“We’re just not using our space effectively” is one way clients typically sum up their pain points when we first sit down to talk with them.
“Well, walk us through your typical work day” will often be one of the first follow-up responses a workplace strategist will ask to begin to discover what’s working and what’s not in terms of how people use their space.
As we continue to look for more effective ways to improve the overall workplace experience, one tool we can use is measuring and analyzing space utilization. To gain better insight into how companies utilize their office space, there are several ways to approach these …
As many smaller to mid-size companies evolve into global organizations, the way we collaborate with one another also needs to evolve. We continue to see a plethora of technology based solutions being rolled out to enable more global collaboration. I personally rely heavily on the hardware, software, apps, and the ubiquitous 24/7 access to get the job done, whatever that job may be at any given time. But lately I’ve been working with more remote teammates and I realize that while we definitely have good technology to collaborate, we sometimes forget the human element to how we effectively communicate with one another. No matter how good your technology, the effectiveness of simple …
If you’re in New York City on March 19, please join us at Inscape NYC for a Workplace Salon discussing the Yahoo! No-Work-From-Home Memo. HOK will help moderate the event and participate in a debate on both sides of the argument. We’ll be joined by folks from Gensler, Credit Suisse, BrightSpot Strategy and Perkins + Will.
Workplace Salon: The Yahoo! Debate
March 19, 2013 from 8:00-9:30 a.m.
Inscape NYC Showroom
414 W. 14th Street, 6th floor
RSVP by March 15, 2013 jfeuerborn@inscapesolutions.com
The audience will be polled on which side they most agree with before and then again after the debate. Let the …
All of this talk about Yahoo, mobility, flexibility in the workplace, and the list goes one, has sparked some interesting dialogue. There are those that see working from home as beneficial not only to an employee’s well-being and job satisfaction, but also to productivity, reduction of churn, greater efficiency, and slimmer real estate costs. However, there are also those that see a lack of innovation, difficulty managing and measuring productivity, and missed opportunities for serendipitous encounters and communication. Accenture’s Survey Results for IWD2013
But we have tasted the freedom that technology offers (as well as the tethering – who checks email before even getting out of bed …
Several organizations have asked for our advice on “work-from-home” policies, particularly in light of the recent policy change at Yahoo, effectively rescinding their work-at-home program. I can’t speak for Yahoo, but the issues they are facing are very real… how can organizations encourage employees to connect with one another now that we’re so all so mobile and can work anywhere? Marissa Mayer, Yahoo’s current CEO and formerly with Google, has seen the benefits of a culture that encourages employees to come into the office.
Not only have I been seeing this NYT article (Relax! You’ll Be More Productive) circulating around Facebook lately, but a coworker also just emailed it to our whole group. It seems that many people are yearning for both increased productivity and relaxation – and this article by Tony Schwartz just may be the golden ticket to helping us achieve that magical balance!
It seems a bit counterintuitive at first. Schwartz states that they key to achieving greater productivity is not found through getting swept up in a whirlwind of working/going/doing longer and faster, rather, it is found in quite the opposite state: that of relaxation and rejuvenation.
When you visit your doctor to talk about what is hurting or not right, you may find yourself describing sharp pains, headaches or numbness. If your doctor is doing her job, she will then ask you follow-up questions about these symptoms to get to the root of the problem.
You are probably painfully aware of some symptoms. Others are less obvious and take some probing and testing to figure out. Having studied for many years and seen many patients, your doctor should be able to give you a reasonably accurate diagnosis of what is ailing you.
That’s our job, but for space. At HOK, we listen to our clients and evaluate their complaints. …
It has been nearly one thousand days since Earth Day 2010. I’m proud to be part of a firm that celebrates this day as passionately as we do. It means something. Our belief in and commitment to sustainability is unparalleled amongst our competition. Every year we campaign and rally around our messages as if an election was at stake. We’ve turned the lights out. We’ve recharged. We go above and beyond to prove to the world that we care about the world. I like this.
One thousand days ago, it was this passion and commitment that drove me to stop driving. On Earth Day 2010, I sold my car. For many of …
This is a short post I’ve written as a guest contributor for a friend at Otto. Check out other amazing posts on design and products at 3Rings!
There’s an intrinsic dilemma that all architects and designers carry with them: the struggle with the idea of control. We lose precious sleep over the often unknowable outcomes of our projects.
An ever-present but less contemplated thought is the impact of those outcomes. While this also can be “unknowable,” designers can draw on evidence and research to predict the impacts of projects with more accuracy. From a business culture standpoint, we crave predictability. Yet, it rarely leaves room for growth, …
Eat the frog first?! That’s what Fast Company Magazine recommends in Kevin Purdy’s article What Successful People Do With the First Hour of Their Day. I am not one to eat the frog first, for sure. My day usually starts about an hour before others show up at the office. This allows me some time to get my list of things to do together, catch up on email and voicemail, and sart checking a few things off my list. I typically accompany this start up time with a cup of “fancy coffee” and some breakfast (usually greek yogurt).mmm…coffee!I save my frog eating for mid-day. I wondered if …
I’m a hard-core Gen Xer. The year I was born falls right in the middle of the “sandwich generation” between the Baby Boomers and their babies. I know that it drives me crazy when people make gross generalizations about Gen Xers – probably because I’m a Gen Xer and want to break the mold. So, when I saw this CNN article about Gen Yers transforming office life, I couldn’t help but reach out to a few of them around HOK to ask for their reactions. What I found was a fascinating range of opinions…
HOK’s Robin Ellerthorpe in his Grand Rapids, Mich., home office
Sue Shellenbarger’s recent Wall Street Journal piece on “‘Working from Home’ Without Slacking Off” reminded me of the question so many clients ask about the benefits and drawbacks of home working.
HOK gets drawn into the conversation because when our clients’ employees work at home full- or even part-time, they typically lose their assigned seat in the office. With more and more people working outside the office, large portions of office buildings can sit empty for long periods and there can be less of a reason to be there. Heck, with everyone away from the office, will there even be people to …
What a better way to start summer than with a Summer kick off/Independence Day party?!
We had a great turn-out on a perfect day today… Clear skies, not too hot, nice breeze and a ton of fantastic food from our food truck caterer, the Greasy Wiener. Not to mention much thanks …
Why the Los Angeles Kings are going to DESTROY the St. Louis Blues! (ahem.. St Louis office.. we are talking to you…)
We have Jonathan Quick! Everyone knows the playoffs can revolve around goaltending, and not only is our goalie a top Vezina Trophy candidate, his name is QUICK! I mean a goalie couldn’t have a more fitting name if his parents had named him, Jonathan “Brick Wall Between the Pipes”. Who do the Blues have in goal? Good question, cause he was riding the pine a few games ago.
Dustin Brown is going to crush Elliott, with a LEGAL hit. With all the crappy fights and horrible penalties of the first round, Dustin Brown has easily 2 or 3 of the
I was curiously Google-image searching the term “female architect” one afternoon and the results were stereotypical as expected; hard hats inside finished buildings, abundant rolls of paper, every face with a huge smile and the occasional Zaha head shot (go girl!). Another observation was that every female is young and attractive; this made me wonder where that portrayal was conceived?
Soon after, I came across an article in February’s “Architect” magazine (p.29) stating that “Only about 3% of executives in major American corporations – including architecture firms- are women (according to McKinsey & Co.).”
I wasn’t so shocked; it’s a man’s world we’re infiltrating, and only for the last few generations. However, the …
Thanks to Lauren Gibbs and Dale Pozzi of HOK’s Strategic Accounts + Consulting group for passing this our way:
Fraser Milner Casgrain, Vancouver
A recent article published in the Great Features: Ideas in Innovations section of the Toronto Star featured how new ways of working, along with changes in working environments, have promoted collaborative, effective team environments for many organizations. Several companies that have recently redesigned their work spaces are featured in the article, including those designed by HOK.
Lisa Fulford-Roy, HOK’s vice president of client strategy, stated that many companies are looking to implement agile workplace standards to reduce costs and space while also improving flexibility for …
Thanks to Dale Pozzi from our New York office for passing along this guest post about London workplace strategist Paul Wheeler‘s recent appearance on BBC Radio:
The open workplan format is facing no small amount of scrutiny lately as a creativity killer. Among the most recent sources of controversy is the publication of new book, “QUIET: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking,” whose author, Susan Cain, posits that the open workplan may be stifling creativity.
Fortunately, advocates have Paul Wheeler to defend the cause (or at least to define it properly).
On Monday morning, BBC Radio’s Vanessa Feltz dedicated a portion of her program to an interview with Susan …
My last post about IFMA World Workplace 2011 focused on HOK and my FM friends. This post shares some of what I learned (always a highlight of attending conferences for me). I was only in Phoenix for a day and a half, so I didn’t hit quite as many sessions as I would have liked, but I did get to see a couple of really good ones.
I’ve included links to each of the sessions where you can learn more about the presenters and download some additional information if you’re interested in learning more.
A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to travel to Phoenix for IFMA World Workplace 2011. For those of you not intimately familiar with the facility management profession, IFMA is the International Facility Management Association and World Workplace is the organization’s annual conference – typically about 5,000 folks from around the world attend. IFMA is one of my favorite organizations – lots of really wonderfully nice (and smart, and interesting) people!
Today and tomorrow, the design world is converging upon the Baltimore Convention Center to share thoughts, best practices, cool products, and swag at NeoCon East!
This year, I had the great priviledge of presenting with my friend and colleague, the fabulous Claire Whitehill. Our presentation was focused on workplace benchmarks and best practices, and shared a few case studies of things that were working well. We had a great audience who were happy to participate and offered some great comments and asked some of the tough questions. Let me know if you’re interested in the presentation – we’d be happy to share!
U.S. Southcom Headquarters is one of the U.S. military’s ten Major Combatant Commands. It includes a four-story, 440,000-square-foot headquarters building with offices, command suite, computer data center, conference and training rooms and the command center. Additional buildings include the 40,000-square-foot Conference Center of the Americas and the 150,000-square-foot Services building for support functions, child development center, health and medical center, fitness center, warehouse facilities, loading docks and central utility plant.
US Southern Command Headquarters also received an Eagle Award from the Associated Building and Contractors Central Florida group on Saturday evening.
On Thursday 22nd September, London’s property industry came together to celebrate the inaugural HOK London Annual Party on board HOK Airways. Having celebrated a number of successes and project milestones particularly in our Aviation sector, we chose this theme for our 2011 Annual Party. On the following evening we opened our doors to the public in celebration of the London Design Festival.
We wanted to celebrate 2011 with clients, partners, consultants supporters and journalists whom we have had the pleasure of working with through this challenging yet rewarding year.
Planning began in June and we made it just in time to register to be part of the London Design Festival. Weekly meetings were …
It’s been a very big summer for Corporate Business Manager, Stacy Sensel.
She’s a HUGE St Louis Cardinals Fan (yay to the cards – this city is on the edge of it’s seat!), she bought a house and installed a pool, and she’s been doing an awful lot of horse showing.
This last weekend, Stacy was at the US Sport Horse Nationals in Lexington, KY. She rode a horse named Red, and placed National Top Ten! The US Sport Horse Nationals represents horses from all over the US and Canada.
Stacy normally shows her Arabian, Beamer, but was showing a horse qualified by another …
Peace not War! Well in this case, a peaceful war of Post-It art.
As designers we create, live, work, and play in the vertical world of cities so therefore we strive to provide a forum for public communication. More commonly a courtyard, park, transit stop or even the elevator is the venue of communication with total strangers of the city, and in some instances other co-workers.
Currently in metropolises around the world, windows are becoming this platform by being transformed into canvases of 16-bit characters of our childhood heroes and villains. So what’s the message of an urban battlefield created of mere paper images? In the video link below it is described as an opportunity for the …
Our neighborhood food court is slowly but surely shutting down (we love you Mrs. K!), and eating out in Georgetown can be rather costly and time consuming, so lots of the WDC HOKers have been struggling to figure out what to do for lunch. Enter Wellness Ambassador (and Director of Graphic Design) Jim Doussard and his brilliant borrowed idea: a healthy alternative andteam building opportunity. [what builds teams better than FOOD?!]
HOK supplied the basic “greens” (and plates + forks) and participants brought in healthy “salad bar ingredients” to round out our meal and join in the fun. Our instructions were: Be creative (be healthy!) The sky is the limit!
Are you drinking enough water? Sources say you need to be consuming at least 64 ounces a day. Show that you can drink that much water 21 days in a row and HOK will hook you up with a nice little prize! The challenge starts September 5th. Here is how it works.
Check your HOK email for the latest message from Maddy Reigel. Inside she has the what, the why and the interactive pdf that keeps track of your water consumption. Cool!
Find your local Wellness Leader for any questions and good luck!
Power to the people – especially those who turned out to attend the Interior Design Regulation celebration August 4 honoring the successful efforts to keep the interior design profession regulated in the state of Florida (more info in 10 May 2011 post). The IIDA event featured guests Senator Jack Latvala, Senator Jim Norman, Senator Arthenia Joyner, and Representative Darryl Rouson. Special kudos to HOKer Kelly Betts for having such a STRONG voice throughout the debate!
More power to HOK and the exhibit we had at the ACA (American Corrections Association) conference in Orlando this week. We were represented by the JBU team and the amazing justice projects across HOK. I had the …
A local paper columnist interviewed HOKer Anna Vasquez, as he explored the option of bike commuting in the Florida summer heat. The humorous article featured some tips from Anna that I can relate to as a fellow commuter. I especially love the outfit tip – matching shoes are a must, but I must admit I forgot my entire dress once!
Wow – I can’t believe July is almost over already! I suppose that is what happens when you take a vacation and then go straight to a conference! As I try to get back into the swing of real work, I thought I would share some recent W+P posts with you:
Change Management: Seven Tried and True Tips. Here’s your chance to hear a podcast about an article I wrote a long time ago…and see a funny picture of me goofing off with some friends (1986 called and would like the hair crimper back).
“We’re just not using our space effectively” is one way clients typically sum up their pain points when we first sit down to talk with them.
Stefana Scinta
