Building Nevada - April 2000

Office Design & Productivity

by Jennifer Rachel Baumer

Today’s office space is changing faster than ever. There are new demands placed on both existing and new space, technology is changing at the speed of light, and light itself is being recognized as a key ingredient in the health, safety and welfare of the most valuable asset of every company: employees.

"One of a company’s largest investments is in its employees," notes Ian Anderson, general manager of Hogue Office Furniture. "Employees sitting at chairs that are not ergonomic are uncomfortable. Their production level goes down, they’re not able to concentrate and sit at their work station for long periods of time without becoming restless, they’re staring at the same panel in front of them and they need to be able to get up and move around."

"Employees are an expensive asset," agrees Bruce Golf; a principal in Domus Design. "Having them on disability or suing you is an expensive way to find out you’ve got a problem."

Health, safety, well are. Productivity, employee retention, hiring. Bringing in new technology and equipment. Remodeling. Reorganizing. There are hundreds of demands employers place on office space, and hundreds of ways to answer them.

Today’s employee is not content to be stuck in a dreary office balancing a board on some bricks with a laptop catching the glare of overhead lighting. "It means a lot to an employee to like coming into work every day, and throwing someone in a corner of a dark office with a pencil and a metal folding chair is not going to do it," says Anderson.

Today’s office is changing, meeting the needs of today’s labor force, telecommunications and demand for speed. There are generally more open areas to facilitate communication and fluid work flow, casual meeting areas, conferencing ends to work stations, semi-shared work stations, fluid or mobile tables. When designing workspace, the nature of the company has to be taken into account.

How to Build an Office

The first step in the process of building a facility is to talk to the people who will be utilizing it. Analyze the flow of communication, information or materials through the building, says Goff, and understand the flow and build a system to support it. "When you have a factory in one door comes the raw material and out another goes a completed product- If you have an assembly line you’d know that you have to do this first, this second and this third. But somehow people forget this in an office." Lue Smith, vice president of The Salix Group, believes it’s important to talk to the people who will be using the space, find out what their tasks are, the equipment they use and whether the technology exists to make it all work together. After the basic design questions are answered, Smith says, ft’s time to make sure the space looks wonderful by working with color and design. "It doesn’t cost any more to use nice colors and nice fabrics, or to introduce and coordinate design and continuity after all the technological [needs are met]," says Smith, who works with companies to find the needs of individual employees and work within the space provided to meet these needs.

"Somebody’s got a goal," says Golf. "What are you trying to achieve? Lower cost, faster productivity, less overtime, less change in employees, more retention. There are a million and one things you might possibly want to achieve. Our job is to ferret it out, dig it out, and that’s why we have a programming process, we sit clients down and force them to talk. We don’t want them to tell us what their goals are as much as we want them to explain what they do and how they do it."

Goff uses his own office as an example, where many projects are done as teams and employees need to collaborate. Offices where workers form teams have different configurations from offices where everybody is heads-down, working solo. Step two, says Golf, is budgets. What fits, how big or small does the client’s space need to be, what are the growth patterns? And then there are reality checks — what can the budget afford? After determining a budget comes advocacy — assisting the client in finding the best contractor for the job, from wallpaper to furniture dealers, assisting with contracting and bidding and finding the best vendors for cost. Finally, there’s the project management phase of the project, seeing that plans are being followed and the budget is online.

"We manage that process so when clients show up the thy they’re intending to get into the office, everything is in the right place, the data system works, the telephone system works, and they didn’t spend more money than they wanted to," says Goff. It’s not a one-size-fits-all proposition, but there are a lot of tricks of the trade to get from plans to production.

Tricks of the Trade

Today’s office encompasses more technology than ever, and more workers are functioning as teams, necessitating the flow of information and the creation of new and innovative office design components. High among the demands are functionality and flexibility leading to mobile workstations, mobile furniture, adjustable height desks that allow workers to move around and even stand while still working and individual lighting.

Lighting, everyone agrees, is of major importance. Linda Hopton, general manager and principle of Facilitec, finds lighting essential for a productive work environment. Ambient lighting is often favored, as it has the effect of mimicking daylight, can improve people’s moods and is easy to work by. Ambient light requires higher ceilings for light reflection, however, and may not be workable for existing spaces, so many companies are looking into individual work station lighting, making lighting flexible to avoid glare off computer screens and reduce light pockets.

Office furniture is becoming individual as well. Systems furniture allows companies to create office spaces that are mobile and fluid. From conferencing areas set up at the end of workstations to work stations on wheels that allow people to collaborate anyplace, anytime, workers are no longer required to stay in one place. "I see a trend of panel heights being lowered and creating more wide open spaces, more user-friendly spaces," says Ian Anderson. "I think you always have to talk about technology and today’s furniture systems have the capacity for more voice and data cabling."

Systems furniture, says Linda Hopton, creates movable privacy panels complete with voice and data ports, actual junction boxes on the stations themselves and termination points boxes that are part of the furniture rather than hard termination boxes in the wall. These panels easily reconfigure so facilities can change without extensive remodeling. In addition, says Hopton, some companies are encouraged to only construct a soft-shell structure when building, with the HVAC in place and lighting in the ceiling and the floor finished. They can then come in with flexible furnishings and systems furniture to create a fluid work environment that can change with the demands of the company with minimal remodeling.

Cabling may not be an issue for much longer, however, as the wireless office of the future draws ever nearer. In addition to the movable panels, prewired with cabling and data ports, telecommunications companies are looking into cellular phones that tie into the building’s PBX system, allowing workers to have one portable phone. Rather than depending on voice mail, or missing calls while away from the desk, employees can now wheel their desk, laptop, and phone to conferencing areas and continue working in a team environment without missing a beat. There are even printers that work off infrared connectivity and LAN PC cards that allow for wireless Internet connection for laptops.

One last trick designers have up their sleeves when creating office work spaces is Feng Shui. Integrating the Chinese art of placement into office design seems natural for some companies and for others feels like a combination of practical issues and superstition. "Practical aspects include how to lay out a room to be comfortable and soothing vs. being very aggressive," says Goff, whose company has incorporated the art into their work. "And there’s the superstitious angle, like you have a money corner. But there’s a reality to it. One of the biggest banks in the world, the Hong Kong Bank, was laid out on its plot of land differently from the architect’s original plan because a Feng Shui master said the snake that guards Hong Kong can’t get through the building. So they actually rotated how it was going to sit on the land, and it’s been a very successful bank."

Productivity or People?

Productivity isn’t the only thing employers are looking for when they take office design into account. The labor force is very tight, and employees don’t have to stay where they’re not happy. Hiring employees, says Goff, is difficult and expensive, and with so few available, companies need to differentiate themselves from the competition. When they’re offering the same pay, same stock options, and same benefits, what sets them apart is the facility and its design.

That, he says, may mean that having a slide in the office is important. But will that make employees more productive?

"Sometimes [it] isn’t productivity. The key issue could be hiring," says Golf. "Each company is different, each goal is different and each setting is different. It’s our job to understand each of the various elements and come back with a plan that makes sense for the individual."

Retaining employees is just as difficult for employers as finding them in the first place. Whereas in the past workers might spend their career at only one or two companies, loyalties have changed and worker turnover is high. Especially for industries such as telemarketing, retaining employees is a necessity. For example, says Anderson, workers can go make $7 or $8 an hour at any call center in town. An attractive and fun environment may be an incentive to stay, so these employers are making an effort to become bright facilities, more kinetic and happy places with higher lighting levels, brighter colors, more open space and fun furniture, becoming a dynamic work environment.

"People are interested in how to make you work better, faster, cheaper, longer," says Goff. "Think of the Internet companies, the ones that put slides in their offices and lunchrooms, and offer other forms of entertainment The point is, ‘We’re not paying you a lot and we’re going to keep you here a long day [so] we’re going to entertain you and keep you happy.’"