FMX forum - Workplace of the future forum (sponsored by RNM Systems)
FMX Magazine 27/10/2009
New ways of working require change in the design, layout and equipping of the workplace, but away from the beacons of innovative design and good practice, what is really happening in our offices? FMX asked a select group of office design, FM and property management specialists to share their thoughts on flexible working and its implications for the workplace of the future
THE PANEL
Chaired by Andrew Brown, editor, FMX
Paul Statham, MD, and Jonathan Cutting, workplace strategy, RNM Systems. RNM Systems is a specialist in workplace management and room and desk booking software (Condeco), working with large enterprises and SMEs
Simon Taylor, head of property, Yell. Yell is the well-known international directories business. The UK head office is about to relocate to new, more flexible premises
David Howorth, director of operations, MITIE. MITIE is a strategic outsourcing and asset management company, providing services ranging from consultancy and long-term infrastructure planning to facilities management and day-to-day services
Mark Bailey, CEO, Bene. Bene is a contract and office furniture specialist which has just launched PARCS, designed by PearsonLloyd – a range of products to help create multifunctional working environments
Tom Lloyd, director, PearsonLloyd. PearsonLloyd is a design studio whose work includes furniture, product and transport. It has just collaborated with Bene on the creation of PARCS
Break-out space, paperless office, hot-desking, hotelling – they are phrases and words we’re all familiar with and which signify major changes to the way we interact with our working environment. But to find out just how flexible and mobile our working practices have become, what direction they are going in and how that is going to affect our real estate exposure, we put a panel of leading industry figures, from a variety of backgrounds, together in a room for an hour and a half.
Perhaps as a measure of just how mobile some of us have become, by the end of the 90 minutes one panel member quipped that it was the longest he’d spent sitting in a chair, in one place, for quite some while.
Before that, the conversation had ranged widely from what actually constitutes flexible working to how it’s evolving and what is driving it – including technology (thin client, anyone?), social changes and the economy. Facilitating new working practices came under scrutiny, looking at the now quite aged principle of the break-out space and how you create more flexible and motivational offices – not to mention how you measure their efficacy.
In these straitened economic times buildings need to work a lot harder, but we still have a situation where a large percentage of desks sit empty every day – and many execs insist on having large offices. We need to ‘sweat the assets’. The discussion revealed that there’s a difference in attitudes between the private and public sectors – the large corporates are far more forward-thinking (and spend more), though lower down in the sector many SMEs still operate ‘in the dark ages’, according to one panel member.
And it appears that there’s also a desire for change in the public sector, now driven from on high by directives urging local authorities to divest themselves of some of their property – but there’s a knowledge lag and the red tape can be prohibitive.
FMX editor Andrew Brown opened by outlining his concept of flexibility and wondering if that was the general view, believing most people have their own definition. PearsonLloyd’s Tom Lloyd was
the first to weigh in: ‘Our work is very much about people and we are very interested in looking at how they interact, wherever they interact. The idea of flexibility suggests there’s inflexibility, but I don’t think you can call it one or the other any more. It’s a bit more blended than that.
‘That’s one of the things we have been challenging,’ he continued. ‘The office environment is rather held by its cultural heritage of desk, meeting room, chair, sofa and break-out space. In the future that is going to break down in a more mature way.’
RNM Systems’ Paul Statham agreed, adding, ‘It does depend on age and cultural experience. The youngsters today expect to be working from the flexible environment of a laptop with touchdown areas.’ While agreeing that social factors are part of change in the work environment, Yell’s Simon Taylor wasn’t so sure that staff, at least not the older ones, were the driver: ‘I suggest it doesn’t come from the workers. There’s still a comfort blanket thing about having a desk, and a status thing as well. People are well aware that we need flexible working, because they work in a flexible way. Then the other side of their brain says, “I still want my desk and don’t want anybody else sitting there, because that means I still have a job.”’
However, he went on to add that staff are fast to accept changes to their usual working patterns. ‘Once they are into a flexible way of working, they very quickly adapt, in the space of two to three weeks.’
MITIE’s David Howorth pointed out how important it is to manage people’s expectations during any move to new ways of working: ‘In my experience it does go wrong when it is forced through and staff are not taken through the journey of why, the benefit, and that it’s OK not to like it. They don’t know the rules: “Is it OK to sit in a public space at two in the afternoon or will my manager still expect to see me at my desk?” You’ve got to sell it to them.
‘In one particular newbuild we worked on we mocked up an area where they could actually go and sit and log on and that was part of their induction into the environment, so they could actually visualise it. You’ve got to take people on that journey so they don’t feel worried; so they embrace it and mix in the senior management!’
‘The senior management also has to buy into the ethos,’ agreed Taylor.
From discussing flexibility in staff and agreeing that major changes are occurring in the office environment, the conversation moved on to the specifics of what is happening and how. ‘I have seen some appalling environments which the designer thought were fantastic, but actually don’t work operationally and are counter-productive,’ said Howorth. ‘The best way is if you can involve people at the very beginning of it with the designers and get the buy-in there.’
He recalled companies he’d visited where they were measuring the efficacy of the different types of new space being provided, not just by usage, but by output (through questioning staff). They found that some areas ‘actually harmed the business’.
Bene’s Mark Bailey added: ‘I’ve seen break-out spaces in many multinationals that just don’t work. It’s extremely important to have a complete diverse range of product types and areas where people work, to keep them fully motivated.’
He added: ‘One thing we are forgetting is the motivation and how important that is. Yes, you’ve got to make it sweat, make it work for you, but as important as that is making sure the people who work inside it are as motivated as they can be by it.’
Tom Lloyd expanded on the theme: ‘The break-out is an idea that’s 20 years old now. It was a symbolic thing about empowering staff to step away from their workspace. But actually it’s just been a sofa for the last 20 years and it doesn’t support productivity.
It’s all been very much task chair or lounge chair, but actually there’s a whole set of things in between.
‘We’ve been breaking that down – it’s not just work or play. The people born after 1980 don’t have a separation between work and life, it’s completely enmeshed. We’re trying to make what was break-out much more mature in terms of how technology supports you, and issues like privacy, acoustics, lighting – actually being able to work away from your desk. Some of it is also down to how the furniture industry segments itself as well.’
Variety, it would seem, is key in the new office. Commented Yell’s Taylor: ‘We are 1,400 people, going from a call-centre person at one end of the spectrum to the chief exec at the other.
‘Through that spectrum there are lots of different ways of working. Some are expected to sit at a desk all day – with breaks – and perform a function, whereas for others it’s a meeting day, or it’s a day of collaboration. What you have to do is design the space to cover all of those eventualities. So you need all those different types of area – and for different types of people as well.’
He described how Costa Coffee was introduced to Yell, turning the little-used lunchroom overnight into the biggest meeting space in the building, freeing up other rooms in the process.
But more variety and less structure should not mean less control over how space is used. If you want to be able to have a meeting – in whatever the space – and you can’t, you become a disgruntled employee.
‘I go into many forward-thinking flexible environments which are failing because they are not allowing people to identify spaces they can use and book. It’s a towels on the sunbeds mentality,’ said RNM Systems’ Statham. He continued: ‘Up to 35 per cent of meetings that are booked are no-shows, and people block-book up to a year in advance. Put a simple screen outside a room that you walk up to and say, “I’m here”, and if you don’t, the meeting is bumped.
‘We’ve put this into various places, from banks to government bodies, and we’ve seen a 35 per cent increase in utilisation of those spaces. So now there’s enough space available for people to have the ability to walk up and book an instant meeting. Before, 95 per cent of space was booked in advance; now, we are finding 35 to 45 per cent of meetings are spontaneous – what the Americans are now referring to as “Drive-by meetings”.’
Technology is the heart of RNM Systems’ business and there’s no denying that it’s a major driving force, a freeing-up factor, in the modern office. Laptops are now the norm, ‘thin client’ systems mean all data and software are on a central server, and workers’ desktops can be delivered to wherever they happen to be that day. Employees can also now safely access corporate systems from home. This trend is clearly going to continue for some time. But that said, these changes are not happening everywhere. ‘The big corporates potentially have the cash to be more dynamic and have the more creative thinkers, but the SMEs are where the changes need to occur,’ said RNM Systems’ Jonathan Cutting.
He added, provocatively: ‘You can walk into any SME and it will be living in the dark ages from a technology perspective and an office furniture perspective – and it is potentially even worse in the public sector.’
But mitigating this in both the SME and public sectors are two other drivers for change towards a modern workplace: environmental and financial. Environmental considerations themselves have potentially beneficial financial opportunities, according to Cutting, as he railed against the carbon footprint of half-empty offices and the cost involved in heating and ventilating such premises. There’s a role for education, he insisted, particularly among SMEs, to show how modern working can actually save money.
The financial driver has become an imperative in the public sector following governmental pressure to divest real estate in an effort to generate revenue. ‘The public sector is now faced with no choice,’ said Cutting, ‘but it’s also an opportunity.’ Statham agreed: ‘Up until now, the public sector has had no financial driver, but now they have suddenly realised they can get smaller office space, spend more money on it and still get a return on investment by having less rent to pay.’
However, he added, to nods of agreement from others involved in the sector, that it was not an easy part of the market to deal with, particularly given current procurement procedures. Cutting summed it up: ‘There’s a lot of red tape, but now the desire is there.’
At the end of the session, Tom Lloyd brought the table back to its starting point: ‘Flexible working shouldn’t be seen as the cherry on the cake. It’s not just a bolt-on, it’s a completely different landscape and it needs to be seen like that,’ he said. ‘It’s not just the guys with the laptops who are the flexible workers, it’s everyone.’
He concluded by talking about his recent experience on the launch of PARCS with Bene: ‘We kept being asked, “What is the future?”, but actually people talking to each other hasn’t changed for a thousand years and never will. It’s all about facilitating that process, because that’s when you get knowledge transfer – and that builds productivity.’
Further information
www.bene.com
www.mitie.co.uk
www.pearsonlloyd.com
www.rnmsystems.co.uk
www.yell.com