Over the past 5 years the trend in office space use has been to cram more people, into less space, as quickly as possible. In 2010, per a CoreNet Golbal Corporate Real Estate survey, the average office worker was allocated approximately 225 square feet of space. In 2012, that figure decreased 22% to 176 square feet of space per worker. Some experts believe that by 2017, each worker will be allocated less than 100 square feet of office space, a 43% reduction compared to last year. That is a drastic decrease in a short period of time. From a tenant standpoint, this makes absolute sense. More people in less space means a greater output per rent figure, thereby minimizing overhead cost. If tenant employees are willing to work in this environment with no negative impact on their job satisfaction, then the tenant has little to lose with this strategy. But looking beyond the "great idea on paper" and getting to the big picture is what I keep thinking about, and the basic question I keep coming back to is: "Is this even possible?"
From the outset my inclination is "No way." Corner offices, large meeting spaces, copy rooms, break rooms, standard cubicle sizes, etc, these things just aren't going to go away. There is a basic level of space that any human requires when it comes to where they work. The last thing I want is someone looming over me as I type emails or underwrite transactions. I just need space to call my own so I can zero in on the task at hand. Other bodies, whether they are interacting with me or not, in my generally vicinity serve as a distraction that keeps me from concentrating. But, am I old school when it comes to this?
The US Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistic catalogues the peoples daily use of the telephone, mail, and email in annual surveys. Overall, time spent on the phone, mail and email over the past 10 years has not changed drastically. Based on my experience, I would assume with a great deal of certain, that time spent on email has drastically increased while time on the phone and snail mail has drastically decreased. The shift from telephone time, a noise intensive interaction, to email, a silent interaction, has allowed employers to condense more employees into tighter spaces, as noise intrusions have become less of an office burden. As telephone usage continues to decrease as more and more interactions are handled through IM, email or other noiseless channels, employers will continue to try to cram more employees into less space.
Also, companywide meetings have slowly been replaced by small team breakout sessions, reducing the need for large conference room space within offices. For large team meetings companies are consistently shifting to offsite meeting locations which spurs creativity and team building. This lowers tenants demand for large conference rooms which are generally the most underused spaces within any tenant office. Shrinking this space allows tenants to bring down employee/SF ratios while not affecting employee morale.
Companies are also putting people into tighter quarters in an attempt to disrupt the sterile environment offices used to be. Long gone are the days of large cubicle farms, replaced now by large communal desks and shared work stations where privacy is minimized. This seems off putting to employees used to plush corner offices but it is the norm for college grads that have been used to space constrained computer labs. By removing the availability of personal space, employees are forced to communicate and work with their neighbors while still being productive.
So this brings us back to the original question, can companies get to a 100SF/employee ratio? While on the surface the answer seems like no, in reality, the answer may be yes. Office work continues to trend towards a collaborative intense environment where tight quarters are cherished. So long as productivity from workers trends upwards while maintaining a high level of work satisfaction, there may be no SF/employee threshold that employers can't attain.