Office cubicles are so 90s – for the hip company, flexible workspaces where employees find comfy chairs to plonk themselves down and hook up their laptops (or not, if they’re working wirelessly) is the name of the game these days. That’s the way it works in Cisco’s Building 14 in Silicon Valley, reports Mercury News.
The Merc quotes Cynthia Pham, a cubeless Cisco program manager as saying:
“Cube walls acted as barriers […]Cubes were nice to . . . lock yourself away from the rest of the world and get some work done. But a lot of work requires interactions with one or more individuals. In this open work space, we can see each other and interact easier.”
The Merc adds:
The change isn’t cheap. Architects say the average cost of redesigning the workplace is $100 a square foot. That means altering one of Cisco’s 50,000-square-foot floors, including new furniture, would cost about $5 million.
Cisco says the benefit is the ability to have more workers work in the same space that would’ve been taken up by big cubes. For instance, Cisco has 310 people working in cubes in one floor, but 420 workers working in the flexible workspaces. Also, productivity is up because the set up makes it easier for impromptu meetings with colleagues around the builing.
See photos of Cisco’s flexible work spaces at the Merc.
Do you work in a flexible workspace environment – do you find it better than life in a cube? Or wouldn’t this work in your team?
Further reading:
AT&T calls teleworkers back to cubicle life
Green buildings make employees see red
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