Mobile Communications Re-define Office Space

Apparently, while the economy has been putting pressure on office property prices, broadband and mobile communications have been altering the very identity of office property as we know it. This past weeks Economist asserts that separating work and living spaces is a historically unnatural practice born out of the industrial age’s need to clump people together to work in factories efficiently. Now that wireless technology allows anyone to work anywhere, the cubicle grid is now giving way to hybrid community spaces. Spaces are now being defined on the fly:

Debra Moritz, a director at Jones Lang LaSalle, a firm that helps companies to manage their office buildings and consults on property investments, says that the total area devoted to traditional office space has begun to decline, although slowly. This is because “inefficiency is more obvious as workers become mobile,” she says. According to Jones Lang LaSalle’s research, workers are at their desks, on average, less than 40% of their time (Ms Moritz ditched her own desk long ago). This does not mean that office space will drop by 60%. But it does mean that office designers are thinking about using space better.

There will be more “on-demand spaces” and “drop-in centres”, says Ms Moritz, with flexible layouts that facilitate collaboration. Within a typical office building, the area devoted to solitary work, such as the cubicles immortalised in Dilbert cartoons, will shrink. Internal walls and furniture are becoming movable. More space is given to communal areas, some of which are distinguished not by their function but by their etiquette—loud or quiet, say—as in libraries.

In other related developments, some call center operators in Manila are asking their employees to work outside the office to offset the unexpected loss in competitiveness caused by the appreciation of the Philippine peso with rent savings.

[via The Economist]