William Hamilton, founder of the successful Capital region IT company
Techsmith, remembers the old way of doing things around the office. Specifically, he remembers one particularly degrading rule about what pictures were allowed on your desk.
“You could have fiancés and family members. You could not have boyfriends’ or girlfriends’ pictures. You could get fired for that,” he recounts with a sense of loathing.
That was at a Fortune 500 company where Hamiliton worked in the early 80s. Disgusted with the way they treated people, he decided to bring a different approach to his own company.
Rely on RelayTechsmith is an information technology company in Okemos. The firm's flagship product is Snagit, a software program that enables users to photograph their computer screen and share it with colleagues.
Hamilton brought a different approach to workplace design: let the employees decide how they can work most effectively.
Techsmith’s relay team used to be spread out in different buildings and separated by cubicles. “What we noticed happening was that you would have a couple developers in a particular room, and they’d be talking about a topic. And the next thing you know, it would turn into a full-blown design discussion,” says Matt Munich, one of the members of the team responsible for the transition to a new workplace model.
Under the old system, only a few team members were around to participate in these impromptu meetings. “The other people just weren’t cognizant of the decision.”
Now, the relay team is housed in one building, and cubicles walls have been taken down. If someone has a good idea, the entire team is privy to the impromptu business meeting.
The keyword is synergy—the thing that happens when something as a whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
The relay team is also allowed to personalize their desks. One team member has his model airplane collection proudly displayed at his workstation—a drastic change from the "that photo's not allowed on your desk" days.
Changing WorkAccording to Hamilton, the workplace needs to change because the nature of work has changed. The old workplace was a product of the industrial age, where there was one, and only one,
best practice.
For example, if your job was to put a tire on a car, there was a certain series of motions that would see that the tire was put on as quickly as possible to maximize efficiency.
These rules no longer apply. One only has to look at General Motors to see how dramatically the economy is changing.
Information Technology is one of the growing sectors of the evolving economy, and by definition it's a more creative enterprise.
Therefore, it requires an environment more suited to creativity.
At the IT consulting and outsourcing company
Artemis Solutions—whose mailing address is East Lansing—innovation means that the workplace office might be exist at all.
Artemis offers services like staff augmentation. Artemis president, John Gilkey, says 95 percent of this arm of the company is run from remote locations: staff members communicate to one another via Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOip—a common example is skype).
By being able to work from home, employees are more flexible than those you might see in a traditional office setting with an eight or nine hour work day.
In his line of work, Gilkey worries less about synergy and more about individual productivity. When Artemis outgrew its suite, the company added more space on another floor. “Within six months you had a lot of people who didn’t know each other between the two floors. So even just a floor can make a difference,” says Gilkey.
Also, when employees work at home they report being less prone to distraction. When home alone, no one is coming in and out of your office asking questions.
Incubation StationIn order to accommodate the increasingly footloose workplace, the City of East Lansing expanded its wireless coverage to blanket the core of the downtown area. Now people can work from any of the area's many park benches, cafés and hotel rooms.
But sometimes being footloose isn't enough.
Comprehensive Emergency Management Associates (CEMA), an emergency and planning consulting firm, got its start working in the placeless workplace. Tom Shaver and Joe DeFores, both former firemen, began by holding their business meetings in coffee shops.
While the staff at the coffee shops was accommodating and offered the duo wireless access, problems began to creep up. “It's not private, and it's loud and we couldn’t always have access to our stuff,” says Shaver. When each meeting was over, the team had to pack up their things and then unpack them later.
They decided they needed a dedicated space to store their materials. The team soon moved into the new
Technology and Innovation Center (TIC) in East Lansing. The TIC is an experimental project (and very unconventional workplace) that was launched in October 2008.
The key at the TIC is diversification, says the facility's manager, Jeff Smith. Rather than investing in one large company (the old model), the City of East Lansing is trying to nurture more small companies operating in different fields.
Small businesses in the center lease space, and can remain in the TIC "incubation space" for up to three years. Facilities such as conference rooms, kitchen and copy room are shared by the tenants. And best of all, “We can meet here for eight hours and close the door and come back tomorrow morning and everything’s still here,” says DeFores.
Once again, the keyword here is synergy.
“We’ve gotten to know a couple of guys down the [hall] who do video production. And, in fact, we’re working with them, and they’re working with us on a couple of projects,” says Shaver.
Currently, other Michigan towns like Dewitt and Fenton are looking into building their own innovation centers based on the TIC model.
“This may be the future,” says Smith.
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Adam Molnar is a freelance writer for Capital Gains.
Dave Trumpie is the managing photographer for Capital Gains. He is a freelance photographer and owner of Trumpie Photography.
Photos:
Office “personalization” at Techsmith
A Techsmith work area
Artemis Solution's Brian Azar often works from his home
Joe DeFors (l) & Thomas Shaver of CEMA at their TIC offices
All Photographs © Dave Trumpie