No Offices

Type: Organizational

Problem: Offices are expensive.

Forces: There's not enough room in the building, can't move.

Supposed Solution: Remove all the partitions, all the walls, have open plan offices. No-one gets their own office. Except HR people. And director level people. And anyone else who whines and has a title. Managers usually.

Resulting Context: No-one has an office. The people who need quiet to think are in something the size of an aircraft hanger filled with noise. No-one has anywhere to go to have meetings. You can't book meeting rooms because people have already co-opted the meeting rooms to use as offices. Of course the room is EMPTY because those people are out having meetings elsewhere. But you can't use it because it's BOOKED. There are offices, but those offices are someone's, so they can't be used to have meetings, even if that someone is a manager and therefore hardly ever in there because their job is to be talking to people...

Examples in Practice: Every British company. Here's a good variant: Unichem Ltd. At their head office, proles (that's you and me) aren't allowed reserved parking spaces. They have more employees than parking spaces. The road outside is busy and has lots of no-parking. So there's this constant battle to find anywhere to park. Sales, of course, get to have their own reserved parking space each. They stand mostly empty because salespeople are out visiting customers every day and in fact don't come in to the office very often...

--KatieLucas

Or instead one might conclude it is best to consider using the HomeOffice, or the VirtualOffice.

CategoryOrganization