I recently had the opportunity to write a guest blog for Virtual Office. The blog focuses on personalization of the workplace, and how new workplace trends could potentially limit our sense of individuality. With more and more mobile work styles emerging, and less and less people “living” at their desks in a traditional 9-to-5, forty hour work week, I question whether the or not people will also start ditching all of their personal knick-knacks in favor of  more streamlined, flexible work environments. 
Check out the full blog post here: A Home Away From Home Away From Home. The blog even makes a brief Office Space reference. Enjoy.

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Last year the HOK Chicago Interiors Group completed an office relocation project for Millward Brown, a leading global research agency. One of the main goals of the project was to make sure the branding of the space worked with the overall brand values of the company but also maintained a local identity to the Chicago market and their specific location. Millward Brown is a very youthful, creative and highly collaborative organization, and the physical space, amenities and branding all needed to reflect that culture.
The final workplace soultion is a very open plan with a variety of collaboration spaces,  reduced amount of materials,  youthful, energizing graphics and several areas for employees to kick back and relax, including a fully loaded Wii Rock Band area. It’s a great mix of a laid back, jeans-wearing culture with some very slick, sophisticated amenities for clients and visitors of all varieties.
The project was recently featured in an article in Interiors & Sources Magazine. Check out the article here.

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Remote…work? A recent article in the NY Times describes a new trend in working remotely: funerals.

10 Workplace Trends to Watch for in 2011
Telecommuting and worker mobility make the list of 2011 Workplace Trends supporting the business case for a workplace strategy that enables a mobile workforce.  High-tech communication tools and a surge in the quest for hiring “new blood” aka recent college grads also make the list of trends we should expect to see in 2011. 
To read the full list of trends click here http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2011/01/04/workplace-trends-for-2011/

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[Friday humor time...at least for me...]  So, I’m sitting here at the island in my kitchen working on day 5 of remote work due to the snow/ice mix that has put the smackdown on the metro-Atlanta region (yes, we shut down for cold weather, too).  Fortunately for me, several years of working with a distributed team has made this second nature:  wireless access, a near-light-speed cable modem, cell phone and a corner office (in my bedroom) have enabled continued communication with my team spread across the globe quick and easy!! 
But it is not without frustrations…
So this morning I got an e-mail from a colleague using his brand new iPad.  It’s got this cute little sign-off:  “sent from my iPad.”  Do I really need to know that?  It’s a little jab in my side saying, “hey, I’m cool, I’m connected, I’m ON-DEMAND BABY!” I groan to my wife about it and then she reads me the closing from one of her client’s recent e-mails:  “sent from my magic iPhone.”  oh, yes, she read it from HER iPhone, too, complete with catchy phrase “sent from my iPhone.”  Another favorite: “sent while moving warp speed on my Verizon wireless smart phone.”  sigh…
Me?  I’m still banging out notes on the microscopic, worn out, push-button eraser heads on my Dash with my fat little thumbs and forefingers!  Even my kids (8 and 5) try to touch the screen to make it work, all the while complaining that I need to get a new phone.  Really?
So, I thought that the least I could [...]

I don’t mean work in the sense of the location you travel to everyday for your job. I mean work by definition “to act or operate effectively” (v). A friend of mine posted a link this week to an article on CNN.com by Jason Fried called “Why the Office is the Worst Place to Work”. Fried went on to describe the modern office as an interruption factory filled with short windows of time for work moments.
One point of particular interest to me was Fried’s comment about how people responded to the question of where they work best. Very few respondents said the office… most replies were along the lines of the porch, the coffee shop, the house.
Earlier this year Jodi Williams + I co-authored an article for World Architecture News titled “Why Working Anywhere Works”. The article encouraged employers to expand their views on where work could happen based on what people actually need to “act or operate effectively”.
The truth is we all “work” differently… recognizing, acknowledging, and accommodating that is the workplace of the future.

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Angie Earlywine, Senior Workplace Strategist for HOK Advance Strategies, Rich Smith, Director Science + Technology-Higher Education, and Tura Patterson, HOK Director of Project Development, made a presentation at the University of Minnesota entitled, “Crossing Over: Space Utilization Best Practices Enhance Space Planning in Higher Education Institutions” on October 15, 2010. The presentation explored similarities between the corporate sector and institutions of higher learning to promote understanding of trends in officing and workplace strategies.
Universities are focused on optimizing utilization and doing more with less, just as in corporate organizations.  There are common demands for:

Demand for agile, efficient processes
Flexibility
Strategic investment in technology
Highly functional, comfortable, and welcoming  places for learning
An emphasis on collaboration and innovation
A need to contain costs while improving performance
New focus on sustainable design solutions and operations
Leverage learning environment to attract & retain talent

In summary, the model for aligning space, technology, and space use strategies with university goals would also hold true in the corporate environment.  View this presentation that includes results of the IFMA Distributed Work Survey and HOK case studies of Butler University College of Education Building, Maryville University School of Health Professions and the University of Southern Indiana College of Business & School of Engineering.
Interested in learning more?  Contact angie.earlywine@hok.com  or rich.smith@hok.com.

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I recently met some representatives from SERVCORP, a company that rents office space to individuals and organizations that are looking for an office presence but do not want to commit to their own costly lease. Having a strong personal interest in workplace trends, I decided to check them out. SERVCORP is an Australian company that recently broke into the U.S. market by setting up shop in a few cities, including two suites in high profile, class A buildings in downtown Chicago. Recently I had the chance to tour one of their suites and I have to say their operation is very well put together. They offer rentals of both Executive Office and Virtual Office space. Their tagline “Everything But The Office” seems to sum up a growing trend in where the future of physical office space is headed. I found this succinct promo video for the company which highlights the idea of having a “big business infrastructure, without the associated costs”.
Two of the more prominent workplace trends these days are the continued growth of a mobile workforce (less people in offices) as well as companies reducing their overall real estate portfolios (less space being rented). This recent Wall Street Journal article is just one of dozens of recent articles reporting the reduction in office footprints in this country.

That being said, what will eventually become of all the corporate real estate out there? Will the soaring skyscrapers, the greatest of corporate status symbols, be reduced to nothing but ghost towns? In ten years will my corporate headquarters simply be [...]

The IFMA has released a new research report, “Space and Project Management Benchmarks,” which provides data on current costs and best practices associated with office space, churn, furniture acquisition and project management. One key finding from this study shows that vacancy rates in office buildings have increased while occupancy rates have fallen slightly — resulting in a gain in office space availability.
HOK was a sponsor of the research report. Advance Strategies’ workplace strategist, Angie Earlywine, worked IFMA to develop the benchmark survey.  The survey was then distributed to IFMA’s membership  for completion. One of the key findings of the survey indicates that the trend in office space over the past two decades has been towards smaller individual workstations. Factors such as layoffs and stagnant hiring, mobile work options and the growth of collaborative space seem to mask this trend, elevating the total amount of space per person available throughout the office. Other factors such as changes in culture driven by a younger workforce, an increase in the number of companies offering distributed workspace strategies, and new technology such as flat screens that require less desk space, further reinforce this trend.
However, extra space around the office doesn’t necessarily mean additional workspace for workers. Where is the extra space going? According to the report, conference rooms, storage space, amenities such as fitness and day care facilities, and empty, unused workstations are the most common end result.
“Over the past decade, senior level managers have given up a lot of space, mostly to accommodate additional [...]

Healthy Workplace
I was reading the Trust for Public Health’s annual report titled “F as in Fat”, which reveals some sobering statistics about America’s obesity and diabetes rates among adults and children. According to the study, adult obesity rates increased in 28 states. 38 states have adult obesity rates over 25%. What’s startling is that in 1991 no state had a rate above 20%.