For those of you who do not speak business jargon, I will explain.
A 100% agile workspace has no offices. None. Not even for directors and VPs. No cubicles. No assigned seating at all. If there is a desk phone at your seat, you have to log on every morning and log out at end of day because tomorrow you might be sitting somewhere different. Everything is open seating with an 18 inch high plastic divider between (most) workstations. Others are just like long tables with 4 or 5 computer ports per side.
The kool-aid explanation is such open workspaces foster collaboration and increase individual empowerment. They increase worker morale and job satisfaction. This is such bullshit that pointing it out makes one feel like Captain Obvious.
Why are we really doing this? Coincidently, we are condensing from three floors to one at the same time. So the inescapable fact that we are reducing our square foot per employee ratio by two-thirds must be a side benefit. Amirite?
This will suck big time. We will have 220+ people vying for 225 seats. Instead of 3 kitchens, we will have 1. Instead of 6 bathrooms, we will have 2. Empowerment and increased satisfaction my ass.
There are parts of my company that have that setup (we call it some other jargony thing though..."hoteling," although the actual arrangement is hot-desking). Fortunately, my area is not one of them, and our leadership is opposed. We will see how long we're able to hold out. Ours really would be to foster collaboration (blah, blah, blah) though, because we are not reducing our footprint at all. Rather, we're in the midst of a space expansion. But still, our area's cubicles are getting shrunk. They are currently larger-than-company-standard and are reducing to company-standard, because even with the work-from-home option and added space, we still don't have enough room for all our people who need physical space onsite.
"The trophy problem has become extreme."
*NM*
- 06/08/2019 11:51:20 PM
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- 05/08/2019 02:54:33 PM
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