The New Workplace
by Barbara Reinhold

When it comes to changes in the workplace, the news divots have been flying for years -- the arrival of the paperless office, workspaces that seem more like our kindergarten cubbies than real offices, the debates about flex time, and, more recently the demise of privacy. More than 60% of workers already work in cubicles,according to some estimates. What's to be believed? What will it feel like at work for you in the next several years? Regardless of how an office is set up, the most important concept for individual workers is to feel some measure of control over their workspaces and work lives. Here are some steps to help you do that:

Spend some time analyzing how you do your own best work. Is it alone, where you can concentrate and put your thoughts and words together just right? Or is it at your team's brainstorming meetings where great new ideas come together from the fragments of each other's thoughts? Or maybe some combination?

What about the feel of your space? Do you work best when things are cluttered and homey, with pictures and memorabilia around, or are your thoughts more crisp and targeted when the desktop is clean and things are in their place? Experiment with a little more and then a little less "stuff" around, and see what works best.

When do you seem to get your most work juice -- early in the morning, after lunch, around dinner time, around midnight? Chart your own energy highs and lows for at least a month to see if you can find a pattern.

Think about color and sound: What color makes you feel most energized? Is there any of it in your office or workspace? What about flowers? Do you like soft music in the background, do you enjoy the clicking of computers and printers, or is silence your thing?

Time alone versus time with teammates: How much of each seems to work best for you, not in terms of having fun, but in terms of getting your work done efficiently and effectively? (And how many of us realize the difference between those two?) When you have some clear answers in your head about those questions, then it's time for a pre-emptive strike. Remember the admonition of the man regarded by many as the strongest CEO in the country, GE's Jack
Welch: "Change before you have to." If everything is set up for you exactly as you like it (and will probably stay that way), say a prayer of thanks and get on with doing great work -- but do remember to look over your shoulder from time to time to see if the cubicle police are coming. But if your ruminations do flush out some unmet preferences for you, it's time for you to arrange what you can on your own and then come up with a strategy to ask your supervisor about
making some changes. Maybe you'll want to work just on your own situation, and maybe you'll want to think more broadly to workplace ergonomics and flexibility and get some co-workers involved. One way or the other, you and your supervisors ought to be considering some of these "work environment" issues: Can workers "personalize" their own workspaces to make them feel more in control? Do workers have the balance of group time and alone time that each one needs? Are group workspaces "neutral" so that the preferences of group members collide as little as possible? (In my office, for instance, almost half the team members are menopausal, which has made for some perplexing discussions of how to manage temperature control during heated brainstorming sessions.) Do workers have permission to vary their work times so as to take advantage of their own creative rhythms -- coming in late after staying late, working at home occasionally, or breaking up the workday with exercise or other activities so that they're at work during their most productive times. The responsibility here is twofold. First, people have to figure out what they really need, and they must be willing to persuade their supervisors that meeting their needs really serves the organization's bottom line. As international consultant Rowan Gibson observed, "Nobody can drive to the future on cruise control." Second, organizations need to be asking and listening more to what their employees know about themselves and need in the way of workplaces. That's the only way we'll get to where we must go -- an organizational philosophy that respects people and gets results at the same time.

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