Wikipedia defines telecommuting as “a work arrangement in which employees enjoy flexibility in working location and hours. In other words, the daily commute to a central place of work is replaced by telecommunication links. Many work from home, while others, occasionally also referred to as nomad workers or web commuters utilize mobile telecommunications technology to work from coffee shops or other locations.”
Many organizations spend a lot of time developing methodologies for telecommuting – a lot of what I hear about telecommuting is about how to go about “getting it done”. Establishing policies, procedures, technology, etc. This all comes from the organization’s perspective, but how does this relate to you? I personally have left a standard 9-5 office environment and now am telecommuting at least once a week. I realized quite quickly that I needed to change some behaviors to be effective and it helped me to establish some ground rules for myself:

Get dressed for the day. Sure it’s a lot of fun to think about spending all day in your pajamas, but getting ready psychologically puts me in a different frame of mind. I become more task oriented and effective.
Flexibility comes with responsibility. You are an adult – act like it! Be accountable to yourself and your employer. Meet deadlines and make sure they know what you are doing – communcation is key so that trust is reinforced.
Figure out a schedule that works. Seriously? Do you think your IT guy is going to hang out till you are ready at [...]

In recognition of the global environment that we all work in, I would like to take pause and recognize an upcoming milestone – January 23rd marks the next Chinese New Year: 2012, the year of the Water Dragon! I ran across a Feng Shui forecast predicting the following:
“In Eastern symbology, the Dragon is considered a benevolent creature that brings about luck. The Dragon, even though it was the largest, fastest and most powerful animal of creation, it arrived fourth to the call of the Jade Emperor because it stopped along the way to make rain for the farmers and to help the Rabbit cross the river that all animals had to cross to arrive at the palace. Dragon years are expected to be full of benevolence and grace.  This year is going to be a transformational life-changing year! Generally, there are more goodies in store for you in the year 2012 than 2011. It’s a good year to improve oneself, take calculated investment risks and to build wealth. The year 2012 holds much promise and may be a major transition in your life. Whether it turns out extremely good, or really bad, will depend on how you ride the mighty Water Dragon!”
Whew! The economist must happy to hear the “building wealth” part, but what does this forecast this mean for the workplace and the people who occupy it? The main message that I pick up is that of transformational change, either organizational or personal. It is often said that the [...]

Change.  Transformation.  Evolution. Integration.  Adaptation.  Performance.
The sands are shifting.  Every client we work with has something going on in their organization that will change their future landscape/workscape.  New IT systems, tools, changing processes, organizational structures and performance measures are all constantly in play – sometimes a symphony…sometimes more jazz free style.
Strangely, when you add workplace change to that ensemble, things can get really messy.  The physical, visible manifestations of the past/present – that often represent personal and individual sense of stability in  the chaos – can send otherwise sensible and professional people into panic.
A dear friend of mine (Dave Lathrop at Steelcase) can be quoted as saying “workplace change boils every dysfunction of the organization to the surface” (I’ve attached an article from him).  I believe he is right.  With everything else in flux, it would seem that the sacred cow is workplace. 
I think that there is a huge opportunity to make workplace the thing that ties everything together…rather than the final straw the breaks things apart.  The challenge is approaching workplace change as an integrator, which means approaching the entire design process in a new way.  Developing workplace strategies that anticipate an uncertain future requires a unique thought process.
“Insanity is doing things the same way and expecting a different outcome”
Let’s stop the insanity.  Let’s really look at workplace as the powerful change integrator it has the potential to be.  Can we make it an enabler of new process…and more importantly new attitudes and behavior?  Can we make it be [...]

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.

Share+Enjoy

Lately I can’t seem to escape discussions about wellness in the workplace. In the past few weeks I’ve received several wellness related articles  from colleagues, witnessed real life issues onsite with clients and helped kick off a firm wide wellness initiative in my own firm. There are definitely enough issues surrounding this topic to turn this into a series of posts, but for now I will focus on sitting and walking in the workplace.
A colleague recently sent me these great infographics: Sitting is Killing You, highlighting some interesting statistics on the detriments of sitting for prolonged periods of time, fueling the argument to get up and walk around throughout the day. Personally, I hate the idea of sitting at a desk all day. I jump at any chance to walk across the office to talk with a colleauge. Not only does it add a few extra steps to my day, but often I can be more productive by engaging with a coworker face-to-face as opposed to long email chains which I’ll eventually have to go back and delete when cleaning out my inbox.

Adding to this discussion, HOK recently launced on Facebook what we are hoping to be The World’s Largest Workplace Survey. This is a great open forum to provide input on how well or not-so-well your workplace is performing. Join the dicussion by taking the survey here. The chart below shows some recent realtime survey results, indicating that an overwhelming amount of people complain about some physical discomfort in the workplace.

And in [...]

All that is old is new again?  True for fashion (not too long ago – I was able to “dress up” for a show by 80s cover band The Legwarmers by shopping exclusively at H&M and Forever XXI…cue embarrassing photo – please note most excellent crimped hair).  Fashion may come back around, but is it true for work, too? 
I just heard a new podcast….about an article I wrote for Building Operating Management (click here to read: Managing Change-BOM).
Listening to the podcast and rereading the article, I realized that these principles still hold up (even better than jelly shoes and armfuls of Swatch watches). So, without further ado…here are seven key principles of Change Management…it worked for Sprint – could it work for you too?

Executive support – get buy in from the top levels!
Communicate!  Get the word out – openness and honesty go a long way.
Develop an integrated team – Human Resources, Information Technology, and Real Estate all have to work together to make workplace change work.
Develop a vision – without a clear set of goals, it is impossible to succeed
Acknowledge staff – celebrate even the small victories!
Plan – change doesn’t happen overnight; it requires planning for the big and little items.
Exercise patience – every change requires some adjustment, and people are going to need time to adjust.

Share+Enjoy

Have you ever seen a sign such as the one above and thought, “Hrm, someone must have done this in order for management to feel the need to post signage.”  I have had this conversation several times recently – so many rules and laws are in place because someone failed to be considerate of others. 
For me, the one that really gets me is the parks that do not allow dogs.  If only people with well behaved, healthy dogs and good doggie manners (i.e., poop scooping) went to the park, maybe there wouldn’t be a need to have a no dog rule. But some jerks didn’t pick up their dog’s poop, so now I can’t take my dog to the park.
Today I was cruising through CNN’s homepage and ran across a great article that applies this concept to the workplace and human resources: Why I fled the office cubicle.
This post suggests that there are two basic types of employees: people and human resources.  People are assumed to have a brain. Human resources are treated as though they are robots that must have every action explicitly programmed (through rules). 
He argues that offices have policies, procedures, and rules because staff is assumed to be “human resources” and not actual “people.” 
I have to say, if all employees acted like “people” and respected their colleagues and surroundings, maybe we wouldn’t need the rules.  But we don’t…so we need the guidelines for good behavior.  Even if we sometimes ignore them.
Please don’t pee in the sink!
Image source: [...]

What happens when a company gets too big to be an exclusively virtual company?
I recently came across an article on inc.com: 4 Tips on Managing a Virtual Workforce, which featured Michael Sappington, CEO of gloStream, a company that provides software solutions for electronic medical records. In the piece, Michael notes some of the obstacles to maintaining a virtual environment as his compnay grows as well as the decision to move to physical office space.
I recently had the opportunity to interview Michael to dive deeper into the pros and cons his company is seeing as they transition from a virtual office to a physical office. Michael was gracious enough to answer my four questions below.
1. As your company grows and you shift your strategy related to flexible work hours and a virtual workforce, have you encountered any personnel issues with new ways of working and, if so, how are you managing this change to keep employees happy and engaged?
Overall, the shift from a virtual electronic medical records company to one operating out of a physical office has gone very, very well. Our team members have welcomed the change and they are much more productive since they can find each other and quickly meet face-to-face, instead of having to spend time tracking each other down before finding a time for a meeting. Our team members are happy to be in an office and really excited about our new work environment.
2. What workplace trends (i.e. technology, furniture, new ways of working) do you feel [...]

For several years our industry has pushed for the shift from ownership of space – as in your own office / workstation or your department’s conference room – to the sharing place.  In large part, this has been driven by the need to reduce the cost of real estate for organizations by trying to increase the utilization of  space used.  However, in my experience, there’s been significant reluctance due to our culture of ownership(especially here in the U.S.) . 
Last May at TEDx Sydney Rachel Botsman presented “The Case for Collaborative Consumption” and how several factors, including the proliferation of sharing websites, are having an impact on shifting our behaviors  from individual ownership to sharing.  She identifies 4 key drivers that are “fusing together and creating the big shift towards collaborative consumption”

A renewed belief in the importance of community
A torrent of peer-to-peer social networks and real-time technologies
Pressing unresolved environmental concerns
A global recession that has fundamentally shocked consumer behaviors

She also attributes the increase in this phenomenon to the “digital natives or Gen Y” and the ease of mobile collaboration – “they are growing up sharing…it’s second nature to them…moving us from a culture of me to a culture of we”. 

Her talk makes a strong case (using several internet examples like Zipcar, Swaptree and Landshare) that our consumer behaviors are changing due to the 4 points listed above that are being enabled by technology, mobility and a younger generation where sharing is second nature.
I believe Rachel’s presentation provides our industry with a few related examples, benefits and ideas for future opportunities around the idea sharing in an effort to reduce real estate, space and resource consumption faced by many [...]

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.

Share+Enjoy