by By Sandy Burud, Ph.D. — The workplace is undergoing a radical transformation. In fact, some workplaces are not places at all. The central location where everyone converges and works from nine-to-five has been replaced by mobile, virtual work enabled by iPhones, BlackBerries and laptops. Anywhere, anytime work is the new ‘normal’ (The Economist, April 2008). The trend has enormous implications for facility managers-some good, others requiring careful attention.
This shift is not simply about more people working from home, (presently 45 million Americans) although that is one shape it takes. Now that employees can check e-mail, hold conference calls, carry software and files on a flash drive, plug-in and work from anywhere, multiple jobs can be done from anywhere. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says 40 percent of jobs can be done virtually, although only 5 percent currently are. That’s a huge opportunity for a business to reap facility savings. But it’s also a challenge, because planning for it and doing it well can be tricky.
 |
The forces behind this powerful trend are fourfold:
Technological — Why drive an hour each way to talk on the phone or sit in front of a computer? Customer service representatives can just as easily talk from a home office. The Internet phone service Skype allows people to talk for virtually no cost from across the world. Video conferencing software brings the faces of the whole virtual team into home offices with documents to collaboratively work on in real time.
Ecological — In 2007 the 2.9 million telecommuters reduced gas consumption by 840 million gallons and curbed CO2 emissions by 14 million tons (the equivalent of taking 2 million vehicles off the road).
Sociological — Most men and women need to navigate personal responsibilities while they are working. Fewer people (except some executives) currently have a full-time spouse at home. Millennials just entering the workforce simply expect to work differently.
Logical — People prefer to work for a business that doesn’t waste their time and energy. With 76 percent of large employers offering flexible work, the businesses that don’t plan for it and encourage it face losing their best and brightest.
Most large companies have had flexible work policies for a decade, but in truth most employees were afraid to actually use them. But now, with greater awareness of the savings possible when a company makes flexible work legitimate, it is often the corporate real estate group initiating a real change in corporate practice. Facility managers recognize the power of using flexible work to reduce operating costs and gain other benefits. They are the catalyst that moves flexibility up the organization’s agenda and encourages companies to create work environments that will result in employees actually changing the way they work. Efforts like those by the Future of Work Initiative, are led by facility managers at companies like HP, Agilent and Accenture which encourage large numbers of employees to be mobile workers and redesign space to be more versatile to suit them.
View flexibility as a business benefit
The advantages for businesses are obvious-not only in real estate cost savings and a reduced carbon footprint, but also increases in performance.
Space cost reductions
At IBM, 40 percent of its global workforce does not keep a dedicated office. IBM, which started its mobile workforce program in the mid-1990s, saves an estimated US$100 million a year in facility costs alone.
 |
Sun Microsystems reduced its excess facilities capacity after realizing that at any given time 40 percent of employees were not at their desks. By redesigning office space, Sun increased its agility and customer satisfaction while avoiding US$69 million in 2005 plus information technology savings of US$24 million annually.
Ernst & Young used a policy of encouraging virtual work to eliminate 1 million of its total 7 million square feet in rent nationwide-offering a dedicated desk only to employees who were in the office more than half a day.
Operational sustainability
Emergency preparedness is requiring increased resources. Training and equipping teams to function in a virtual environment accomplishes this goal naturally. A 2006 analysis found that 87 percent of teleworkers could continue their work if their office was closed due to a storm or some other catastrophe, compared to 62 percent of non-teleworkers. (CDW Government, Inc.)
Environmental sustainability
A mid-sized company with 14,000 employees would gain 16,700 pounds. of carbon offset credits for every 5 percent of full-time equivalent employees who do not travel to work.
Performance
Companies with a reputation as a great place to work have a 1.8 percent higher market value, according to Watson Wyatt research. Flexibility, which gives employees greater choice about when and where they work, is essential to being seen as a great place to work.
By telecommuting, employees can save gas, clothes and car expenses, have more time for other activities and acquire reduced stress. People who work from home or on compressed schedules are healthier, exercise more and sleep better.
There is also a downside. Distanced workers can become isolated, disconnected and new conflicts can arise. Their home space can lose its time and space boundaries that make home a refuge (Refer to the book What’s Happening to Home? by Maggie Jackson) and a place to disconnect from work. Ask any loved one who tries to talk to a teleworker in his/her work mode. The fact that you can wake up in the middle of the night and sit down at a laptop to finish a report may not be entirely positive. Supports can help reorient people to this new way of working, which is why online discussion forums (such as those at www.flexpaths.com) that enable flexible workers and their managers to share tips are expected to gain steam.
In addition to telework, many other forms of flexible work can reduce real estate costs and space requirements if planned well.
Compressed work schedules (four to 10 hour shifts, 9/80’s-80 hours of work in nine days as opposed to the usual 80 in 10-a slighter longer schedule for nine days and every tenth day off)
Job sharing (where two people share one job and one space)
Flexible schedules (work schedules are spread out, by choice)
Informal flexibility-as needed changes of schedules or work location. The point is to become less regimented, so space designs cannot dictate alternate working schedules-following the fluidity of how people must work in a more complex world.
Critical success factors to make it work Even though the facility group may be the catalyst, successful flexible work requires a combination of players-facilities, human resources and leaders, working together cross-functionally to:
Provide the critical technology and communications equipment, technology support and training so that dispersed workers can function at a distance and teams can communicate without constant presence or intervention of a manager.
Reconfigure space by consolidating empty space, creating more flexible shared space, and space that works for stable, mobile and super-mobile employees. Functional requirements are different; Grantham and Ware, who outline the hallmarks of a well-designed agile spaces include these (among others):
Flexibility: Modular furniture strategies, workstations that allow users to adjust and reconfigure them, fluid layouts based on function, touchdown spaces for part-time telecommuters or virtual workers who may stop by for short periods
Technological connectivity: Plug and play, data sharing, network access, virtual meeting and wireless capabilities
Coach managers on how to successfully manage flexible teams. Done well, shifting to a flexible way of working where everyone is not instantly accessible can force teams to plan in advance, set clearer expectations and communicate more deliberately. But managers need retraining, incentives and models to change their methods.
 |
Coach employees and teams on how to work flexibly (i.e., how to communicate at a distance, stay connected with supervisors and each other, and plan for accessibility but still be able to disconnect).
Maximize online capabilities to complement real-time and in-person connections (high-tech plus high-touch) to streamline and create efficiencies but retain the critical human relationships. Online forums or affinity groups can complement live contact.
Establish objective ways to evaluate how well employees and teams are performing. This reduces concerns about ‘how will I know they are working’ often expressed about virtual work, making it irrelevant whether someone working from home does a load of laundry during work hours.
Shift the focus of decision making from line supervisors and managers to employees and teams. Charge the teams with figuring out how to reconfigure the work, what work is unproductive and how to streamline it, and what systems, equipment, support and/or space they require work most efficiently and in a manner that is fair across the team. Employees should know how to do their job well-if not they’re in the wrong job.
Evolve assumptions about space and time
What’s most important is to use flexibility as an opportunity to move away from a mechanistic way of managing people and conceiving of space. At its heart, flexible work reflects the shift from the standardized, synchronized, centralized way of managing production (things done at the same time, in the same way, in the same place)-whose goal was to generate the exact same output each time. A machine-driven mentality suited to the industrial era. Think cubicles.
But now, corporate survival depends on innovation, new products and new ways of doing things. This philosophy of space means that work environments and work cultures must be organic to stimulate the customized and unpredictable. In organic environments, uniqueness and self-regulation-rather than control and sameness-are the goal. Environments should be open, fluid, creative and unpredictable. The cubicle is replaced by the couch, the cafe, the bench, as well as the desk or table, depending on what the activity of the moment calls for. To be successful:
Be open. Experiment. It will drive creativity and engagement.
Think user-generated. The top-down mindset has been replaced by open-source and wiki’s-where the masses contribute as much as those higher up the food chain.
Broaden the conversation. Bring employees and managers into the discussion. The role of a manager should change and problem solving is pushed down. The team can help figure out how to configure flexible space and can decide how to convey essential information across dispersed teams. The team also figures out how to sustain the critical knowledge sharing that happens best person-to-person.
Examine old assumptions about space and time. Consider what types of space work best for what types of work (i.e., creative work or problem solving may be done best away from the office). Do managers have to be present every minute employees are? Can you work sitting on a veranda?
With the growth of flexible workplaces, facility managers have an opportunity to expand their professional contribution beyond managing facility spaces. They can play a critical role in advising companies not just where the work gets done but how it gets done. As a result, facility managers will in turn work for a company that’s more productive, environmentally responsible and successful.
About the author
Sandy Burud, Ph.D., is chief strategy officer for FlexPaths (www.flexpaths.com), a provider of workplace flexibility solutions, and co-author of Leveraging the New Human Capital: Adaptive Strategies, Results Achieved and Stories of Transformation (Burud & Tumolo, Davies-Black Publishing, 2004). Burud has 30 years of experience as a consultant, researcher and writer on workforce trends. She can be reached at sandy.burud@flexpaths.com.