Our access control system records every entry to head office, and last spring I asked for a year of it. On an average day about sixty percent of our desks are used. Nobody experiences an average day. On Mondays around a third of the building comes in, on Fridays about a sixth, and on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays it is close to full, with most teams choosing Wednesday for their day together.
Almost everything my department had provided for that building was sized for the average. The wireless on the second floor, planned for its long term occupancy, struggled every Wednesday lunchtime. The nine rooms with video equipment were booked solid three days a week and nearly empty the other two, while the large meeting room with the old projector sat unused because nobody could join from a depot. Docking stations ran out by half past nine midweek. And on Fridays we heated, lit and cooled a building for a sixth of its people, which somebody from our carbon reporting noticed before I did.
I think this is where office technology is heading for the next decade, at least in companies like ours. Head office is turning into a venue that people visit to meet each other, and the working unit of that venue is no longer a desk. It is a room in which some people are present and others are not, where the quality of the experience is set by the worst connection, not the best chair. And the load comes in peaks chosen by team habits rather than a steady working week.
We have started to plan for that. Forty desks on the second floor became eight rooms, each equipped so that the person joining from a depot hears and sees as well as the person at the table. Desk telephones went, apart from reception. The wireless was redesigned for Wednesday, not for the average. Room booking data now feeds our capacity planning in the same way network utilisation does. And we have agreed with facilities that the top floor closes on Fridays, which costs nothing and has already saved more than the room conversions cost to run.
For thirty years I sized the office by counting the people who worked in it. I now size it by the busiest day and treat the quiet days as an opportunity to spend less.
– Serguey Shinder
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