Working in 4-part Harmony
July 31, 2008 Office Insight, Trends
If you haven’t had a chance yet, take some time to check out the Steelcase 360 ezine. 360 is a news and knowledge publication loaded with Steelcase insights on work related topics.
About a year ago, the lead 360 article was titled “Working in Four-Part Harmony.” The topic, how real estate workspace is allocated given the mobile workforce, is still relevant today. Do you have a permanent workspace to call home or are you like many of us who sit around a big table with a team?
The full article discusses how to take the four work patterns described below into account when designing an office, but if your lunch is short ( another growing trend) then a cliffs note version is below.
Working in Four-Part Harmony (summary)
More than 2 billion people now use cell phones along with an estimated 50 million PDA’s and 3.2 million BlackBerries®. We send an astounding 9 trillion emails a year. Thanks to this technology, we are a mobile workforce. We are away from our desks 40 to 60 percent of the time in meetings, in collaborative spaces, at our 3rd place (defined by Roy Oldenburg as public places like pubs, cafés and parks where people gather to meet with others), or even taking the occasional vacation day (it could happen, right?).
Not only are we more mobile now than ever before, but we work differently too. There are four primary ways of working and we engage in many or all of these work types every single day.
First, people work alone.
Whether a dedicated workstation or just a workstation for the day, it’s the individual’s home base, or “I” space. It’s where we focus, think, write and concentrate on individual tasks.
Second, people work in collaboration with another person.
People drop by each other’s workstation and the “I” space becomes “you + me” space where information is shared, ideas are traded, decisions are made, and tasks move a few steps closer to completion.
These two ways of working make up nearly 80% of our work day.
We work in small groups of three to five people and larger groups of six or more.
The more people you have in a group, the more ideas are generated and the greater likelihood of reaching the best decision. However, more ideas means more information has to be communicated and discussed, and adding complexity and time to the process.
These four different ways of working—alone, in pairs, and in small and large groups—are how knowledge work gets done. The workplace must effectively support all four.
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