially it’s more interesting, the coffee/tea tends to be better, it feels like you’re getting away from the office and fundamentally studies have shown that people are more productive in a coffee shop than they are in their office.

Some employers have tried to replicate this with break out areas for breakfast/snacking, wisely steering away from lunch as that is such a social occasion in Singapore.

I know of several employers who have also placed a Starbucks inside their offices in order to stop people from visiting neighbouring ones but get the benefit of the increased productivity. The end result is the same, more productive and happier employees.

More people are using the benefits of technology to no longer have an office. Serviced offices will always have their role for people who want an address or need a place for people to meet/hot desk but more and start-ups and small businesses are finding that café’s become their meeting place.

They have the benefit of being flexible, they are everywhere and studies show that working from a café actually makes people more productive.

There is also new software which allows meetings to happen on line rather than in person. This effectively means that meetings can be called anytime and you don’t need to be in your office to have one. This again reduces the need for a physical office and increases productivity.

Many companies from Google to Mixpanel actually allocate a % of their time to creative time not processing/admin time to increase both productivity but also employee satisfaction.

Loose culture is the new culture. At Gore-Tex for example there are no managers/titles/org charts. Some employers now run two interviews, one professional and one personal to ensure the right personality type.

When people feel more in control of what they are doing they tend to be more responsible for the outcome and more productive as a result.

The famous All Blacks rugby union team who have just completed a perfect year of 14 wins out of 14 have a philosophy of “no idiots”. In Maori (New Zealand’s native language), whanau means 'extended family'. It's symbolised by the spearhead.

Though a spearhead has three tips, to be effective all of its force must move in one direction. Hence the All Blacks mantra 'No Idiots'. The All Blacks select on character as well as talent, which means some of New Zealand's most promising players never pull on the black jersey – considered “idiots”, their inclusion would be detrimental to the whanau.

There are many theories as to who people work better at crowded, noisy coffee shops v’s quiet, spacious offices. One is that the coffee shop provides just enough distraction, more than a still/quiet office but less than a rock concert.

Work often seems more like fun in a coffee shop, feels like it’s on your terms not your company’s. An MIT Study on wi-fi workers found that when we are alone in a public place we have a fear of “having no purpose”.

If we are in a public place and it looks like we have no business there however in coffee shops it is ok to be there to have a drink but loitering is not encouraged by the owners so patrons deploy different methods to be busy. Visible activity takes this pressure away which increases someone’s productivity.

Another study done by the Journal of Consumer Research included several experiments and involved more than 300 people. It showed that those that had ambient noise in the background (around 70 decibels, such as a busy café) scored higher in objective word-association tests and their answers were rated more creative by other participants.

The study also showed that small doses of distraction also prompted the mind to work on a more abstract level and therefore become more creative.

The other reason why coffee shops make employees more productive is simply the caffeine. Researchers studying night shift workers for example found that those who drank something caffeinated every few hours made fewer errors than colleagues who didn’t.

The other interesting thing about caffeine is that it has been found to ease the pain in your neck, shoulder, back, forearm and wrist from working at a desk.

Another study also found that people who take regular coffee breaks with other people are more productive than those who work in isolation. Something to be said next time your colleagues go for their break.