By Paul CarderEdition 6 – October 2015 Pages 26-29
Tags: office design • productivity
My trade is to ask questions, and to make sense of the pieces of the jigsaw. That has been a particular challenge with regard to the commonly asked question, ‘what are offices, today?’ What seems clear is that the various ‘actors’ in the office economy are looking at offices through very different lenses. In fact, it appears that we could have three perspectives on offices, as follows: .
(a) Offices as a ‘product’: floor area, for a price (rent)
(b) Offices as a ‘service’: space and service, for a simple fee (daily, monthly, etc.)
(c) Offices as ‘experience’ : more than the sum of (a) + (b); attraction; added value;
Rob Harris’ book,a decade ago, helped to simultaneously consolidate my thinking and to spark new questions. But today, urban planning and development professionals still view offices as a distinct category of real estate “use”.
And most real estate professionals also view offices as this “product”, i.e., the delivery of floor area, in a specific category. Some things have changed – for a couple of decades now, the ‘hybrid’ economy of serviced offices and agile spaces such as co-working hubs have turned the office product into a “service”. But, in many cases they have simply made the leasing of floor area much simpler, and more flexible in terms of time commitment and pricing. As Neil Usher says in his workessence blog (http://workessence.com/):
“…while co-working is on the one hand declared to be disrupting the institutional stuffed shirt that is the commercial rented sector, the sprouting centres come to increasingly resemble the corporate world at which their earlier incarnations cocked a snook”.
That may indeed be true for many serviced offices, and a few co-working hubs. But, what is happening now, in pockets of activity, appears to be that the “experience economy”3 is starting to pull offices through into a contemporary “place experience” sub-economy.
How many followers does your office have?
Companies like WeWork4 are creating a following, a community, of which inspiring places is just one (important) element.The corporate world is fighting back, and (again, in pockets) trying to emulate this “place experience” sub-economy. We all know the well-publicised examples, such as Google.
Behind all of this, of course, is the fact that increasingly we (us fortunate knowledge workers) often do not ‘have’ to be anywhere in particular. Sometimes we need to be with specific groups of people (meetings, workshops, events). Mostly,we can choose who to be with, and where to hang out. Though, not everyone can do this, and not all of the time, as Neil User also points out:
“…the more technology we deploy and the more reliant upon it and more in its service our careers become, the more we need closer human interaction, and the enablers of this. The more we push the boundaries, the less that work is an individual pursuit.”
But, that human interaction does not need to be in the corporate office. There are economic push-pull factors at work, which simply did not exist when the concept of the office originated, as a real estate ‘product’. Many office users are now consumers, with real choice. Larger employers are trying to attract people back to the office, in the knowledge that they can work somewhere ‘cooler’, or just more convenient.
What is this dynamic? What do we call it? – the“social office” perhaps? Does your office have “followers”? Will places have followers? Will Google hangouts not just be online? (scary thought, or exciting, depending on your viewpoint – could we see Google “hangouts” in every urban centre?)
Form and function have changed
Many commentators have predicted the ‘death of the office’. It is no closer to becoming true than the ‘paperless office’ was when Business Week5 predicted it in 1975. Mark Twain once said, “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated”. The same might be said of the office. Offices are certainly changing. Or, in many cases, ‘have changed’, almost to be unrecognisable to my parents and others who have not stepped into a contemporary office for a couple of decades.
Contemporary office space often looks very different to the way it did even a decade ago. And the activities and functions conducted by people in office space have changed – not entirely, but in relative proportions. Office work is less desk-bound, and more collaborative.
Any Facilities Manager can prove this with utilization data, using sensor technology6 or a simple walk-about. Commonly, the general workstation-filled open-plan space is approximately 40 percent occupied, on average. But, meeting rooms are often fully utilized, and if you hang around long enough you will hear someone say, “There are no meeting rooms available. Let’s go across the road to [xyz]”. Xyz is usually a café, restaurant, or place where a group of people can get free meeting space in return for buying coffee (a kind-of reverse business model, in many cases!)….