Marie
Good morning to Channel World Wide News !
It’s Marie Carey and today, we will speak about the flex office. As we have already heard, more and more companies are adopting flex-office. (petite pause). Many of our listeners asked to have informations about this phenomen.
To answer those questions, we have invited a special guest, his name is William Robin and he is here today to talk about it !
We will see that, this way of working nowadays have some consequencies for employees, especially on their organization.
Marie
Nice to see you William and welcome on stage.
But tell us, what are you doing here ?
Hiiii everybody, and thank you Marie to receive me on your podcast!
My name is William Robin and I did my master’s thesis on the flex-office.
This new phenomen, still not very well-known, affects more and more workers in the world. That why, it is important to me to raise awaresness about it
Marie
Mmmh, can you give a definition about what flex-office is ?
William
Okay, so flex Office, also called “desk-sharing” is when employees don’t have access to a proper office. To deal with it, they bring their personal working instruments. For example their laptops, their own phones, and of course the battery chargers going with it. And thanks to this portable devices, they can now be independent.
Therefore the main idea of desk-sharing is to promote commons goods.
Marie
are you saying that every personal possessions can be shared !?!?
William
Yes ! It goes from the meeting room to the plants of the office (ahah).
No, the flex-office is the combination of two notions, many various collaboratives spaces and the sharing of works positions, including various working areas named “villages” or “districts”.
Employees are free to choose where they want to work.
Of course, this kind of situation is not appropriate for everyone … and unfortunately some recent studies have shown that people prefer to work with an individual office
Marie
Yes, I understand this opinion.. It can be difficult for the long terme.
I would like to introduce you Ted, he didn’t support the new organization of his latest job and wantid to talk to us about it.
Hiiie Ted
Ted
Hello Marie and William, it’s a pleasure to be here !
Marie
Welcome, and thanks for meeting us. As I said, you worked in a company which used flex office, am I right?
Ted
Yes that right Marie
Marie
Can you tell us your impression about it ?
Ted
To make it short I was working in a famous Bank in Manchester, and sadly for economic reasons the company management chose to change the open office in flex-office. When a firm adopts flex-office in their system, Teleworking is promoted. It’s obviously more economic for them to have smaller area with less employees at the same time.
Marie
Obviously.. And what was your reaction?
Ted
To be honest I didn’t know what was flex-office before that. But the company put in place some meetings to warm us.
At the beginning I was pleasantly surprised, because the program was very rich: a lot of colors, new furnitures, big cafetaria and so on…
Marie
And at the end it was just an illusion, right ?
Ted
Yes.. At first, I missed a lot my old office. I used to be a finance director, and I was fortunate to have a spacious office and my team close to me.
With the advent of Flex-Office, I notice a phenomenon of depersonalization. For example, I had my diploma hanging on the wall, with a few photos and the most important thing: the coffee machine. Ahah. Unfortunately, this is no longer possible anymore, since we all share the same space.
Secondly, the company encourages people to work at home: if there are a hundred employees, the management won’t have… I don’t know… about 70 employees on the site. So if an employee wants to have the possibility to choose his place of work, he will have to arrive earlier than his co- workers.
Marie
Ok, but is it considered like extra hours?
Ted
Unfortunately no…
This is also another disadvantage for those who are forced to communicate quickly like the creative professions. They need to consult several times a day and have their own materials to move forward
William
And when you leave the desk, even if you do a break for 15 minutes, you have to clean it and take of your stuff.
Ted
Mmmh… With this kind of organization, you risk to loose your post and it’s not a safe feeling
…
You don’t know who of your colleague is here or not. It’s cool if you like meet new people in a day, but for me, it’s was very complicating to do not see my co- worker friends.
Marie
What a strange situation, well we come to the end of this podcast which was very interesting. Can we perhaps end on a more optimistic note?
Ted
While observing this new way of life, I still noticed that the hierarchy had changed. It’s nice to no longer know who is who and what functions that person performs. There is an new social mix.
Marie
Thank’s a lot Ted and William for all these explanations. I hope it helped many listerners of our podcast.
William
With pleasure, if you want more informations, you can check my internet site.
Ted
Bye