Today it is very common to find remote workers in an organization. Remote workers include all employees who spend some portion of their week away from the regular office. The two most common remote workers are those who work from multiple locations in a single day (mobile workers) and those who work from home (teleworkers).
In most organizations the cost of office accommodation is usually only exceeded by the cost of employees. We have studied many clients with remote workers who are typically assigned full-time office spaces. Significant savings can be attained by reengineering your office space to better accommodate remote workers.
Remote workers perform the primary portion of their job outside of the traditional office. When they return to the office they are rarely performing "desk bound" work. They are more likely to be interacting with their manager and peers, dropping off information from the past week or gathering information for the coming week. The office requirements for these employees is very different than for those employees who work exclusively at the office facility. Remote workers are prime candidates for using smaller, shared workstations.
Mobile workers spend a large amount of time outside of the office. Many of these employees are only in the office one day a week. They are usually equipped with portable technology such as a cellular phone, notebook computer, portable printer and a cellular modem. These employees truly work out of a virtual office. The location of work can include their customer's site, their vehicle or their home. When these employees return to the regular office they can be accommodated in much smaller, shared space where they will set up their portable technology - basically only requiring a connection to the local network.
Teleworkers typically work from home two to three days a week. The majority of their "heads-down" work is performed at home. The home office should be constructed as an ergonomically-acceptable space. Teleworkers will have either a dedicated desktop computer or a portable notebook computer, modem and possibly a low-end printer in their home office. Like the mobile workers they can utilize a small shared space in the central office where they can plug in their notebook and access a telephone line.
Organizations with remote workers should rethink the way they use space. Having full-time dedicated offices for these employees is wasteful. Organizations can save significant dollars by having remote workers share small workstations. For remote workers this could mean, for example, having four employees sharing one workstation while for teleworkers there could be five employees sharing three workstations.
The bottom-line return can be substantial. Consider an organization of 200 employees with 10% of the employees working as mobile workers and 10% teleworking. The organization currently uses 40,000 square feet to accommodate its employees (200 workstations). Under the guidelines presented above, the organization could reduce its space by at least 4,600 square feet. At approximately $25 per square foot for annual operating costs this minor change saves $115,000 annually.
The business benefits of redesigning space for remote workers is impressive. If you have remote workers in your organization you should start to think about how you can institute a space-sharing program to reduce your organization's operating costs. The savings achieved can be used to support enhancements in other areas or to improve profitability.
CONTACT:
Ken Robertson
Phone: (604) 294-2292
e-mail: ken.robertson@klr.com
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