Musical Chairs can energize your people
March 18, 2019
Looking for a way to re-energize your workforce and unleash a wave of innovation and productivity? Consider rearranging the workspace!
Over the past ten years, we’ve seen a strong trend away from the office cubicle and toward more open and flexible work arrangements. Over the past decade, companies have adopted a variety of new ways of allocating office space that have employees moving about with their laptop instead of spending their work hours anchored to a cubicle and assigned a specific computer.
Today, only about 50% of workers in the US have a specific assigned workspace. For me, and most of the clients Bayshore Partners serve, what’s important is the bottom-line question: does all of this moving about improve productivity, and ultimately, profitability?
Dr. Sunkee Lee, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University is currently conducting research on the topic. Dr. Lee studied data from a large e-commerce company that reconfigured their workspace as a part of a relocation. By examining data both before and after the move, Dr. Lee found that the employees who were moved experience a big jump in performance. The improvement in performance subsequent to the realignment of workspace was greater, even, than an increase in pay had caused.
While this informal study is primarily a snapshot of what happened at a specific company at a point in time, the knowledge is valuable given the popularity of flexible workspace arrangements.
Here are a few examples of how companies approach space assignment now:
Hot-desking and activity-based working – employees don’t have assigned desks but chose a desk for the day based on what they are working on and who they might be collaborating with. In these arrangements, employees may have a specific area assigned but they are free to choose the specific spot they work from. This method of assigning space is frequently used for companies where employee work in several locations.
Hoteling is a similar concept, but employees’ “book” a cubicle or desk ahead of their arrival. As with hot-desking, hoteling is useful in accommodating workers who work remotely and only occasionally come to the office, as well as those who travel extensively and don’t need a space assigned full-time.
Rotating seat assignments is an approach embraced by companies such as Google and HubSpot. For the most part, organizations that succeed with this model place a high value on creativity and innovation. The utilization of space is an important component in keeping the ideas flowing and employee engagement high.
Some employees find flexible seating and working arrangements disruptive and unsettling. Others find that instead of fostering good relationships in the workplace, it breaks down positive alliances.
Is your company using a flexible workspace arrangement? If so, post a comment!
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