Office sweet office ...Trends include executive suites, hoteling

Poet Ogden Nash described the office of 1935 in his poem, "Let George Do It, If You Can Find Him."

Here is a pen and here is a pencil,

Here's a typewriter, here's a stencil,

Here is a list of today's appointments,

And all the flies in all the ointments,

The daily woes that a man endures

Take them, George, they're yours!

Fifty-four years later, it is doubtful that poor old George would even recognize the office environment of the '90s. Today's workspace, be it a highly desirable corner office or a lowly cubicle, is totally bereft of stencils or even typewriters. Moreover, that list of daily appointments is likely to be on a Palm Pilot (though the bug metaphor isn't totally outdated.)

Ever since Kinko's tried to make the word office into a verb, there has been a multitude of new concepts and high-tech words added to the business lexicon: tele-worker, hoteling, free address to name a just a few.

It should come as no surprise, then, that one of the best ways to keep abreast of current office planning trends is by surfing the Web. Here are a few sites to get you started. Take them, they're yours!

www.amcity.com/washington/stories/111797/focus10.html

Trends in office planning are a lot like trends in fashion or automobiles. Today's trendsetter can easily become tomorrow's has-been. This Washington Business Journal article points out the need to match design solutions to an organization's corporate culture.

To survive trend changes, the correct office design often will be a synthesis of concepts reflecting the many elements that contribute to that overall corporate culture.

www.amcity.com/seattle/stories/040797/smallb1.html

This article, from the Puget Sound Business Journal, describes an executive suites company. Thirty years ago a secretarial service found that it didn't need all the offices in the space that it was leasing and decided to sublet these offices.

Before long this became the company's primary business and today has grown from 12 offices to 160 offices occupying two floors of a downtown building.

Executive suites offer a haven to people whose businesses have outgrown the garage or bedroom, as well as home-based entrepreneurs who need a conference room on an hourly basis. Available services include Internet access, voice mail, paging and mail handling.

www.workspace-resources.com/business/busi00.htm

www.equiscorp.com/workterm.htm

The modern commercial office reflects or embodies social changes that have evolved over the past 50 years.

Thus, we have such business buzz words as hoteling, group address, tele-work, virtual office and universal plan. (See the Equis URL above for a glossary of workplace terminology.)

The WorkSpace Resources site will bring you up to speed on the latest developments in corporate and home office design.

You'll find plenty of general and specific articles, tips, plans and checklists even Popular Mechanics instructions on how to build a home office wall unit.

www.facility innovations.com/10keys.htm

Office hoteling is a shared-space arrangement that has become one of the most significant recent trends in office management. It is particularly applicable to telecommuters and salespeople who spend a great deal of time out of the office.

This approach optimizes office usage by requiring a reservation for a particular time; reservation software is used to arrange for availability by location and specific required technologies to be accessed. This Web site details the 10 keys to hoteling success.

These keys include recognizing the sacrifices that employees participating in hoteling are making, having a method for accommodating extremely short visits and planning for peak, rather than average, demand.

www.gilgordon.com/

This site, which has been up for nearly four years, has a tremendous quantity and variety of information on all aspects of telecommuting, tele-working, the virtual office and related topics.

Start with the site map and the site search engine on the "About This Site" page. These will get you to the Facilities and Office Design FAQs, the Virtual Office, article downloads and all manner of other useful material.

Among the article downloads, look for "Last Word on Productivity," which is a detailed commentary on the myths and truths about measuring telecommuter productivity and doing cost-benefit analysis for telecommuting programs.

www.enviro village.com/Library/Tdefault.htm

The EnviroVillage Library is under construction, so you may find some broken links and dead ends. But this site still offers one of the best indoor air quality and environment resources to be found online. Their glossary is comprehensive, from "ambient air" to "water soluble."

You'll also find online papers from many of the top indoor environmental professionals, as well as free newsletters and online manuals containing hundreds of pages of information and diagrams.

Practical topics covered include asbestos abatement, air duct cleaning, the ecological janitor, humidity control and pest management.

(Mike DePue is the business librarian at the Main Library, 397 East Central. For almost 18 years he has answered thousands of questions on as many topics.)

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