Monday January 24, 2005

What is having your own office worth to you?

The same co-worker who I described yesterday also told me that although he is a flexible status worker he would much prefer to have an assigned office. At Sun being flexible means you don't have an assigned office. Instead you reserve an office in advance in the building where you need to work on a given day. My co-worker is skeptical about the impact of Sun's internal work infrastructure program on ability to collaborate. He worries as I have heard others worry about how having to clean up every night might make him lose his train of thought and thus be less productive.

What most people don't realize is that the flexible office program is what has enabled Sun to develop all the other very popular aspects of the internal work infrastructure program we call iWork. If you read very many Sun blogs you realize that a lot of Sun people work from home. It is a big reason that people like working at Sun. We also have drop in locations close to where people live and iWork cafes on many campuses. These programs are all funded by flexible office savings which we have calculated are in the neighborhood of $70M per year.

I guarantee you that the Work from Home program, the mobility technology support, and the other aspects of Sun's internal work infrastructure program would never have happened if they were not seen as enabling Sun to save money, support the way we work and make employees happy at the same time.

One of the best things about being a member of the iWork group at Sun is that we have a very clear vision that we support the way people work. We understand that to some degree 70% of all employees at Sun are mobile (travel frequently from place to place to do their jobs) or distributed (choose to work in locations sometimes that area apart from their main work groups). These figures continue to grow, reflecting a phenomenon that is common for knowledge workers.

This is not to say that we don't continue to study how to support the mobile workforce while nurturing creativity, enabling collaboration and allowing people to work in an environment that is most productive to them. We continue to look at how to address the kinds of concerns my co-worker mentioned. But there is no way I would want an assigned corner office with a view of San Francisco if I had to give up all that Sun provides to allow me to work where I am most effective. I'd be interested to hear what others have learned about how to enable distributed work and support the mobile workforce.