IS ABW WINNING?
At the recent Workteck conference in Melbourne there were many conversations about the successes or otherwise of ABW. For me it was not the first time I’ve heard about the potential blow back from this way of working however I’ve yet to hear of a substantiated case of ABW failure. To help the conversation I’ve touched on some our recent first hand ABW experiences both here and overseas.
What’s the trend locally and internationally?
In Europe ABW has been an effective workplace strategy since its introduction to the Netherlands 18 years ago and continues to be so.
Interpolis and Microsoft remains the stand out examples of how a workplace can transform a culture into one based upon trust and self-leadership. These two organisations directly attribute reduced staff attrition, reduced sick days ( for Interpolis 9% below the Dutch average) and increased productivity due to their ABW workplaces. There are many other large organisations in Europe that have also adopted ABW including Credit Suisse, Unileaver, KPMG, Rabo Bank, Microsoft, Arup’s, Macquarie Group and Alcatel Lucent. In fact Macquarie Groups new London office, which opened recently, has been designed along the same lines as their Sydney ABW operation. Whilst we don’t see any signs of this abating ABW is still one of a range workplace choices tenants can make such as open plan, cellular or hot desking.
The question that should always start the workplace conversation is one of purpose. Just what is an organisation looking to get out of its workplace and the people connected with it – business as usual, improved levels of business flexibility, a change in culture, more team based work etc.
It’s fair to say that ABW is well established in Europe and Australia. Not only that but ABW is now morphing into Activity Based Learning for school, child care and retail banking environments. On the other hand ABW is relatively new in America. For large space users the abundance of office space, a preference for hierarchical structures and general lack of business vison has resulted in the slow adoption of ABW. The IT sector, a natural starting point for ABW is still very much desk bound in buildings with super large floor plates ( 4000 sqm ).
ABW in Australia
Australia remains a place receptive to new ideas. A recent Colliers Market survey identified that a third of tenants across our major Australian CBD’s are considering adopting ABW as a work style for their new workplace. For a snapshot of what’s happening in workplace design it’s hard to go past the major commercial development at Baranagaroo in Sydney. This major development represents nearly half all the new office space that is coming onto the Sydney market in the next 2 years. Tenants such as Westpac, KPMG, PWC, and HSBC are all tailoring ABW to suit their particular needs. It’s worth noting that these tenants occupy about half of the 300,000 sqm of space currently under construction. Whilst the major tenants at Baranagaroo are from the Financial and Professional Services sector the last 3 years has seen a shift in the application of ABW from these sectors into pharmaceuticals, government, logistics, car rental and IT.
What are the cultural drivers for organisations looking for a non ABW v ABW?
I came across this article entitled “Does activity-based design work?” which talks about ABW working and not working –
There is no doubt that some organisations have adopted ABW and it’s been a failure The reasons are many – Companies have adopted ABW for wrong reasons such as cost savings, adopted it and not followed thru with the culture piece or were simply never invested in the idea in the first place. Gavin Moss and Ross Gittins weigh in on the activity-based design debate. Here’s what they had to say about whether office design has an effect on collaboration, and therefore return on investment.
Yes, says Gavin Moss managing partner of PwC Adelaide.
Success for contemporary businesses is more dependent on employee creativity and innovation. And it’s widely understood that collaboration drives the creative process. With technology rapidly changing the business environment, traditional ‘stop-start’ methods of collaboration are redundant. For a culture of constant collaboration to thrive, employees need a physical environment that supports it.
Over the past few years PwC teams in Adelaide, Canberra, Newcastle and Perth moved to an activity-based-working (ABW) model. By 2017 all 5500 PwC people will be working this way. No one has a set desk and people choose how, when and where they work, all based on the job at hand. The floor space is zoned into areas by activity, with low-focus spaces for open discussions and higher-focus spaces for concentrating on individual tasks. After six months working this way in Adelaide, we’re a more connected and collaborative group. It’s exciting coming to work, not knowing who you’ll sit with and deepening your internal network.
In our Canberra office, staff reported a 50 per cent increase in satisfaction after the change. Seventy-five per cent said they were better collaborators and 80 per cent said they felt more efficient and effective. In our Perth office, staff turnover halved. Crucially, 60 per cent said they felt they were now delivering more value to clients. The experience of the past six months has opened my eyes to the potential that can be realised by aligning your work environment to the culture you want to promote.
No, says Ross Gittins, economics editor, Sydney Morning Herald.
I’m sure reduced office space has yielded savings, but I suspect it’s a false economy when you take into account productivity. Diane Hoskins, of United States office design firm Gensler, has been researching the question using surveys of more than 90,000 people from 155 companies in 10 industries. Her people found that knowledge work consists of four modes: focus, collaboration, learning and socialising. They found that the most significant factor in workplace effectiveness is not collaboration but individual focus work. They also found that focus is the thing the new-style offices make hardest. The four work modes are highly interconnected, with focus as the primary component and the key predictor of all other effectiveness. So office arrangements that sacrifice individual focus in pursuit of collaboration result in decreased effectiveness for both.
Other research by Gensler finds that workers who can focus effectively are 57 per cent more able to collaborate, 88 per cent more able to learn and 42 per cent more able to socialise in their workplace than their peers who are unable to focus. Justine Humphry, of Sydney University, says ‘clean-desk’ policies are used as a way to prevent employees from ‘nesting’, and yet “studies have highlighted identity expression and professional status as key reasons for personalisation at work,” she says.
This is an extract from Ross Gittins’ article ‘How hot-desking can wreck productivity’, published on The Canberra Times website and reproduced on the AHRI blog.
How many organisations and employee numbers are working in ABW environments in Australia?
This is pretty rough but when I add up all the space the organisations occupy we have noted above its about 1.5 mil sqm or about 187,500 people.
I’ve also looked at the BRW top 10 companies and ticked the ones that are ABW based – there are 6 out of the ten.
BHP – Partial ABW Woolworths – ABW Westfarmers – Standard Rio Tinto – Standard NAB – ABW CBA – ABW WESTPAC – ABW ANZ – ABW Telstra – FWOW Caltex – Standard
Other useful information about our most recent ABW project for KPMG can be found here and here.