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 [...]

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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With more than $290 billion in assets and approximately 55,000 employees, PNC is one of the largest financial services companies in the country. Based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, PNC also has more LEED certified buildings than any other company on Earth. When it opened in 2001, PNC’s Firstside Center in downtown Pittsburgh was the nation’s largest corporate green building at 650,000 square feet. And with the recent opening of PNC Place in Washington, D.C., PNC currently has over 100 LEED certified projects in its real estate portfolio. Gary Saulson, Director of Corporate Real Estate for the PNC Financial Services Group, is responsible for the direction of PNC’s sustainable strategies. Overseeing approximately 30 million square feet of commercial real estate, Saulson has impressively helped transform PNC into an industry leader in corporate sustainability. I recently had the opportunity to speak with Mr. Saulson about PNC’s sustainable and workplace strategies.  
“Our simple task is to build environments where employees can thrive and customers can do their business”, says Saulson, who explains that PNC has an internal Product Review Committee that tests and reviews all products that go into their offices. The Product Review Committee is represented by people from across the bank: including people involved in Operations, Energy, Sustainability and Finance. They also work with manufacturers to beta test products, including conference tables, chairs, light fixtures, restroom faucets and hand dryers.   
Saulson believes it makes good business sense to “do our homework” on the products they purchase and implement into their workplace standards. He explained to [...]

FastCompany’s Co.Design recently posted a great essay, Frog Design: The Four Secrets of Playtime That Foster Creative Kids, part of a series produced by Frog Design.  What I like about the essay is that all the ideas about play and creativity apply just as well to adults as to kids and to most aspects of life, including the workplace.  Play becomes more of an attitude rather than a designated time, place or activity. The essay explores what play really is – “A playful mind thrives on ambiguity, complexity, and improvisation—the very things needed to innovate and come up with creative solutions to the massive global challenges in economics, the environment, education, and more.” – and is not - ”we have unknowingly created a society of more game players rather than game designers“  The author talks about how important an open environment is in fostering creativity, open in the sense of unstructured.  (Does this remind anyone of design thinking around open and flexible office space?)  As with everything else, a balance between structured and unstructured is the key but this piece argues that as a culture we’re leaning a bit too far toward the structured, especially in the environments we create for our children.  After all “Play is our greatest natural resource.”  The series is based on Frog Design’s Design Mind.
 

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One of the reasons we started Work+Place was to share HOK’s workplace expertise – developed over the past 15-or-so years.  While our experts have been sharing their latest and greatest thinking – everything from the obesity epidemic and the impacts of Mexican drug cartels on the workplace to research, potty humor, and workplace pranks, we thought it might be fun to dig back into the annals of HOK’s workplace experience and see what we could find. 
As you can see from the graphic above, we’ve had lots of experience with single project and full accounts, giving our team a rich set of data to mine.  This post is the first in a series highlighting our thought leadership through publications.  Keep an eye out and see what we’ve said and how our thinking has evolved.

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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%.

Just saw this article in the Chicago Tribune and think it’s a great example of schools trying to leverage the use of cell phones in the classroom instead of trying to stifle the natural progression of technology. The mention of cell phones in the classroom typically brings about negative commentary; they’re a distraction, kids will use them to cheat on tests, it potentially infringes on teachers and students privacy, etc. But this article highlights a few schools in Illinois that are refreshingly trying to embrace the inevitable, realizing that cell phones can in fact prove to be very useful education tools.
In Elmhurst, IL, York Community High School Principal Diana Smith plans to sit down this week with students to talk about the possibility of their using cell phones for academic purposes. The Elmhurst school currently requires that phones remain off during the day.
“What we know about kids now is they are used to having so many sources of technology available to them,” Smith said. “I think we need to be in step with them on it.”

The discussion of these policies in schools got me thinking about how this relates to technology policies in the workplace. While many policies are borne out of necessity, it is also no secret that the new generation entering the workforce is accustomed to having the best technology at their fingertips and will expect their future employers to either match or even exceed that expectation. I foresee more and more high schools and even elementary schools adopting policies for cell phone use in [...]

 
Imagine many years ago you started your own business and with hard work created a successful enterprise.  Suddenly you are forced to leave your city because your livelihood and, more importantly, your life, are threatened.  For many in Mexico, this has become a reality due to the warring drug cartels seeking to dominate and control the highly lucrative drug, gun, and human trafficking business. 
For this story I won’t go into all the details but what’s relevant is that many people are extorted and kidnapped by the cartels to raise money for weapons and resources to fuel their operations.  This happens to the small “mom and pop” businesses as well as larger organizations with many employees. 
It’s the latter that this post focuses on because the smaller businesses typically don’t have the means to relocate – they either succumb to the extortion or go out of business altogether.  Many of the more affluent and higher profile business owners have chosen to relocate across the border or somewhere else in Mexico that’s potentially safer and where they can maintain greater anonymity.
Since my wife is from Mexico and her family has two primary businesses, I am observing the reaction to this crisis firsthand.  My wife’s family owns and operates an educational institution and a construction firm.  The challenge for them, which is the focus of this article, is how to effectively run and manage your business remotely with little planning or expertise. 
This week we are visiting my wife’s family for the first time since they have [...]

I recently had the pleasure of being invited on a trip to the Haworth corporate headquarters in Holland, Michigan. The environment at One Haworth Center embodies the company’s commitment to good design and sustainability. We were able to meet with members of their “Ideation Group” who explained aspects of the research they perform finding ways to see how the built environment affects people. Scientific research has found that the arrangement of furniture and interior space affects human behavior. Haworth wants to change people positively. The company uses a variety of research tools including: psychology of existing workspace, organizational culture, social network analysis, and individual work style analysis. Haworth also looks at the different types of organizational cultures which are: collaborative, creative, controlling, and competitive. All together the visit was educational, enjoyable, and truly inspiring.

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Don’t just work from home. Creep out your employees from a distance!
I saw this article recently about the robot that visits your cubicle. Advertised as a “telepresence robot”, Anybots aim to connect workers more seamlessly through the use of video cameras, still camera and a microphone. The basic concept is that, working anywhere from a laptop, you can log into one of these robots which reside in your office and the robot essentially becomes your “avatar”. Your Anybot can zip around the workplace interacting with coworkers; stopping by your desk, sitting in on meetings or impromptu collaboration sessions, heading over to the factory to see what’s coming off the production line, etc. The video demonstration on their website gives you the idea.
While I do see some of the fundamental advantages of “Robot Boss”, I still can’t help but think of all the hilarious and awkward scenarios that could play out in our workplace culture:

It looks like a Segway had a one night stand with a vacuum cleaner. I hope the cleaning staff doesn’t try to use Robot Boss to buff the floors.
People will definitely dress up Robot Boss in embarrassing clothing. Mine would have a handlebar mustache and dress accordingly for the seasons and holidays. 
If you put a piece of paper over the sensors, can you laugh as Robot Boss crashes into walls because it can’t see straight?
Will people eventually prefer Robot Ross to in-person boss? If in-person boss wears cheap cologne, then yes.
I’d like to see Robot Boss take a client out to lunch. Good luck catching a cab, Robot Boss!
I’d be freaked out if [...]