22squared compressed into two floors instead of three, and reorganized the space to shape a new culture:

J Michael Welton via NYTimes.com

“We wanted people to be able to work wherever the work is, in whatever style,” said Mike Grindell, the executive vice president and chief administrative officer of 22squared, an advertising agency in Atlanta that recently completed a renovation.

The agency originally had three floors at 1170 Peachtree Street NE, and was subletting two-thirds of one of the floors in 2009 when it hired the large architecture company Gensler to redesign its quarters and ensure it met LEED gold energy standards. Gensler teamed with Carter USA, an Atlanta-based commercial real estate company, as project manager and Humphries & Company from nearby Smyrna, Ga., as general contractor.

At 22squared, a privately held agency with $64.7 million in 2011 revenue, the team ended up with a 50,000-square-foot space on two floors that went from an emphasis on hierarchy to one about equality. Before the renovation, natural light was reserved for private offices and conference rooms; now sunlight reigns for all.

Walls were dismantled. Employee work stations are now by windows. Private offices are at the center of the firm’s two floors. Small collaborative spaces are prevalent. White boards and glass walls for writing are everywhere. Work groups come together, dissolve, then come back together again.

By Gensler’s own measure, the revised space has delivered favorable results. Collaboration has increased by 22 percent, according to Gensler’s Workplace Performance Index, which rates workplaces and employees before and after renovations. That score brings 22squared’s rating up to par with the top performers in the advertising industry.

“You see and feel work happening all over the space,” Mr. Grindell said. “There’s better density, energy and productivity on two floors now than on two and a third before.”

Lowering the costs and barriers hampering cooperation, and creating a new tempo for work.

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GlaxoSmithKline is an example of a global corporation that is rethinking the workspace and making drastic changes to increase productivity and save money:

J Michael Welton via NYTimes.com

Christian Bigsby, the senior vice president for worldwide real estate and facilities at GlaxoSmithKline, said the company was engaging in what it called an opportunistic “footprint reduction program.” It began to make the investment, based on vacancy, relocations, or lease terminations, about six years ago.

Located in 90 countries with primary administrative centers in Britain, the United States and Belgium, GlaxoSmithKline is enacting the program globally.

if the company provides 85 percent of its space for 35 percent of its work, where was the rest happening?

“We can move to a smaller building with a smarter, improved working environment for reduced S.G.A. costs,” Mr. Bigsby said, using an accounting abbreviation for selling, general and administrative expenses — essentially, the overhead and indirect costs.

Before the program began, 35 percent of GlaxoSmithKline’s work activities were taking place in cubicles or offices. But those spaces took up 85 percent of the company’s office space, what Mr. Bigsby called a significant misallocation of resources. The question became: if the company provides 85 percent of its space for 35 percent of its work, where was the rest happening?

The answer: in meeting rooms, corridors, coffee stations and during travel. “Our solution is to press down the 85 percent dedicated space and increase the variety of alternative work spaces, because people’s activities did not align to the traditional spaces.” Mr. Bigsby said. “The desk space is now about half of our footprint.”

The arrangement of the workplace into neighborhoods and communities, in the form of benching for six people at a stretch, is not without a down side. On what the company calls bonus day earlier this year, Mr. Bigsby scurried to find a private space to review his salary with his superior.

“Everyone was trying to get a one-on-one,” he said. He had to settle for talking to his boss at a video conference out on the floor.

GlaxoSmithKline provides eight seats for every 10 employees, so it is possible that people might work in a different space every day.

A more flexible workplace seem to lead to a more resilient culture, too.

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More evidence that a feeling of engagement with work has large consequences:

Sense Of Engagement

“Place making is back in the corporate vocabulary,” says Tom Vecchione [a workplace leader at Gensler New York]. Perhaps the most tangible sign of the workplace revolution’s next phase is a renewed belief that work’s settings should be inspiring, above all else.

“When people are engaged by their work, there’s a confidence and camaraderie that let them feel they can do anything,” he says. “Companies that acknowledge this and design for it can accelerate that engagement.”

The upside of that greater commitment is huge. A recent Corporate Leadership Council survey of 50,000 office workers found that when people are engaged by what they do, they make, on average, a 57% gain in discretionary effort (they’re willing to do more on their own initiative), a 20% gain in personal performance (the effort pays off) and an 80% drop in their desire to change jobs (they’re happier).

“Work patterns have changed, but the office is still a critical component,” says Christine Barber [Gensler’s director of research]. “It’s the cultural glue that holds the organization together.”

Getting the workplace right is still key, so that people can create and share culture, and build social connections, even in an increasingly mobile world.

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