Mr. CEO, tear down those walls!

Modifying yesterday’s fluorescent lighted egg cartons into sunlit emporiums of collaboration

Story by Lee Marie Reinsch

 DILBERT, YOUR BLAND BLANK PARTITION may soon be relegated to history: The days of the cubicle farm could be going the way of the family farm.

To paraphrase the late President Ronald Reagan, “Mr. CEO, tear down these walls.”

As work and the workforce evolve, so do the chambers housing them. Northeast Wisconsin office specialists say a new generation of employees, a tight economy, and concern for the environment are combining to shift yesterday’s fluorescent-lighted egg cartons into sunlit emporiums of collaboration.

Beyond the Boomer factor

“BABY BOOMERS AREN’T RETIRING; they are staying on, so their companies need to cope with an aging workforce,” said Curt Beilke, president of Systems Furniture, Inc. in De Pere.

That makes plenty of lighting and adjustable furniture crucial. Office chairs need to support arthritic backs as well as the leg-jiggling of those in the ADHD crowd. Monitor stands and keyboard trays allow workers to make their work station their very own.

Ergonomics is all well and good, but modern-day changes to the workplace go beyond that. For once, Boomers aren’t driving this societal movement - Generation Y is.

Generation Y includes people born in the 1980s and 1990s. They grew up with computers and cable news. A mouse is a necessity, not a pest. A monitor does not patrol the hallway at school, and a browser isn’t someone flipping through magazines at the grocery store.

Starting with daycare, Generation Y has been herded from one group activity to another, from play dates to language camp to soccer. This generation of social networkers is used to input from others, and they don’t see why that can’t be the case at work, too.

“They like an open environment, so companies are bringing horizons down,” Beilke said.

That means lower partitions between cubicles – or in many cases doing away with cubicles altogether. It can mean more glass than wall between workers and departments, or low glass dividers like those that separate desk areas at two of Systems Furniture’s clients. Nicolet National Bank has low opaque-glass dividers, and The Business Bank has low clear-glass dividers.

Steve Brown, president of Northstar  Contracting, Inc., in Little Chute, sees “fewer closed-door offices, lots of pods, team work structures, open work plans, and not so many fixed walls” instead of individual cubicles.

The idea is to make communicating easier.

Lower panels allow workers to “pop up and talk to people, ask for input,” said Jim Gaerthofner, owner of Nordon Business Environments of Appleton.

Collaboration, not competition

THE WORD “COLLABORATION” pops up a lot when people talk about Generation Y in the workplace.

“Younger people want more collaborative spaces – they’re more accustomed to that,” Gaerthofner said. “Historically, I would produce a certain product to a certain point and hand it off to you, and you would do your part.”

But now there’s much more joining of forces: “It’s a team working on a particular project,” he said.

He admits the open-concept office is very much a generational trend.

“The older the worker, the more inclined they are to want more privacy,” Gaerthofner said.

Gone are the long hallways with private offices on each side. The corner office may not have disappeared entirely, but there’s less need for it, and if it does exist, it likely has a glass wall or window.

Workers may not be plopped lunchroom-style into the same giant room, but those who work in the same department ideally can see each other. Those whose tasks interconnect have common spaces to update each other and hold informal meetings.

Conference rooms aren’t segregated anymore - they’ve turned into “tabling areas” where discussions take place or employees work together, Beilke said.

“The purchasing people, engineering people and sales people all have a spot to get together and discuss things, not always in those formal meetings, which is how we worked in years past,” Beilke said.

Despite what your second-grade teacher may have told you about talking in class, quality can increase when people work together, Gaerthofner said.

“Maybe somebody has a suggestion you hadn’t thought about or someone will catch something you didn’t see,” Gaerthofner said.

Workspaces: Places to recharge, not remain

THE TREND IN WORKSPACES is that they’re shrinking. The humongous 2-ton desks with columns of drawers on the bottom have been replaced by streamlined stations that more resemble card tables. If your cube is already the size of a Triscuit, this may instill panic. But that’s only because you’re probably used to the old way of viewing a workspace – as a home away from home.

Today’s work stations are just that – stations to check in to but not places at which to spend all day, say these specialists.

 “Younger workers are working on their BlackBerrys and iPhones or they will take their notebook computers into the lunchroom to work there all day,” Beilke said. For this reason, more companies are having Wi-Fi built in.

Furniture is reflecting this trend. The Generation by Knoll chair is adjustable for Baby Boomers, Generation X and Y. Lounge chairs have tablet arms that roll around.

Factors that used to dictate room layout, such as traffic flow and traffic patterns, aren’t as relevant anymore.

Even though people in call centers or customer service areas remain pretty much tethered to their desks, they still need visual contact with their supervisors. “They can wave their hand if there’s a problem and the supervisor can come over” in an open-concept room, Gaerthofner said.

Even while walls may be coming down between onsite workers, workers often no longer have to be onsite to do their jobs. Technology has enabled the remote office to emerge more each day.

“It’s not necessary that departments have the adjacencies that they once did,” Gaerthofner said.

Instead of getting together over a printout, people can view the same image from their respective computers.

Enviro-mentality

MOTHER NATURE IS EXERTING HER INFLUENCE on office design, construction and operations. Beilke is seeing more buildings made of recycled products and materials that have a lower impact on the environment than typical construction.

“We are seeing less metal that is plated,” Beilke said. “We’re seeing more metal finishes that are painted because paints are water soluble and don’t produce off-gases.”

Some carpet manufacturers are offering recycling of carpeting in the purchase price. “They’ll recycle it when you’re done and it will be made into backing for other carpet,” he said.

The state Department of Natural Resources Northeast Regional Headquarters near Green Bay estimates it saved $250,000 in office furniture last year by using recycled office furniture. The old furniture was salvaged, refurbished and reupholstered with 100 percent recycled fabric. Reusing the furniture kept the old desks and chairs of 160 employees out of the landfill.

Many companies in northeast Wisconsin have been quietly reclaiming and repurposing materials for years:

ν Security Roofing in Appleton recycles asphalt roof shingles from its customers and has the petroleum extracted from them.

ν Presto GeoSystems in Appleton makes sidewalks and paved areas out of recycled glass pieces.

ν Urban Evolutions of Menasha salvages barn boards from old farms and turns them into hardwood floors for companies such as Urban Outfitters, LL Bean and GAP.

People want to create a smaller “real estate footprint,” Gaerthofner said.

“If they are leasing space, they want to lease less space, whether they are downtown Green Bay or downtown Chicago,” Gaerthofner said.

Getting rid of floor space, reducing a lease payment, and getting facilities as small as possible while retaining functionality is key, Gaerthofner said.

Green is hot, eco-friendly is red-hot, as are LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) or at least LEED-like projects. Gaerthofner cites a study of business leaders that found that if they were to build in the next few years, they would aim for environmental precepts but not necessarily get certified LEED.

“Building a green or LEED-type building without going through the LEED process may be the trend,” Gaerthofner said, citing the expense, paper work and red tape of LEED certification as deterrents.

Self-professed cynic Steve Brown also sees the down side of LEED-certification, but says it’s still hot.

“Everyone is scrambling to do it, but some of the (requirements) are questionable,” he said, citing points awarded to companies for installing bike racks even if no employees ride bikes to work and points awarded for using materials imported from 499 miles away but not 501 miles away.

He said he agrees with the overall intent of LEED design, which is to save energy and create less waste, but that some of the ambiguities and technicalities amount to “shenanigans.”

“Green building is going to be a redundant term in the near future, because every building will be green,” Gaerthofner said.

The enlightenment period

OPEN-CONCEPT OFFICES are often brighter than their cubicle-farm predecessors. That’s led office designers to take a new look at lighting.

“You used to have a row of 68-inch (cubicle) panels with a shelf in each that blocks the light,” Gaerthofner said.

With lower walls, glass dividers or no walls between desks, people across the room from a window can benefit from daylight. There’s nothing to block the overhead lighting anymore and less of a need for lights on individual desks.

“Going forward, we are seeing more harvesting of sunlight and natural light,” Gaerthofner said.

Only now, it’s not called “opening the shades” or taking the bag off your head, but referred to with the hip term “day lighting.”

“Workplace studies show an increase in productivity when people have the opportunity for day  lighting, and schools academically have seen improved scores,” Gaerthofner said.

“Smart buildings” have sensors regulating electric light levels according to daylight levels.

“Depending on the time of day, people are finding they can turn off lights in some parts of the building and nobody even notices,” Gaerthofner said.

Hmmm. Let’s summarize: Big windows. Lots of light. Open spaces. Doesn’t sound cheap to heat, does it?

While clients are asking for open-concept office spaces with loads of glass, they also expect them to be energy-efficient, Brown said.

“They want it both ways,” Brown said.

Whereas at his house, Brown and his wife put on another sweater instead of turning up the thermostat, today’s young people scoff at the idea.

“The 25-year-olds want nothing to do with that,” Brown said. 

The solution? Brown said he’s seeing more businesses opt for ductless mini-splits, which are wall-mounted heating and cooling devices that can heat or cool a 5,000 square-foot space with less energy and more quickly than a traditional furnace system.

Dollars and common sense

LESS OFFICE SPACE usually means lower utility bills and lower leases. Consolidations, acquisitions and downsizing of some companies often means headquarters are located elsewhere. Fewer executive offices mean less of a call for the big fancy desk and make-a-statement maple bookcases.

“There still is the need for private offices, but we certainly see less of those,” Gaerthofner said. “Here in the Valley, we’ve had more headquarters that have left and the top executives aren’t here anymore. From Thrivent to Kimberly Clark to R.R. Donnelley, you are seeing the offices here become regional centers and therefore, the top decision-makers are no longer here, so the need for that type of privacy is no longer as apparent as it once was.”

Gaerthofner says he doesn’t have hard data to support his observations as a growing national trend but it’s just what he’s noticed over his 37 years in the business his father started in 1960.

With a slender economy, it’s no surprise that even if companies aren’t saying the word lean, they’re instituting some of its philosophies.

Denny McCullough, a consultant with Optima Associates in De Pere, defines lean as “identifying and removing process waste through team-based problem solving.”

Process waste is “anything the customer wouldn’t want to pay for if he knew it was included in your cost,” McCullough said. Like the three extra copies you made of his invoice because you hit the wrong button on the copier.

Lean is a tool, a strategy for approaching problems a company might be having, McCullough said.

Implemented by the people who do the work and not by management, lean is about working smarter, not harder, McCullough said.

One of his clients was a company that repaired and reconditioned products. Generally, the company’s customers could expect to wait 12 to 14 weeks to get their item back. Upon examining the steps involved in the process, McCullough’s people found that the actual repair of the products took 48 hours of actual hands-on work. The rest of the time was taken up by bureaucracy, inspections, signing-off on inspections and assorted administration-type tasks.

“(Workers) were waiting for things to arrive in their inbox and going from floor to floor inspecting work that was inspected by other people,” McCullough said.

A brainstorming session with employees resulted in an unconventional idea from a female fan of the television show, “E.R.”

“She said they have a triage team to treat crash victims at the scene,” McCullough said. “We decided to treat the products coming in as crash victims.”

Long story short, the company ended up cutting its wait time dramatically and attracting a lot more business by doing paperwork and preliminaries for the products on the scene, rather than sending it up the chain of command.

“We didn’t get that idea from what we knew about the product, and it wasn’t from that industry,” McCullough said. “We got it from another industry altogether – healthcare.”

An alumna of Ripon College, Lee Marie Reinsch is a freelance writer based in Green Bay.