Xerox's Waltham office looks and functions like an airport red-carpet lounge for frequent fliers. Both provide an office away from the office for transient workers.
At the Waltham facility, you see rows of phone booths, work cubicles, lounge areas, and dataports everywhere. Strategically placed leaning rails, whiteboards, worktables, and chairs encourage chance encounters among the staff. Thus, information is more easily shared. "Everywhere a person could conceivably sit down, he or she should be able to plug in a laptop and become productive," says Sean Connellan, who is the manager of strategic planning and operations support in Xerox's corporate real estate organization. The facility in Waltham also has
product demonstration areas, meeting rooms, a mailroom, and classrooms for training.
The Waltham building has about 40 percent less floor space than the old regional sales office had, but it still supports the same number of people. However, it does not appear to be cramped at all. Many of the offices are, in fact, empty.
To schedule on-site meetings in Waltham, staff members connect to the network to determine room and equipment availability and to reserve any necessary equipment. A touchscreen located in a lounge provides for up-to-date resource scheduling. According to Connellan, however, this scheduling system is only a trial and might not be deployed companywide.
Optimum Office Layout
illustration_link (10 Kbytes)
Whiteboards and leaning rails in corridors to encourage ad hoc meetings
Meeting and demonstration rooms with videoconferencing capabilities
Dataports in every o
ffice
Where Virtual-Office Workers Meet
