A humanistic approach to space - office designs - includes related articles - Cover Story

HR Magazine, March, 1998 by Dominic Bencivenga

New office designs can boost employee communication and productivity while cutting overhead. But organizations can't truly take advantage of those cutting-edge designs unless HR gets involved.

The next, greatest idea for Hewlett-Packard Co.'s multifunction printer/fax/copy machines and high performance ink jet printers may be born on a new sort of boulevard for dreamers.

Nestled in a 1.1-million-square-foot research and development facility about 25 miles north of San Diego-amid 3,000 office cubicles-sit 14 environmental engineers and site services employees. They spend their days in an open area filled with portable furniture. Their work space is a free-form experiment where teamwork is emphasized and personal space is kept to a minimum.

Cutting through the area is a boulevard, where groups of computer and engineering employees from other divisions can congregate on their way to the coffee machine to informally discuss ideas and approaches to new projects.

"It's kind of a research and development program for office environments," says Robert C. Jakubowski, a Hewlett-Packard Co. workplace strategist. "We are creating more open space for teams where people can interact impromptu."

This pilot project, one of seven ongoing at the site, began in June 1997. It is one of many office design experiments companies are conducting to trim real estate costs and improve communication, performance and productivity.

In some cases, companies are abandoning the one-size-fits-all concept of using either cubicles or offices. Instead, they are adopting a hybrid approach in which open spaces-complete with video and projection screens - are available for team projects and group discussions, and private spaces are used for work that requires deep concentration. Employees who need solitude may have their own offices. Those who do not may-for short periods-use small portable booths, such as the "personal harbors" developed by Steelcase Inc.

While these new approaches to office space may produce different space configurations, they share a critical element: They work best when HR is involved in the process. When most organizations are designing office spaces, they need to consider their employees-their human resources-and the way those individuals do their jobs. And that means HR professionals are, or should be, included in the office redesign teams from the outset as a matter of successful business strategy.

"The HR professional is the key to the success of projects like this," says Jakubowski. "It's two sides of the same coin."

OVERCOMING PAST DESIGN MISTAKES

When companies introduced the cubicle concept in the late 1970s, they failed to tie design to employee productivity. Employers "didn't change the work environment" when they added cubicles, says Gary E. Wheeler, former president of tile American Society of Interior Designers and the national director for interiors at Perkins & Will, an architecture, engineering and interiors firm based in Chicago. "About five or six years ago, companies said, 'This isn't solving a problem, it's actually creating more problems.'"

Cubicles-which were intended to improve communication-often had the opposite effect because employees became concerned about privacy.

"If people can't control the communication, they actually communicate less," says Bill Sims, a Cornell University professor of facility management and planning. Sims is also the author of Team Space: Creating and Managing Environment To Support Highly Productive Teamwork, to be published by the International Development Research Council in Atlanta this month.

To solve the problems caused by cubicles, organizations need to transform their physical offices to ones that encourage cooperative work. Companies need to adopt a "caves and common areas" approach. This provides employees small, quiet places to work, as well as their own team areas for spontaneous collaboration, Sims says.

For example, offices might include more open space and dedicated project rooms. By setting aside rooms for the duration of a project, rather than scheduling them hourly, employers allow workers to keep brainstorming and development ideas posted as long as they wish, which should help them remain focused on a specific mission.

The key is to integrate the physical environment with technology, management practices and work practices. This allows employees to move where they are needed and "to work where they are the most productive and will be supported," Sims says.

Evaluation of work space begins with the job, experts say. Some jobs dictate that an employee always have an office. In other jobs, employees frequently interact with coworkers and should probably work in open spaces. For example, software programmers or copywriters may need totally private space, but HR executives might spend most of their time in an open area and need access to private rooms only for interviewing. Customer service departments may work better in totally open areas, where it will be easier for employees to help one another answer customer queries.