News & Views

Despite renowned architect Frank Duffy claiming that the modern office is on its way out, it remains the base for the majority of people from 9 til 5. But new ways of working combined with new technology have made obsolete pieces of furniture that were, until recently, stalwarts in the office – and home.

1. The Desk
Experts (read consultants) in new ways of working would have us believe that the humble office desk is dead. Instead of being chained to our own personal bit of mdf, we will work in everything from office break-out spaces to cafes, drop-in meeting facilities and the kitchen table. But nothing has quite replaced the desk for sheer ergonomic comfort, as anyone who has spent a day hunched over a laptop in Starbucks will testify.  The size and shape of the desk has certainly changed – gone are the massive L shaped desks which took up half a room. Instead smaller desks, or collaborative benches are popular. And even the big law firms where massive mahogany desks were passed down the generations from father lawyers to son lawyers, have gone (but probably only to the home office).

2.Tea trolleys
The distant rattle of the tea trolley was the highlight of most office workers’ afternoons. The steaming aluminum tea pot would hove into sight, and all work was forgotten as workers queued up in soup-kitchen style for their brew and a slice of, often homemade, cake. Sadly the nearest most workplaces get to the tea trolley is the sandwich man and his crate of tepid sandwiches which have already been polluted by a circular London commute at exhaust pipe height.

3. Clocking off machine
Clocking off machines were a permanent fixture in most offices, ensuring that you were measured not by what you produced, but by the minutes you spent chained to your desk (or at least in the office). While some factories, and even places like MacDonalds, still have them, they have largely disappeared from most offices meaning that workers may actually get judged by their performance, and not their ability to work the system – did bosses really think we didn’t share clock in cards?

4. Office nameplates
Back in the day before even the CEO sat in an open plan environment anyone who was anyone had an office, and even if you didn’t get a view, you always got a name plate – usually with both your name (not first name of course because that would be too friendly) and job title. They were designed partly as a source of information about the occupant, but mainly to instill fear and awe in any subordinate forced to knock on said door. The most fearsome name plate always belonged to the head secretary whose office overlooked …

5. The typing pool
Although you could argue that the modern-day call centre is very much like the post-war typing pool, it doesn’t come close to the uniformity both in dress and behavior of 100 touch typists in perfect synchronisation being watched by a matron in her 50s to ensure that no gossip, mistakes or short skirts left the typing pool to distract the rest of the business.

6. The telephone table chair
Remember the telephone table? It sat in the hall from the early part of the last century until the mobile home telephone made the sofa a more preferred spot to take a long call. Ebay is now deluged with hundreds of ‘vintage’ models.

Next for the chop will be filing cabinets (paperless office anyone?), pedestals will be replaced by those funky lockers and in-trays will become obsolete in the new paperless mobile world. Are you feeling nostalgic yet?

Last night I attended a BIFM Women in FM event at Capita Symonds where Mirella Visser, author of the Female Leadership Paradox, talked about the role of women in organisations and the specific traits and skills women bring to boards.

Visser, a hugely successful businesswoman who has been the first woman on many boards around the world, seemed to be describing success for a woman as a seat on the board of a major organisation.

But what does success look like for women? It’s easy to get bogged down in clichés when you talk about women in business – Nicola Horlick’s book cover depicting her with an FT under one arm and a teddy bear under the other is a classic example.

The reality is that success is very much in the eye of the beholder. For some, it will be staying at home and creating a loving, nurturing environment for their children. For others it will be an all-encompassing career. For most of us it’s something in between those dichotomies with all the juggling and to-do lists that involves.

The important thing for me is that we must respect whatever choices women (and men for that matter) make and support them. Too many women get to their idea of ‘the top’ and then do whatever they can to prevent other women following in their footsteps. Others look down on full-time mums as if they’ve taken the easy option (and as most working mums know, a day in the office is often the easy option).

To ensure that all women achieve their idea of success, women (and men) must support them and create a nurturing, inspiring environment, so whether they’re jetting off to New York to instigate a major takeover,  dashing home early from work to get to parents’ evening, or taking a career break to look after children, they feel accepted and supported in their decision. As @sarabean2 said to me on Twitter “when Dad’s stay home with sick children, proves they care, with Mum’s seen as not reliable” .

Interesting to hear the government lay down the gauntlet to facilities management service providers on Monday at the annual Business Services Association lecture. Francis Maude MP, minister for the Cabinet Office, warned them that large businesses might no longer be the chosen way forward for government outsourcing. To improve the value proposition for the delivery of public services, he wants small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs), together with charities, voluntary organisations, employee mutuals and civil societies to get a slice of the government’s procurement cake.

But the government can’t have its cake and eat it. SMEs and others will only be keen to get involved when the procurement process is less needlessly bureaucratic, doesn’t cost so much (Maude himself recognised that it costs four times as much to bid for public sector contracts as it does for those in the private sector) and doesn’t take so long.

Yes the government have taken measures to make it easier for SMEs to get involved but the reality is still that only the big businesses have the resources to bid for the big deals. Maude urged the big outsources to tell him personally (though he didn’t give us his direct line) if the procurement process remained exasperating and impenetrable despite these measures. Trouble is, most FM service providers might be too knee-deep in bid preparations to drop him a line.

Read the full event report at i-FM.net

There’s a certain romance to travelling by train. Even if you’re heading out of London’s Euston for the Facilities Show at Birmingham’s NEC as I am this week, there’s a distant echo of more glamorous journeys taken on the Orient Express. There are quiet lounges to sit in if you choose to arrive early for your train, or unlike planes where you must queue for hours, you can simply arrive at the station and hop straight on.  The hiss of the train as it glides into the station is reminiscent of old steam trains. The slam of the door, the station manager’s whistle and the grind of the wheels starting to roll out of the station all feel incredibly civilised compared to waiting in a bright airport lounge or at a bus stop in the drizzle.

And once you grab that cherished forward-facing window table seat, plug in your laptop and phone, connect to the WiFi and spread out your papers, you’ve never had a better office. Whatsmore, you need never move. Whereas the tea-lady has long gone from most offices, the train catering trolley rattles down between the seats, catching the ankles of the unaware, but providing sustenance to those embroiled in reports and emails. And from lunchtime even that most treasured of items: the G&T. For while an open can of lager is frowned upon on London buses, thanks to Boris, it’s de rigeur to enjoy a little alcoholic refreshment on a train.

Even better,  generally terrible mobile reception means that most phone conversations are pointless, so you can work (and drink) in peace, safe from interruption both from your own colleagues and fellow passengers’ conversations with their office.

The train is one of the few public places where it’s also perfectly acceptable to fall asleep (though not to snore or lean on fellow passengers, so beware). And the soporific nature of the train means that while one minute you can be immersed in the last year’s sales figures, the next you’re gazing out of the window at the fields full of sheep rushing by and are quickly in the land of nod. Which, if you look at any of the research into working patterns, is hugely beneficial. A 10-minute power nap can leave you feeling refreshed and invigorated, it’s just a shame that it’s frowned on in the real office.

But there are of course downsides to train travel. It used to be the fearsome stench of the smoking carriage, where you could feel the cancer developing as you hurried through the smog. Even seasoned smokers would prefer to sit on the floor of the corridor outside rather than risk a Newcastle to London stretch puffing away with their fellow smokers. Now the most feared of travel experiences is the train loo. The glamour of travel ends the moment you reach the electronic door (which has a habit of opening an inappropriate moments) and the smell of what I hope is disinfectant but can never be quite sure.  No workplace is ever perfect.

Over the years I’ve written countless articles about new ways of working and they’ve all focused on the practical, tangible stuff – the buildings, the furniture and how the workplace itself has adapted to support people in their shiny new flexible world. I touched on culture change a fair bit, particularly looking at how the ‘management by presenteeism’ culture tended to be eschewed in favour of measuring people by their actual performance.

But what I hadn’t fully appreciated is the internal journey someone goes on when they learn to work intelligently, flexibily or whatever the latest buzzword becomes. We ask people to give up their desk stuffed with memorabilia, pedestals full of even more ‘stuff’ –their history – and give them a laptop and a range of ‘flexible working solutions’ and then tell them to get on with it.

Some organisations recognise what we’re asking of staff and do provide training in new ways of working, but many don’t  –  the budget’s all gone on the funky furniture and the workplace consultants.

And, as a result, many people struggle. They find that without the structure of day-to-day office life, they can’t manage their time properly, can’t discipline themselves to work and get distracted by other ‘stuff’. They miss the buzz of the office, and the familiarity it brings. And they find, because perhaps they haven’t got to grips with the new technology, that they can’t locate important files or connect to that key person. They find that without the workplace they can’t work – or at least not as well.

For people who work alone, or as part of a virtual team, it’s even worse. A while ago a senior consultant told me about someone who he’d employed who, after six months, admitted they found it very tough NOT to work in an office. They missed the possibilities that office life provides in abundance: to chat or not to chat; to have a quick impromptu meeting; to pop out at lunch with someone; or for a drink after work; to bump into colleagues in other departments or get the chance for that chat in the lift with the the big boss over from the US. That’s office life and when we dismiss the office as being something a bit naff and rather yesterday, we forget the essential role it fulfills as a social, as well as a work, hub.

As for me, after almost 20 years going to a defined place to work (whether that be old people’s home, library,  pub, shop or office) I’m now working from home most of the time. I didn’t have my first ‘work’ conversation until 10am today and I got a huge amount done with only the hamster to talk to. But I wouldn’t want to do it everyday. Tomorrow I go back into a workplace – albeit not my own – for a client meeting and I’m looking forward to it.  But there was one particular person I missed more than any other – IT support.  It suddenly dawned on me that when my computer struggles (and as a result I struggle) then the only person with the answer is me – or my ability to find the answer from the numerous online forums created by people for whom IT support is not an extension number but a virtual network of thousands of like-minded souls with similar problems.

Local authorities have a new money-making idea to make up for the funding shortfall from central government – to charge people such as personal trainers for using the parks as their workplace. Potentially even professional dog-walkers and nannies could have to pay. Hammersmith and Fulham parks department announced the move recently. Parks suffer from “recurring activities that took place on a commercial basis, such as private football coaching, which needed to be identified and charged”. The council said this month that use of the parks is free “however, as soon as personal trainers start charging and making money out of the park, they are running a business and would need a licence,” a report in FM World said.

Personal trainers have argued that they already pay for the upkeep of the parks through their council tax, but there is a reasonable argument that as they’re using them to generate commercial revenue, they could not necessarily do elsewhere (or would be charged to do so) then they should contribute some of that revenue to the park’s owner. Other businesses pay for the rent and upkeep of their own workplaces after all.

But how far should this go? If you happen to meet a business contact in a park and have a meeting, should you contribute a percentage of the potential revenue, or a fixed fee, to the park? What about people working on laptops, or reading documents in the park (particularly working mums waiting to pick up their children from a nearby school)? Surely a vibrant park, with all different parts of the community using it, is an essential pat of community life?

Personal trainers aside, this is just the beginning of a problem caused by flexible (or agile, intelligent) working. Now that technology, and many organisation’s cultures enable us to work anywhere and everywhere, that’s exactly what we do. People have business meetings and work in public spaces from parks, squares and beaches to museums and galleries. They pay £2 for a cup of coffee and then sit in Starbucks for four hours with what essentially amounts to a mobile workplace. Only the hole punch is missing. And they expect to get it for free.

Local parks need to encourage that trend (and compete with the Starbucks) by providing facilities, not just for the personal trainers but also for the flexible workers – well-organised cafés with really good coffee would encourage people in to spend money and work, generating revenue for the council and creating a vibrant, fun space for all parts of the community. And how about installing some office pods-style drop-in workplaces for people to use on a pay-as-you-go basis – not just in parks, but in other public spaces. Like the 20p you pay for up to 20 minutes in an automatic toilet, the council could charge a fee to use a pod for an hour or two. My guess is they’d be popular with the legions of people who are not coffee addicts, want to work without the distraction of overhearing everyone else’s conversations, and don’t want the distraction of home or the office. They could become the true third space.

I’ve just got my hands on Jason Hawkes’ London at Night,
a beautiful, glossy coffee-table book with stunning photographs of the capital in darkness. It is also a sad illustration of the light pollution lack in the UK’s biggest city. Because when I say “darkness’ I refer only to a lack of sunlight. Every image on every page is flooded with light. Some are street or car lights, or lights from bars and restaurants – all probably necessary to some degree. But the majority of brightness comes from office buildings.

And those where the reader is close enough to see individual chairs and desks appear to be completely deserted. The majority of the floors of the Willis Building at 51 Lime Street are lit and devoid of people; and this eerie emptiness can be found throughout the City, in the American-style office blocks in the Docklands and the More London complex near London Bridge which houses big names such as Ernst and Young and Norton Rose. The Gherkin is one of the few buildings which appears to be selective about its lighting requirements: a beacon of darkness in a city of shining lights.

Yes, cleaners would no doubt be accessing the floors of some of these buildings, and there would be some people working late in distant, unseen, corners. But the vast majority of the energy used is unnecessary, and costly to both the bottom line and the environment. When are designers, facilities professionals and building users going to wake up to the need to switch the lights off: either manually or through movement or time sensitive controls. It’s not as if the technology doesn’t exist. In theory we’re willing, but in practice it seems, we’re weak.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the unstoppable trend towards mobile working and how, wherever you go, there are people perched with their laptop or talking business on their mobile phone. I had two concerns: lack of free WiFi coverage and a lack of consideration for ergonomic comfort. The day after that piece was published in this magazine I was on the Stansted Express when two chaps got on and started discussing their employer, a well-known facilities management company. Not only did they openly name the organisation several times but they talked about what they believed to be fraudulent practices and made derogatory remarks about senior execs.

OK, this was an extreme example but it got me thinking about privacy and confidentiality for mobile workers. Sitting in a Costa Coffee a few days later I overheard two colleagues talking about a major client and the contract renewal process (including how they could add in ‘additional costly services’ once the deal had been signed). On the train to a meeting, a woman was on her mobile to a client talking about fairly confidential aspects of their relationship. And at a serviced office space, I was sharing a table with someone and could clearly see the business plan they were working on.

Ask around and you find that this is a common experience. One facilities professional told me how she was waiting in a hotel reception before a FMA meeting and couldn’t help but overhear a chap talking about a named FM client to a colleague over the phone. Once the call was finished, she introduced herself and said she was also in FM. He went white. Someone else told me about a recent train journey when he was sitting next to someone who was working on an internal document about a new software product which was going to market despite several known glitches. And of course the press is full of stories about memory sticks and confidential documents left where they shouldn’t have been. Next time you’re out and about, look and listen and I bet you’ll pick up some interesting titbits.

You would have thought that much of this is common sense. But I think workplace managers and HR professionals must also shoulder some of the blame. I don’t think we take the time to train people in new ways of working. We take them out of static workspaces, give them a laptop and a BlackBerry and expect them to understand the etiquette of working in public. But of course they often don’t and they continue to work in the way they did when they were in private workspaces. We need to explain how people using those spaces need to adapt their style of working – perhaps by using code names when talking about clients or your own business in public; not naming people individually but perhaps by their job title; and being careful what confidential documents you work on in certain environments.

I’m writing this on the tube and don’t think I’ve been overlooked…