 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Alternative Ways of Working Alternative Workplace Strategies (AWS) Glossary In Office Teaming Teaming refers to a situation where in order that staff are able to better communicate and collaborate with others in their team, the workplace is designed to incorporate physical elements that encourage these activities. For example clustering of the workgroup areas along an interior "street" off which shared or centralised facilities such as meeting rooms and coffee lounges are located. (Vischer, J. C, Workspace Strategies, 1996, p33) Non territorial Space Space that has not been personalised or labelled; is expressed through non-closure; and does not have distinctive items in individual workspaces. (Vischer, J. C, Workspace Strategies, 1996, p33) Hot Desking/Free Address Hot desking refers to the practice where individual desks are shared by two or more people. It is used when staff are generally not in the office at the same time and would not have a conflicting need for the same space at the same time. Examples of situations where hot desking is appropriate are:
Advantages
Disadvantages
Issues
Group Address Hotelling Hotelling is a concept where staff who spend considerable time out of the office do not have a fixed workpoint and are allocated a space on a booked basis. Staff would usually have some sort of mobile storage for their files and papers that would be kept in a central store. This mobile would be rolled out to the booked space when required. Examples of situations where hotelling is appropriate include:
Advantages
Disadvantages
Issues
Club Club organisations are for knowledge work, ie for office work that transcends data-handling because it can only be done through exercising considerable judgement and intelligence. Typically, work in such organisations is both highly autonomous and highly interactive. The pattern of occupancy tends to be intermittent over an extended working day. A wide variety of time-shared task-based settings serve both concentrated individual and group interactive work. Individuals and teams occupy space on an 'as-needed' basis, moving around it to take advantage of a wide range of facilities. The ration of sharing depends on the precise content of the work activity and the mix of in-house versus out-of-office working, possibly combining tele-working, home-working, and working at client and other locations. Typical organisations include creative firms such as advertising and media companies, information technology companies, and many management consultancies. What such organisations have in common are highly intellectual staff, open-ended problem-solving, and a constant access to a vast array of shared knowledge. (Duffy, F., The New Office, 1997, p65) Den Den offices are associated with group work, typically highly interactive but not necessarily highly autonomous. Den spaces are designed for group working and often provide a range of several simple settings, usually arranged in an open-plan office or in group rooms. While the settings are normally designed on the assumption that individual office workers occupy their 'own' desks, such groups also like to have access to local ancillary space for meetings and project work, and for shared equipment such as printers and copiers and other special technical facilities. Tasks are often short-term and intense. Sometimes they are more long-term; and they always involve much team effort. Typical work requiring dens includes design, insurance processing, some media work, particularly radio and TV, and advertising. (Duffy, F., The New Office, 1997, p64) Cell Cell offices accommodate individual, concentrated work with little interaction. Highly autonomous people occupy them in an intermittent, irregular pattern with extended working days - and often work elsewhere some of the time (possibly at home, at a client's office, or on the road). Each person typically occupies either an enclosed cell or a highly screened workstations in a more open-plan office. Each individual work place must be designed to provide for a complex variety of tasks. The autonomous pattern of work, implying sporadic and irregular occupancy, means that the potential exists for such work settings to be shared. Typical occupiers of cellular offices included accountants, lawyers, management and employment consultants, and computer scientists. (Duffy, F., The New Office, 1997, p63) Hive Hives are characterised by individual, routine-process wok with low levels of interaction and low autonomy. Hive office workers sit continuously at simple workstations for long periods of time on a regular nine-to-five schedule. Variants of hive offices include 24-hour shift working. Workplace settings are typically uniform, open-plan, screened, and impersonal. Typical organisations or work groups include telesales, data-entry or processing, routine banking, financial and administrative operations, and basic information services. (Duffy, F., The New Office, 1997, p62) Activity Setting An office model where the floor design provides
staff with different spaces to go to to do different types of work.
Staff still have their own space, but different types of spaces
are available that suit different types of work. Rather than reducing
the total office space, the Activity Setting Model provides a redistribution
of space. Telecommute Teleworking Teleworking describes an arrangement where staff in organisations work for one or more days a week at a location away from their usual workplace. The location could be at their home, at a telecentre or a mobile office. The employees use technology often supplied by the organisation to carry out their work and to link them electronically to the organisation. Advantages
Disadvantages
Issues
Telecentre A telecentre is an office near the employees' homes to which the employees regularly report to work. It looks like any other office, with desks, computers, telephones and meeting facilities. The benefits of a telecentre over telecommuting (working from home) are that shared resources allow for more access to office equipment such as photocopiers and quality printers, better computer access through dedicated lines, and provide the social stimulus that is absent for the lone telecommuter. Telecentres also allow for on-site supervision when the nature of the work or security considerations make working from home impractical. Virtual Office Virtual working is the concept of ‘technology
enabled working’ that enhances people’s lifestyles by
allowing a work/life balance. The age we are in is considered “a
new intellectual industrial revolution” and technological
advances are generating great changes. Newly e-enabled, workers
are not only working in traditional office space – they are
space-sharing, intensifying the use of their current space and working
from home – and all these options are cutting operational
costs and increasing peoples’ productivity. BUT WHAT DOES IT ACTUALLY MEAN?! The company has a physical location, but employees have no assigned desk/offices. Employees may have day-lockers and "check out" a desk for the day in a hotelling system, they may set up an "office" in their hotel or at home, or somewhere considered ‘alternative’ (a well known IT company has a lake within their grounds for employees to work by - whilst fishing - and network cables are provided by their chairs on the banks). Obviously its’ not for everyone, it’s for the workforce that are / can be mobile. Desk-restricted people will still be needed to maintain and run the ‘base unit‘ with the mobile staff orbiting like satellites. In the modern day world, people are working longer hours – and as a sweetener, various employers allow some, or all of this work to take place at the choice of the employee. Staying at home to look after the baby, or wait in for the plumber, no longer means ‘downtime’ for the boss – infact it is considered that some types of work are better off done in these alternative environments as there are many benefits. Taking the happiness of staff as a given and putting it aside, it also creates flexibility,means they tend to put in longer hours as they don’t have to commute - therefore there’s higher productivity; provides a client focused approach – with knowledge sharing databases and instant PC access at the client’s place of work (no more “I forgot to download that file for the presentation! and limits un-wasted office space”. Don’t be misguided - Virtual working can have its downsides – there is a period of transition and people can feel disjointed from the organisation – Physically, Psychosocially and from Management; some staff can feel enraged that they no longer have ‘a’ desk to call home; and sound working practices need to be in place to make it work effectively. The technological side of things needs to be readily supported and a help line should be available for staff should there be IT problems that can be managed over the phone.
Integrated workplace planning Business systems and organisational support must be integrated sufficiently to allow seamless combinations of workplace solutions, "office" and "out of the office" generally progressing from a geographic to client based model:
Outcomes Linking broad aspects of the workplace:
|
