Jean:    From a business plan, there are related issues, on of those being the retention of people. Is there a relationship between space and retention?

John Benny:    We may be one step ahead in that there are prescriptive levels of space per group. We have also been driving a culture change over the last couple of years. The customer is more engaged in making decisions for themselves. Everyone has his or her own viewpoint on the best work environment. Once we meet the basics of being clean, well lit, and a sufficient amount of space per person, we allow them the latitude to tailor their space as they wish. It has allowed us to get the space per person down by trading off, with their participation, on how the space gets planned. We have a standard that includes common space and aisle ways. Our magic number includes support areas, coffee bars, etc. Our list of constraints is less than a page and allows them to have flexibility.

We are being watched from a financial standpoint on how we manage vacancies. There is a cost to drive vacancy down to near zero. It requires continuous minor moves because we are always chasing the vacant chair. What level of vacancy is good business practice, is questionable.

Jean:    What's the tool kit of the employee three years from now? Do they need to own space?

John Benny:    We have an experiment in process in day care. We built two day care centers that were immediately subscribed. That has been a part of the workplace change. We are trying to break down functional alignment in our organizations and counter that with real collaboration in a lot of different strategies. That’s not something you can do remotely or electronically, you need to interact as much as you can. We are looking for the synergy. In three years, we will have a much more flexible workplace that can continuously change as the character of project teams change. We acknowledge that people who work in a matrix organization work in more than one location, and will need more than one space.