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Just as technology is driving changes in the workplace, so too is the design and space planning of office interiors. The cubicle environment that provides a stage for the comic strip Dilbert is an everyday real-world experience for growing legions of employees. Only now, those workers are not alone.
One of the most prominent trends in office space planning and design is the movement of executives and managers out of their private, secluded offices and into strategically located, glass-encased or cubicle-style work areas.
"The trends are going more toward open offices," says Maria Valbona, an interior designer at Smith Consulting Architects. "Managers are going into the cubes and being more part of the team so that there's more open communication and more interaction of ideas."
Some of Valbona's most successful clients are experimenting with open office systems, a trend that originated in Europe and has taken off in the last year. "They're the ones more open to going into the 21st century," she says. "They're on the cutting edge of office layouts and how they do business."
Jackie Jennings, president of Johnson & Jennings General Contracting, has overseen several office remodeling projects. In some cases, the trend is being taken to the extreme. "There are instances where no private offices are being built," Jennings says.
Abolishing the stereotypical corporate hierarchy, increasing accessibility and facilitating communication are the main philosophical reasons for embracing open office systems. Both interior designers and their clients appear satisfied with the results.
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Jackie Jennings, president
of Johnson & Jennings
General Contracting.
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Maria Valbona, an interior
designer at Smith
Consulting Architects.
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Gossip And 'Feng Shui'
By increasing cohesion, open office systems are supposed to reduce office gossip and rivalry.
Situating offices in the "feng shui" style in which employees share equal status also enhances a cooperative spirit. "Feng shui" is based on an Eastern belief that proper placement of people and furniture in an office will have a positive effect on business. "Everyone is pretty much at the same level," says Smith Consulting's Valbona. "Everyone has their own strength. We’re all part of a big puzzle. We’re all pieces of this puzzle and with a missing piece, it’s not a complete puzzle."
At Century Partners Inc., the open office design is considered an overall success, albeit one with a few pitfalls. Katherine Matousek, assistant property manager, reports problems such as excessive noise levels at times and difficulty in making sensitive phone calls. Along those privacy lines, Jennings says that open office systems would pose an obvious problem in law offices, where confidentiality is a top priority. Even in group-oriented companies, constantly working among several other people can be too distracting.
The Privacy Dilemma
Valbona offers several ways to handle the privacy dilemma. She advocates "personal harboring," a concept in which strategically placed rooms throughout the office create "a womb-like atmosphere where you feel safe, you feel secure, you’re alone, you can have private phone conversations."
Yet if unusual privacy demands become unmanageable, Valbona points out that "This is the age of technology where you can go home, take your laptop with you and do a lot of your work there. So if you are getting backlogged because of the open office system, you take your work home.
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Most of the reason for being at work is to be accessible." And Valbona says the partitions do afford some privacy. "It’s bizarre, but the moment you sit down, you’re in your own private world and you can tune things out. The second you stand up, you’re a part of the communication that flows freely back and forth." Part of the philosophy behind open office systems, after all, is that employees share peripherals and ideas.
Another pragmatic reason for switching to open office systems is mobility. With companies either downsizing or expanding within short periods of time, remodeling traditional office systems can be costly and inconvenient. Cubicles are the easiest and most cost-efficient way to account for such changes, says Valbona. "You can easily reconfigure, too," she says. "Say you lay off a couple of people because your company is moving in a different direction and you need different cubes to accommodate the new employees. You can easily reconfigure. It’s like building blocks. You can reconfigure to the shape, the size, all the needs that are required for your new facility, your new philosophy, your new target market."
Flexibility is a notable characteristic of furniture popular in open office systems. Besides having softer edges, eliminating the sharp corners that Jennings says are taboo to the "feng shui" style, many of the pieces can be easily moved. "Everything has wheels," Valbona says jokingly. "Perhaps it’s because we’re moving into the 21st century where we’re moving so quickly that the furniture now has wheels."
Furniture does have to keep up with rapidly increasing technology, says Valbona. "And private offices are pretty stationary," she says. While restructuring private offices can be extremely distracting, resulting in nonproductive "downtime," Valbona says open office systems can be reorganized virtually overnight. And if the reorganizing isn’t working out, the managers will be among the first to notice.
'Cube Farm' Lingo
The workplace cubicle invasion is being accompanied by its own lingo. Here are a few examples of "bizspeak" that have come our way via e-mail.
Blamestorming: Sitting around in a group discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.
Chainsaw Consultant: An outside expert brought in to reduce the employee head count, leaving the top brass with clean hands.
Cube Farm: An office filled with cubicles
Ego Surfing: Scanning the Net, databases, print media and so on, looking for references to one's own name.
Keyboard Plaque: The disgusting buildup of dirt and crud found on computer keyboards.
Mouse Potato: The online, wired generation's answer to the couch potato.
Ohnosecond: That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that you've just made a big mistake.
Perot: To quit unexpectedly, as in "My cellular phone just Perot'ed."
Prairie Dogging: When someone yells or drops something loudly in a cube farm, and people’s heads pop up over the walls to see what’s going on.
Sitcoms: What yuppies turn into when they have children and one of them stops working to stay home with the kids. Stands for Single-Income, Two-Children, Oppressive Mortgage.
Starter Marriage: A short-lived first marriage that ends in divorce with no kids, no property and no regrets.
Swiped Out: An ATM or credit card that has been rendered useless because the magnetic strip is worn away from extensive use.
Tourists: People who take training classes just to get a vacation from their jobs. "We had three serious students in the class; the rest were just tourists."
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