Cost stripping Versus Targeted Spending

ASID ICON-New Ways of Working
American Society of Interior Designers Magazine
page: 32, 33

"Mobility and the technological literacy that fules it are ingrained in today's student workers and the workers od the future".

Cost Stripping Versus Targeted Spending

• Such changes in how space is allocated and used don't come easily to people who have spent their working lives aspiring to a "real" office. Such changes come more naturally to younger employees who have worked this way as students in the recent past. But even with younger employees, companies must decide between two very different paths. One is "cost-stripping," the cut-costs-at-any-cost path, in which firms use hoteling to reduce the corporate space requirements, and the workstations they provide are as basic and stripped down as possible. The alternative approach is "targeted spending."

• Employees' desire to work in a distinctive "place," rather than a bland, dull, anonymous area, was satisfied by creating a unique space for the group as a whole. Far ahead of its time, the space was no more expensive than a conventional office and it improved morale and productivity (sales).
  

Working Smart

• Quality companies accept that the world in which they operate constitutes an integrated system. A Porsche without breaks isn't a great car. neither is a workscape that has great furniture but inadequate technology, or one with lots of terrific places for employees to choose to work, but a management philosophy and corporate culture that discourages people from working in the full range of available settings.

• Cost and flexibility are a foundation on which to build tomorrow's offices, but by themselves these factors are insufficient. By definition, a foundation by itself is not only unfinished but uninhabitable. To succed in the 21st century, office planning and design need to create spaces that are not just "functional," but welcoming, sustainable and flexible.