Where is Your Wallet?

August 8, 2007 by jack petrie.

I recently attended the CoreNet Global 4th Annual Eastern Regional Symposium in Baltimore, Maryland on the campus of Johns Hopkins University. The theme of the symposium was Positive Chemistry: Building a Winning Organization. I particularly enjoyed a breakout session on the question “Can Organizational Chemistry and Employee Mobility Coexist?”

The panelists included Joel Ratekin, Director of Corporate Real Estate at CapitalOne (”C1″), John Vivadelli, President of AgilQuest and Arnold Levin, Director of Bennett Strategy.

Mr. Vivadelli was quick to emphasize that even the nomenclature of “workplace” is inaccurate. Because “work” is an activity (or verb) and not a location (or noun) like “place”, the word “workplace” itself contradicts the concept of worker mobility.

CapitalOne (”C1″) is on the leading edge of workplace innovation, having instituted a progressive workplace concept known as the Future of Work (”FOW”) program. FOW supports C1’s core business values of Excellence and Do the Right Thing. The obvious benefits of the program are Real Estate Portfolio Efficiency, as higher densities result in smaller footprints for leased space and Portfolio Flexibility, as Corporate Real Estate is able to meet changing business and headcount needs without needing to add real estate. But the real impact have been in the following three areas: Business Agility, as units can modify activity patterns throughout project lifecycles, Individual/Group Productivity - due to less time spent coordinating, commuting and/or accessing information; Employee Satisfaction - commensurate with greater choice and control over their work parameters.

CapitalOne’s three drivers towards instituting a mobile workforce are: 1) increase in amount distributed work, 2) the trend towards younger labor demographics and 3) an emphasis on service worker productivity.

Levin mentioned that the role of the office changes depending on whether individual or collaborative work takes place there, as individual workers don’t require an office environment and can work remotely and collaborative workers don’t require private offices as much as collaborative work areas.

Typically, only 30-50% of dedicated office areas are occupied by users at any given time.

Ratekin is quick to dispel a couple myths of private work environments: 1) that losing personal “stuff” lowers individual productivity and 2) that losing an assigned seat lowers productivity. At CapitalOne, neither myth has been the case.

In selling collaborative and open environments to end users, there are typically three constituencies: 1) Senior Management - to whom cost concerns are highest priority, 2) Middle Management - to whom productivity gains are high priority and 3) the workforce - for whom “control of their lives” is biggest concern.

My question is how does one appeal to senior sales professionals who fit in none of those “buckets”, but certainly carry a lot of entitlement (”stuff”) and prefer private environments….?

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