Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 10, 1993 TAG: 9310070010
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BY JAY MATHEWS THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Long
But sit and watch for a few days and odd things happen.
The muscular dark-haired consultant who occupied the office down the hall is gone after two days, replaced by a slim blond woman in a well-pressed suit. A week later, she has disappeared and a tall, thin man with a mustache sits in her chair.
Names on many of the office doors seem to change as often as the paper towels in the restroom, and files move back and forth too many times to count.
Welcome to the latest version of the office of the future, a set of ideas that violates almost every nesting instinct known to man but which is already at work in several parts of the country and is key to a three-year study on how to radically redefine corporate real estate.
"Already new patterns for organizing work and new technologies for supporting it are evolving more rapidly than many people in the field can absorb and use," according to the study's latest progress report released by the Industrial Development Research Foundation in Atlanta. "It will be the role of corporate real estate management to keep abreast of the changes and help their companies respond."
What is happening at Ernst & Young's 18th floor office here is called "hoteling." Executives who do much of their work outside the office reserve desk space for only the days they need it. Their names are placed on the door when they arrive in the morning and then just as quickly removed when they leave for work out of town.
"Where we traditionally occupied 250 rental square feet per person, we are now down to just a little over 100 square feet per person," said Larry Ebert, director of real estate services for Ernst & Young.
The process is overseen by an office "hotel coordinator," sometimes even called a concierge, who makes sure two consultants are not assigned to the same office at the same time. It is among several reforms being studied by the research foundation in partnership with the Center for Real Estate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Others include the "virtual office," in which a few gadgets create an office wherever one is sitting; "universal plan" offices, in which everybody gets the same space no matter how impressive their job titles; and the more familiar and now widespread practice of "telecommuting" by using computers in the home.
"The typical corporation has about 25 percent of its assets invested in real estate," said Prentice L. Knight III, executive director of the Industrial Development Research Council, the corporate real estate executives group that pays for the foundation's research. "But all too often those assets are undermanaged, in large part because senior corporate management has yet to view real estate as a strategic asset."
Knight said several other companies, including Andersen Consulting, International Business Machines Corp. and Digital Equipment Corp., began exploring "non-territorial" offices like the Ernst & Young hoteling system three years ago.
The progress report on the research foundation's study, called Corporate Real Estate 2000, said IBM has set up non-territorial offices for all its marketing and sales staff in Britain and is implementing similar programs in 20 U.S. locations.
The San Francisco branch office of Andersen Consulting began what it labeled its "Just-In-Time" program after the partner in charge balked at leasing an additional floor of an expensive building when he saw his consultants leave their offices empty for days at a time.
Andersen created 13 just-in-time offices with combination desk and conference tables to be shared by 70 management consultants. Each office is fully equipped, with the only difference being executives cannot decorate the walls with family photos and mementos.
The progress report noted that the system "generated an annual rent savings of $114,000 and a first year total cost savings of $505,000."
Employees complained of the time needed to move files from a central filing area and of their inability to keep what the report called "one's own stuff" nearby. But the research foundation concluded the idea was a success because "almost 90 percent of the respondents reported that the quality of the work done was about the same as previously."
Michael Bell, director of corporate real estate at Dun & Bradstreet, said malcontents are likely to embrace the changes eventually "because we are telling them you can office anywhere you want - if you want to office at home, fine."
"Universal plans," also promoted in the study, defy not only human territorial instincts but the hallowed pecking order. Aetna Life & Casualty Co. in Connecticut ended its system of assigning offices of different sizes by rank and substituted a floor plan with just two kinds of working spaces. Managers and directors received 120-square-foot offices, smaller than they were used to. All other supervisors and lower-level employees were put in 60-square-foot open workstations.
Higher-level employees assigned to open stations complained, but Aetna estimated the system saved up to $1 million. It also eliminated the troublesome game of musical chairs whenever someone was promoted.
Some ambitions may go ungratified and some nesting needs unfulfilled, the study indicated. A partner at Ernst & Young said the company's hoteling system has been "very, very difficult" for some executives to accept.
by CNB