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Choices in Workplace Design for High-End Knowledge Work
By Susan Cantrell, Accenture Institute for High Performance Business

How can an organization enable its high-end, interdependent knowledge workers to be as effective and productive as possible? In addition to technology and organizational levers, many companies today are experimenting with alternative types of workplace design to improve the performance of knowledge work for everything from chip design to portfolio management.

The proper use of workplace design, or the physical use of space, architecture, interior design and artifacts to support work, is purported to enable a range of benefits related to knowledge worker effectiveness, such as increased:

	attraction and retention of knowledge workers
	knowledge sharing and communication
	trust and teamwork
	creativity and innovation
	concentration and focus
	flexibility and responsiveness to change
	mobility
	number of hours worked
	commitment to the organization and sense of cultural unity
	respect for the individual knowledge worker's needs and idiosyncrasies

What are the key choices in workplace design confronted by managers of high-end knowledge workers? To answer this question, we've identified 11 major dimensions or tensions in workplace design and companies who have made specific choices in each to support knowledge worker effectiveness. Of course, the different dimensions may overlap in any real setting.

Choices in Workplace Design
Open or closed
The choice of open vs. closed must be made both for individual workplaces as well as for the delegation of space throughout the building as a whole. Open space is generally thought to encourage communication of knowledge, trust, teamwork, serendipitous contact (considered to be the basis of a company's most innovative and creative ideas) and cultural unity. Closed or private space is thought to encourage concentration, focus and, ironically enough, creativity again, as it's easier to escape a herd mentality in a room of one's own.

Individual work spaces can range from private offices (such as the offices of most professors and lawyers or the software developers at Microsoft) to partitioned or screened offices divided into cubicles (such as those found at Intel). They can also encompass open desks without walls or dividers (such as those found in many media, advertising and architecture firms, or companies like SEI Investments and Applied Biosystems).

In addition to individual workplaces, an organization may choose to dedicate varying percentages of open space either to fostering informal communication (as British Airways, Ford and Boeing's St. Louis Leadership Center do by creating "main streets," informal sitting areas, wide stairwells and escalators, and communal kitchens or coffee bars) or to group and teamwork (e.g., Steelcase has one entire building dedicated to meeting the needs of global teams).

One work setting or multiple work settings
Increasingly, managers of high-end knowledge workers are choosing to offer their workers a range of work settings. Not only does this enable knowledge workers to obtain the benefits of both open and closed environments, but it also enables increased flexibility and perhaps improved recruiting, retention and productivity based on respect for the individual knowledge worker's idiosyncrasies. Firms like Accenture, Fidelity and Compaq are adopting an "activity-based planning approach," which provides knowledge workers with multiple work settings (such as small private offices encircling a common area in a "caves and commons" approach, group offices, informal brainstorming areas, presentation areas, library areas, etc.) to be used on an as-needed basis.

Alternatively, settings may range beyond the traditional office to include places like a knowledge worker's home, a satellite or hub office, a business center, a car, an airport or even a child's baseball game. A number of companies are experimenting with varying degrees of such "virtual work" programs, including Merrill Lynch, which has instituted a telecommuting program for its financial professionals to work at home from one to five days a week, and Sun Microsystems, which has deployed infrastructure to enable its employees to work anywhere, anytime, using any device. Virtual work may enable improved responsiveness to clients and changing business needs, increased number of hours worked due to shorter commute times, and reduced costs. However, if not carefully managed, it may also cause productivity to decline when face-to-face team interaction is required.

Fixed or flexible
Many companies are also experimenting with flexibility through the use of movable furniture or temporary structures to encourage teamwork and responsiveness to changing business needs. Knowledge workers at Oxygen Media and SEI Investments, for example, can form on-the-fly teams by moving their wheel-equipped furniture and unplugging their voice and data cords. Other firms have movable partitions that also adjust in height. And when Monsanto needed to quickly form a 45-member team, researchers erected a temporary outdoor "tent" that can last for up to 15 years.

Uniform or customized
In many companies, especially in investment banking and law firms, offices are customized to reflect hierarchy and status. This can be an attractive recruiting tool. In contrast, companies like Intel have adopted the "universal planning" approach, which seeks to eliminate hierarchy and reduce the costs of turnover through making offices and facilities as uniform as possible. Still other companies, like Nortel Networks, are customizing space not based on status, but on the type of work performed. The company has identified eight types of teams and corresponding workplace design "baseline assemblies," which are intended to be even further customized by the team. Increased respect for the uniqueness of each team and type of worker is thought to increase productivity, as it is assumed that only the knowledge worker knows how he or she works best.

Designed by experts or designed by workers
For similar reasons, some firms ask their knowledge workers to participate in workplace design. Firms like Monitor, whose consultants have highly idiosyncratic work styles, have asked their high-end knowledge workers to fully participate in design decisions, treating them as they would a consulting engagement. Other firms (like the Dutch insurance firm Centraal Beheer) even encourage their knowledge workers to bring in furniture from home and design their offices exactly as they would like them to be.

Shared or dedicated resources
Companies like Ernst & Young and Chiat Day have experimented with new ways of distributing and sharing resources such as office space. "Hoteling," "free addresses" or "non-territorial planning" are just some of the words used to describe a system in which knowledge workers do not have dedicated offices, but rather are assigned them on a temporary and as-needed basis. Since many professionals – such as consultants, who often work at client sites, or sales executives, who may travel much of the time – spend limited time in the office, the goal is usually to have fewer offices than people in order to reduce costs.

Other variations on this theme include shared workstations, in which two or more people share a particular workstation, and either dedicated or non-dedicated team areas. Frequently hoped-for benefits in addition to cost savings include knowledge dissemination and increased creativity (predicated on the fact that people will randomly sit by one another and communicate) as well as increased time spent with clients.

Centralized or decentralized
Whereas some organizations believe that housing as many employees as possible in a centralized location (even on one floor, if possible) can improve corporate unity and communication, others believe that many smaller, decentralized locations will help foster an entrepreneurial, take-charge spirit and group identity and cohesion. IDEO, for example, carves out separate spaces called "studios" for groups of between 8 and 35 employees. Any particular building may have between one and two studios, and each city may host one or several buildings. Similarly, the consulting firm Viant caps each building's capacity at 200 to foster group unity and a sense of personal power and initiative.

Mixed or homogenous neighborhoods
Who you sit next to and near to is thought by many to be an important factor in increasing the effectiveness and productivity of knowledge workers. One manufacturing firm, for example, has co-located product developers with people in supporting services such as styling and service in "mixed neighborhoods" in order to increase communication and reduce time-to-market. Steelcase, a corporate furniture firm, has developed an alternative to seating according to function by experimenting with seating according to individual personality. Its "floorcasting" approach categorizes individuals into "hubs," "gatekeepers" and "pulsetakers," who, when strategically mapped and placed, may enable an organization to improve communication flow and even its knowledge workers' concentration and creativity.

Hot or generic locations
It may be even more important to look outside an organization's walls and place high-end knowledge workers in strategic cities or locations. Annalee Saxenian, for example, has documented how knowledge sharing and physical co-location in Silicon Valley helped to improve the effectiveness and competitive edge of the region's high-tech companies. And many advertising and publishing knowledge workers, and even executives in organizations such as Ford's premier auto group, insist on being in cities like New York and London in order to spot trends and encourage creativity.

Transparent or opaque
To improve communication, trust and openness between knowledge workers, many companies have tried to make the activities performed in a building as transparent as possible through the use of glass doors, signs and labels. Organizations like Walt Disney have taken this a step further by encouraging the technique of "displaying," or placing work in progress on walls with invitations for people to comment on the work with sticky notes. Finally, the use of corporate artifacts – like Nike's display of shoes designed and used in winning athletic competitions – can be used to make the corporate identity and history transparent, thereby motivating and inspiring high-end knowledge workers by giving them a common sense of unity and identity.

Conclusion
In conclusion, careful attention to workplace design may enable a range of benefits that can influence the productivity and effectiveness of the high-end knowledge worker. Managers seeking to maximize this valuable corporate resource must be aware of the fundamental choices and trade-offs between different types of workplace designs so as to choose the most appropriate design for them.

Susan Cantrell is a research fellow at the Accenture Institute for High Performance Business (ISC). She can be reached at susan.cantrell@accenture.com. To read more research from the ISC, and to sign up to receive its monthly electronic newsletter, visit Accenture Institute for High Performance Business.

© 2001 Accenture