Info 202 Fall 2011

Article: It's Not About the Furniture: Cubicles, Continued

There is more to an office environment than just some desks and chairs. The article above describes the changes happening in the modern workplace and how the past methodologies of organizing an office, primarily cubicles, may not create the ideal collaborative and emotionally fulfilling environment needed by today’s workforce. When I think of a large office I typically think of a bunch of cubicles (probably inspired from the movie “Office Space”). As the article describes, the man credited with creating the cubicle, Robert Propst, hoped that the cubicle would create a more fluid and flexible environment for knowledge workers. From a managerial point of view, cubicles can be a very nice way to segment various offices, or groups while providing the flexibility of changing the layout for any number of reasons, from physical proximity of workers to segmentation of business processes. However, the cubicle can be viewed in a negative context as well, especially from the point of view of the entering workforce. Some may view the cubicle as a symbol for lack of job security, or promotion of temporary workers, or a detachment of the worker from the company, meaning that a worker is “dispensable.” Cubicles were designed to promote the individual worker but today’s projects increasingly require collaborative efforts from many workers. This requires new concepts on how to organize a modern office to increase worker efficiencies and promote a positive working environment, ranging from small businesses to large corporations.

The article describes how the company Herman Miller uses a proprietary technology that tracks the usage of office space. By using the data generated by this tracking system, an office can have a layout that promotes maximum usage rather than separation of the worker or business function, as would be the case of a standard cubicle layout. Of course the desks and chairs are still needed, but how the desks and chairs are organized can have a profound impact on the collaborative environment of a company. Campbell McKellar, the founder of Loosecubes, takes another approach and in some ways offers another definition of the workplace. She points to the fact that a large portion of the U.S. workforce will be on contract in the future, and therefore the concept of everyone working in one location may not be ideal for certain businesses. In this regard she proposes the idea where the contract worker can rent office space from companies who have the space to rent. This allows a worker to change his or her environment as they see fit and promotes autonomy, which may be a positive concept for many of today’s modern workers. Although this may become the next trend in workspace organization, the irony is that it seems that cubicles or individual working spaces is the ideal fit for the next generation of contract workers.