WHAT do you see when you picture an office? A Dilbert-like sea of cubicles, a bulletin board plastered with outdated memos, a dreary lunchroom? Chances are, you can also picture the standard work space there, whether it is one of those cubicles, a desk out in the open or, for the lucky ones, an actual office.
That type of workplace is alien to a growing number of workers. In industries from technology to finance to sales, nonassigned work spaces — also known as nonterritorial work spaces, mobile platforms and hot desks — are gaining popularity.
In some divisions of
Bank of America, employees can reserve unassigned work spaces or meeting rooms in various bank locations. At Sabre Holdings, teams are assigned to neighborhoods of workspaces, and employees find places for themselves when they arrive. (The early birds can get seats near the windows.) Thousands of
Cisco Systems employees sit at unassigned desks in team rooms interspersed with communal break areas. And at some
I.B.M. divisions, only a small percentage of employees — mostly top executives and their assistants — have fixed desks or offices.
To a peripatetic journalist like me, the appeal of a mobile workspace is clear. Armed with my laptop and cellphone, I have conducted interviews from my car, from
Starbucks and even from an empty room in a doctor’s office.
Employers benefit from these setups, too, both by cutting real estate costs and by increasing their appeal to younger workers who tend to prefer jobs that let them work anywhere and any time.
But a traditional office has its advantages. Its workers can have neighbors, for example, and pictures on the wall. It can also provide a sense of community and a predictable structure.
Therein lies the challenge for managers seeking more fluid spaces: how to offer flexibility but keep employees feeling connected and engaged.
“The biggest issue is maintaining the culture of the organization,” said Joseph Brancato, a regional managing principal at Gensler, which was the designer of the interior of the new headquarters of The New York Times. “It comes down to, ‘Can you maximize people’s performance utilizing the least amount of real estate?’ If you cut it back too far, you’re going to impact performance. You’ve got to find that sweet spot.”
Several early experiments with non-assigned work spaces were short-lived. For example, Chiat/Day, the advertising firm that is now TBWA/Chiat/Day, designed an office in 1994 using what was called hoteling, in which employees were assigned a desk and computer when they arrived. The company expected people to work elsewhere much of the time, but they kept coming in, and the staff kept expanding, creating logjams and equipment shortages, a spokesman said. Eventually, it reverted to assigned work spaces, though with more communal break areas.
New technology has since made it far easier to work anywhere, and employers are looking at unassigned work spaces with renewed enthusiasm. Mr. Brancato says the number of inquiries he receives about flexible spaces has grown sharply in the last six months.
But nontraditional offices don’t work for everyone. A study of office workers in Britain by Lynne Millward Purvis, a senior lecturer at the University of Surrey, and several colleagues at the University of Exeter found that employees’ identification with their work team was higher if they had assigned tasks.
Nonassigned spaces function best when designed primarily to accommodate employees’ work styles, said Mark Golan, a vice president in Cisco’s Internet business solutions group. “The purpose of the work environment today — the reason you come in — is for collaboration,” he said. “An office of cubes works against that.”
But if a company cuts office space to save money, for example, then moves to nonassigned desks to squeeze everyone in, the feel of the change will be very different — and probably less popular.
Sabre Holdings created its nonassigned work spaces when it was simultaneously unloading two office buildings and trying to foster more teamwork, said Paul Rostron, executive vice president for human resources.
There was some apprehension among employees, he said. But they adapted, developing new protocols like talking more quietly and using phone headsets, and Sabre has saved about $10 million a year with the new design, a spokeswoman said. Sabre also created an online social network to help employees feel connected to the company.
At I.B.M., about 40 percent of employees are on mobile work schedules, according to a spokeswoman, and non-assigned spaces are a logical byproduct. In the health care and life sciences division, about 1,600 employees always work from home, 600 or so are usually in the office, and about 1,700 alight there from time to time. Those mobile workers share 120 desks and numerous glass-enclosed conference rooms.
Dan Pelino, the division’s general manager, said he and the managers in the unit regularly check with mobile employees to make sure they don’t feel isolated. “We have seen this feeling of being cut off,” he said. “It does come up when we have town meetings and the like. But no one is interested in going back to the old way of coming in every day, and bricks and mortar, and who gets the best parking spot.”
