World Resources Institute (WRI) (Photographer: John Cole)
Recently, there has been much press about open office plans, mostly about how bad these work environments are and that they don’t work. As Principal of FOX Architects and Publisher of Work Design Magazine; an architect and workplace strategist reading one of these articles are kind of like someone saying, “my shoes don’t fit.” Office space can be analogous to shoes in that you may be wearing the wrong pair shoes. Moreover, like shoes, if you put the wrong pair or the wrong size on – there is no question you’re going to, at best be a little uncomfortable and at the worst, in pain, with the shoes not appropriate for your activities. You don’t go running in high-heels – office space is not much different – don’t do your work in the wrong space.
Let’s Do the Math
Office space is costly. In large urban markets, it’s not uncommon to be paying $50/SF per year. As a simple example, if you do the math, a company with 100 people will on average require about 20,000 SF of space. The rent, in that case, totals $1 million per year or $83,000 per month.
Switching to an open office plan, you can easily save 25 percent or in this case 5,000 SF. You just saved your company $250,000 per year, enough to hire about three people, including taxes and benefits; and that saving is each year, over the life of an office lease the dollars are significant.
If you are a facility manager, it’s an easy decision to squeeze a little and move into an open office environment. That was the trend a few years ago, and what’s more, it was supposed to be good for collaboration.
The facility management profession measures cost, efficiency, and the effective operation of corporate office space. To reduce occupancy costs, they aggressively cut square footage, increased head counts, and supported remote work.
Am I Too Late?
Office space is changing – and it is often confusing for organizations coming out of older generation space. There is not a lot of research or credible information; and few instructions for organizations trying to adapt themselves to a more modern office. The longer you have been in your existing office, the harder it is to make the jump to a newer, up to date office – it is not an easy change to make. The entire organization needs to relearn and adapt.
Today almost all the workspace that we are designing is a combination of spaces. In fact, it is not uncommon to have 15 -20 different types of places to work, a range of open and closed, public and private, individual and group, high and low tech, all in one office. When put together properly, each type of space increases flexibility and can support a variety of work, ranging from heads down places for focus and concentration, group spaces for collaboration, meetings, and communication. A single type of office or workstation cannot accommodate all the different tasks or functions that we must perform in a day. Thus, the root of the problem with an all open concept.
Seeing the Office as a Tool
As office rents rise, there is a shift in workplace planning with more focus on ways to increase the value that office space can bring to an organization. That is almost a complete 180-degree turn from the traditional approach to maximize the efficient operation and reduce the cost of the office environment.