It seems like alliteration around weekday names is a thing and since I’m in the CRE world the big one is Workplace Wednesday. It’s the day we get to celebrate everyone’s favorite place to be: the cube farm! Wait, just kidding.
It’s the day we get to celebrate that location where you work!
The concept of workplace has evolved rapidly over the past decade. It used to mean the office environment that consisted of 20% private offices, 80% cubicles (workstations?) and a scattering of conference rooms and the like. Today the workplace can mean almost anything:
- Traditional workplaces still exist all around.
- Non-traditional workplaces ranging from open plan offices to unassigned seating to anything an architect/workplace designer can dream up.
- Co-working spaces like WeWork where lots of businesses/random people work in the same place.
- Home offices (like the one I most often frequent).
- Starbucks/local coffee shop of choice.
Workplaces are now simply anywhere that you can work productively. The idea that we all work and collaborate the same way has firmly been discredited and the aim of giving different employees options to be most productive is firmly in place. People may not like the open office with unassigned seats because it can rightly be called noisy or chaotic but the intent is to give people more options on how they work. Over time every organization develops cultural norms to allow the office to work better and more efficiently for the different types of workers.