Changes in the Workplace

I recently attended a seminar at Neocon regarding the many changes in the workplace.  This particular seminar was based on our government workplaces but it mirrors what is happening in the corporate world as well.  It all started with President Obama's infamous edict of 2010 to all government agencies that all of them will immediately dispose of unneeded real estate and reduce square footage in all departments.  The government found that, like the corporate world, people are not at their desks approximately 40% of the day.  This in combination with the younger workforce who does not need or want a fixed workplace, allows for shared work areas and mobile workers allowed to work from home a certain amount of days a week.  In addition, a shared conference room and meeting room arrangement among departments was worked out so that conference rooms could be eliminated to better utilize the ones that stayed.  One side benefit that was discovered was that when people were also allowed to work from home, a 16% jump in productivity was realized.  That was something no one expected.

One of the additional hopes by the presidential memo was to turn governmental offices into a more environmentally friendly scenario.  This was done by not only using more eco friendly materials, and other green building standards, but also realizing a great savings in overall CO2 reductions by so many employees working from home and not using their cars on the roads.  In addition, car pool programs were set up to further this goal.  As far as the furniture, since the overall height of the furniture was reduced, natural light was brought into the workplace, and a sound masking system was installed to take care of any additional noise created by the open environment.

If you would like any additional information on how to create this type of environment in your workplace and save your real estate dollars, please contact us at Environments That Work.