Whether they are bedazzled beauties or simple iPhone-standard white earbuds, your headphones may be hurting you – and I don’t just mean your eardrums. In the April 2012 edition of the Harvard Business Review, Anne Kreamer explores the impact of the headphone culture in the office.
Her findings: headphones contribute to the phenomenon of being “all alone among a group of nominal comrades.”
I fit her study: under 35, sit in an open-plan work environment. But I don’t wear my headphones 50% of the time or more. For a couple of reasons – partially because I lost my iPod. But, I really didn’t use it much, because I felt like I was missing out on the interesting “stuff” going on in the office – sometimes office gossip; sometimes project related stuff.
I find that if I don’t plug in, I learn a lot more and connect much better to my colleagues. Sometimes it benefits me. Othertimes, it benefits them. Either way, it benefits the company.
Others find that headphones can be isolating, if productivity-inducing: just ask the girls who completely missed the Space Shuttle Discovery fly over because they were engrossed in their music and didn’t see or hear literally everyone else in the office get up and go outside.
I think Kreamer is right: while headphones definitely help with focusing (I like to use them when I’m really trying to crank out a spreadsheet), they can damage informal collaboration and relationship building [...]

Do you have a great collection of “stuff” at your desk or in your office? Well, it might be time to pack it upo and take it home……

For years designers and facility staff have been trying to figure out the perfect workplace configuration to stimulate creativity.  Sitting quietly in individual offices? Collaborating in open plan offices? Coffee bars? Innovation spaces with beanbag chairs?
After reading an article in Time Magazine this week: Why Morning Routines are Creativity Killers, I think I have figured out the five key elements of a perfect office for creative types:
1. Fancy coffee for all. 

2. Spa (including all services)

3. Showers galore (in keeping with the spa idea)
 
4. Video walls playing nonstop loops of cute, happy laughing babies. 

5. Puppies

And there you have it: the five key components of a creative office space.  Genius!  I’m ready for the first pilot – who’s signing up?!

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Just a quick video to make you smile today: Steve Hargis inspires corporate real estate folks as part CoreNet’s Corporate Real Estate 2020 initiative:

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The cube is dead!  Long live the cube! 

Just read an interesting article in Interiors & Sources: The Cubicle, Deconstructed, quoting one of HOK’s own, Pam Light, Director of Interiors in Los Angeles.  The article quickly moves through the history of the open plan office, highlighting some of the successes (better space efficiency!) and failures (can’t find anyone in a maze of high-paneled cubicles!), and then addresses some of the major concerns users typically have:

Visual privacy
Noise or acoustical privacy
Hierarchy
Flexibility

Designers and furniture manufacturers are amply aware of these concerns and have been addressing them through thoughtful space planning and design and manufacture of products that offset the issues.  Check out the article for some tips and product ideas.

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Ok, not exactly sex, but it caught your attention, right?!  Ran across a great article on CNN.com: How Hollywood Lies about the Workplace?  I agree with all their points!
1. All the beautiful people.  Obviously I am beautiful all the time (HA!), but all of my colleagues and clients…gasp…are not. P.S. who wants to wear 4″ stilettos that cost $600 to work anyway?!
2. Executives work? Neh.  Pretty sure every executive I’ve ever met has a pretty darned grueling schedule.  And those that don’t, well, they tend not to last
3. Your outfit? Anything goes. We to this day discuss an intern who worked at our company 2005 and dressed quite fashionably but quite inappropriately for the office. And trust me, if you’re not dressed professionally, HR will be sending you home or walking you to the store to help you pick something more appropriate for the office. Not sweats and flip flops.
4. Work is so easy. HA!  Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Also, as an architecture firm employee, I firmly believe that the field of architecture has been excessively glamorized (HIMYM, It’s a Wonderful Life, the Brady Bunch).
5. Money is no object. See note above regarding $600 shoes. And note above about architects in Hollywood - not so many make enough to afford the crazy lifestyles and fab apartments
6. Your boss is a horrible person and/or idiot.  Well, I’m certainly not going to say that on a public blog!  And, by the way, my boss is great.  No lie there.
Read the [...]

Please welcome a guest post from Susan Grossinger, Senior Vice President, Director of Product Design at HOK.

Please take a few minutes to watch this Gather video and listen to the design team — including HOK’s Steve Hargis, Tom Polucci, Louis Schump and Annie Bergeron — speak about the inspiration and research around the ideas.HOK Product Design’s team members came from all over North America and we joined with our industrial design Partner – id-a Design based in Zeeland, Michigan, to create an award winning collection of collaborative furniture that is a new market niche for Allsteel.
The 11-piece collection created the most buzz at Neocon 2011 and stood out in the crowd because of the focus on helping companies effectively collaborate by providing new products that until this time didn’t exist.
Fast Company Design wrote: “With its latest collection of contract furniture, Allsteel wants to be among the first to cater to this new office paradigm, offering pieces expressly designed for idea sharing.”
The Gather collection, which officially launched in December, has already won six industry awards including Interiors & Sources Readers’ Choice, Buildings Magazine’s Product Innovation Award and four Best of Neocon awards including People’s Choice, Editor’s Choice and Silver awards in the Education and Sofas and Lounge categories.

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I sit in an open plan office (there are only five enclosed offices in our entire building – for the president of the company, director of marketing, director of ops, comptroller, and HR – that’s roughly 3% of the work spaces). From my desk, I have a lovely view of lots of other people, as well as out a big glass window overlooking the C&O canal.  You can’t see the canal from my seat – you have to actually walk over to the window…but, you do see plenty of birds smash into the window.
Our own Leigh Stringer contributed to an article in the Wall Street Journal: Indecent Exposure: The Downsides of Working in a Glass Office.  The article shares the many benefits of highly open offices (including those with glass-walled conference rooms and glass-walled offices), as well as some of the downsides.  Known by some as the fishbowl factor, Leigh takes it another step and shares about people actually walking into glass walls.  Never have I seen this happen, but I’m not denying it.  Hey, I was walking my dog the other day and ran into a telephone pole.  My take: if you can’t figure out there’s a wall (or telephone pole) there, maybe Darwin is trying to tell you something…
Regardless – there are ups and downs to very open and open-looking offices.  I think with the appropriate mix of some “private” rooms and lots of open plan, there is a balance that allows for collaboration, concentration, and the occasional cocktail [...]

When you hear the word “Deltek” mentioned at HOK, the first thing that pops to mind isn’t always the accounting/time software we all know so well…it’s usually the great new project that’s about to open.  Deltek is moving their headquarters into a new facility, complete with HOK-designed interiors. Yes, some of your favorite Work+Place bloggers are behind this design (Catherine Haley and Daphne Kiplinger).
What is it about Deltek’s new space that’s so special?   One of the many features is Deltek’s commitment to an open office – even the CEO will be seated in open plan workstations. Check out an article in today’s Washington Post (Deltek Consolidates into New Herndon Office) , or view a few preview photos in our Flickr set below:

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The other day at work, I was joking with one of my colleagues that I don’t have any work friends – that my job basically keeps me chained to my computer, telephone, or out at a client site, so I rarely have the opportunity to go out to lunch or hit happy hour. 
It’s not 100% true, but I really don’t socialize a whole lot while I’m at work other than with the people who sit right next to me, or the people who are on my project or leadership teams. Generally I thought this was a good thing – heads down worker, don’t waste a lot of time in idle conversation…
Yes, in general, it is a good thing….but a recent article on CNN.com caught my attention – Cliques in the Workplace. It highlighted some of the positives (in addition to the negatives that I’d thought of, plus some new ones). Guess I better get cliquin’ (is that even a word?!)
Benefits of being in a clique:

Association with people with good reputations
Connections that pay off through partnerships/teamwork and informal learning
Mentoring

Drawbacks:

Association with people with not-so-good reputations
Atmospheres of exclusivity
Potential for misinformation (that’s why it’s called gossip, people, not facts)

How cliquey is your office? Do you participate? What have you learned?
Image source: wp-content

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