[DJC]
[Commercial Marketplace]

Privacy And Productivity: Do They Go Hand In Hand?

BY DON MacLAREN
Business Space Resources

Take a look at these two recent space plans. In Plan A, everyone has a 130-square-foot, private office. In Plan B, with the exception of the managers, who have hardwalled corner offices, everyone is in either 64 or 80 square foot work stations. Which plan would you choose for your organization and why?

Floor Plan AFloor Plan B

Does a hardwalled office really make a person more productive? Or, if properly configured, can work stations be even better because they can be more flexible in meeting not only the individual's work style, but also changes in the work process/system.

Microsoft has always been an advocate of the 10 by 10-foot standard hardwalled office and has designed buildings to accommodate them. Irreverently called "dormitories" or "rabbit warrens," they use a loop-shaped corridor so that there are exterior and interior offices all around the building. In other words there are back-to-back interior offices facing the exterior offices. Everybody has the same office environment and only the pictures and files need to be moved to a new location. Everybody has complete acoustical and visual privacy but the company can easily move people to staff a particular project team.

On the other hand, there are many companies like Frank Russell, Weyerhaeuser and Data I/O that feel just as strongly that most everybody should be in work stations that can be readily reconfigured to meet changing needs.

These companies believe that properly designed work stations can provide not only visual and acoustical privacy, but also flexibility to group the work stations into whatever configuration is needed.

What are some of the forces driving the choice of Plan A or Plan B?

Michael Brill of the Buffalo Organization for Social and Technological Innovation (BOSTI) has identified four major trends that are changing how we do our jobs. They are changes in: organizational structure, workforce, technology and the work place itself. He believes that these changes are permanent and will continue to evolve in today's very competitive world economy.

Changes in organizational structure, or how a company carries out its work process, is usually referred to as "re-engineering". He calls it "deconstruction". By taking an organization apart, it can become more customer-focused, more team-based, more entrepreneurial and quick to respond to the needs of the market place.

The old corporate pyramid is disappearing and being replaced with a team structure with no middle managers.

The workforce, itself, is changing. As the largest continuing expense that a organization has "down-sizing" goes right to the bottom line. Individual jobs are requiring increased creativity and professionalism as each task becomes more completed in itself (as opposed to pieces of a larger task) and, therefore, complex.

While this makes one's job more interesting and challenging, it leads to an increasingly stressed work force working 60 to 90 hours per week to get a job done on schedule. It also leads to the increasing use of contract employees for limited specific tasks rather than permanent members of the organization.

There is no question that technology is having a major impact as it becomes more portable, integrated and user friendly. Just think about your laptop computer with its modem. One has more computing and communication power in hand than a 35-year-old main frame that required 30,000 square feet of air condition space and three engineers to keep it running!

It is no wonder that the workplace is being reconceptualized, as a tool in the work process, and designed to be used as a tool, not just a place to sit. Organizations are beginning to realize that infrequently used space is an unproductive asset on the balance sheet.

Brill sees four clear patterns of space time use of the office: mostly-in (like programmers and support staff), mostly-out (like customer service engineers or salespersons), long-out (in and out for long periods on a predictable basis, like auditors and internal consultants), and in-and-out often (randomly in and out for a few days or a week at a time, like the marketing staff).

This realization is beginning to lead to three previously unthinkable solutions that Brill calls: The Now Office where people get an office whenever they need one, a sort of "just-in-time workspace" frequently called "hoteling"; The No Office where one uses portable technology so they can work anywhere, at home, in the car, in the plane, etc. and The New Office.

The New Office is a set of work spaces where people can flow back and forth from solo to team work, where team work is emphasized and readily provided, where business units can be temporarily housed to support cross-function integration, and where people can easily experiment with new ways of getting the job done.

Numerous past studies, starting in the early '80s, have demonstrated that physical environment and work procedures both have notable effects on individual and group performance, satisfaction, and communication.

For example, use of systems furniture, in controlled experiments, not only produced space savings benefits, but also increased productivity to an even greater extent. Just the use of an ergonomic chair was found to increase productivity by 5 percent or more.

BOSTI's own research looked at the work place as a collection of "facets," or elements, like the physical enclosure, aesthetics, privacy, status, communication and lighting. These were equated to such "bottom-line measures as: Job performance, job satisfaction, ease and quality of communications, and satisfaction with the environment.

Just the first two of these elements were found to have measurable economic benefits of as much as 5 percent of annual salary that far outweighs the cost to do it right!

Studies would seem to point to open office/work stations as the "best" solution. But is it? Whatever has been the status quo seems to be "what's best."

Let me illustrate with two examples from my years at Exxon. First, when Exxon Enterprises consolidated its offices on two floors, corporate real estate tried to convince management to try open office work stations before building out the space along traditional lines. They even built a 1000 square foot mockup using the then best Herman Miller work stations and let the troops try them out.

A vote was taken when the company president and a couple of VPs were away, and it favored the "new" layout 51 to 49 percent. But wait, since management was not fully represented, another vote was taken. And guess what? Traditional offices were now favored 51 to 49 percent! So that's what we got!

The experience at Zilog, then an Exxon affiliate, provides another case in point. In their original location in Cupertino, CA, all the engineers had hardwalled private offices. When they were to move to a brand new building in nearby Campbell, to expedite the move, management decided to go to work stations for these engineers. There was a tremendous outcry citing all the usual reasons why this was a bad idea.

The facilities manager astutely suggested that they try the work stations for just six months and, if they still felt strongly about hardwalled offices he would build them out. He never had to!

Don McLaren is a principal in Business Space Resources of Seattle.

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