The days of the desk being the office equivalent of cement shoes are ending.
Increasingly, employees are working outside the office. Telecommuting – working at home with the help of a computer and modem – reporting to a satellite office, and using a laptop computer to take work just about anywhere are slowly changing the traditional work environment.
But a new study shows that while many companies are experimenting with new work setups, the way in which they use these techniques — known as Alternative Workplace Strategies (AWS) — greatly affects employee morale.
The study of 4,000 facility managers in the United States and Canada, conducted by the International Facilities Management Association and La Salle Partners Inc., a Chicago real estate services firm, indicates that companies will increase their use of these techniques, leading the researchers to conclude that “office work is in the midst of a managerial and technological revolution.”
Most of the companies surveyed had more than 50 employees; some had more than 1,000.
Several factors are driving the change. Accommodating employee desire for flexibility is one. Cutting, or containing, costs is another. A third, said Jacques Gordon, La Salle’s managing director, is increasing worker efficiency.
That may be why the most popular alternative work strategy is creating a “team environment,” in which the office is set up for group work. Forty-two percent of the respondents who use these strategies use some kind of team approach, the study said.
But the most popular strategy among employees, and the one that increased morale the most, was telecommuting — especially when the employee was able to choose when he or she would work at home.
The least popular, the study showed, was the satellite office, especially when workers are forced, rather than asked, to work there.
“There seems to be a fine line that an employer faces between mandating things and actually making these (strategies) an option,” Gordon said. “You have to be careful what signals you’re sending when you’re implementing these things. One of the signals that you may send is that (the employee is) expendable.”
This signal may be unintended. Still, employers need to be sure their people who work from home or from satellite offices feel welcome in the main office. Otherwise they may feel alienated, he indicated. Sixty-five percent of employees who telecommute said doing so has improved their morale. Conversely, 27 percent of those forced to work at satellite offices reported their morale had dropped as a result.
The nature of the employees’ job determines what kinds of office alternatives are best. Some kinds of work require face to face interaction, and setting up the office for teamwork is effective. Other jobs require less social interaction, and telecommuting is more appropriate.
“Some reduce face to face (interaction),” Gordon said of the various techniques. “Others increase it to the point where it could be annoying.”
Though giving workers more options makes work more convenient, and in some cases more efficient, it also has its drawbacks. For one, it’s expensive. High technology gadgets and the technical support associated with them are costly. Some 40 percent of the respondents faced higher technology costs after implementing an alternative strategy, the report states.
“It can be pretty expensive to equip workers to become more mobile,” Gordon said. “They need to have the state-of-the-art laptop, tech help — all of that is expensive to put in place quickly.”
Because these strategies are relatively new, Gordon said, it is not yet known if these increased costs are simply startups that will level off, or if they will continue to escalate. A high percentage of organizations surveyed have not even tried to track these expenses, he said.
Besides technology, there are costs associated with renovating the office for a team, buying furniture, maintenance, and real estate costs, he said.
Though use of these strategies is expected to increase, its growth is still in the early stages, the survey suggests. For example, 57 percent of the respondents who use alternative strategies said they have had no change in their rent or property occupancy charges, though 35 percent said they hope that these techniques eventually will reduce costs. Twenty percent said they have already have saved money, it said.
Also, the total amount of space that survey respondents are dedicating to alternative strategies is only 5 percent, according to the study. But these numbers will go up, Gordon said.
“Conservatively, it looks as though the numbers we got back indicated a very rapid increase in use,” he said.
