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Feeling a little cramped at work? Do you no longer enjoy the elbow room you
used to? Well, you're not alone. According to the International Facility
Management Association, the average American office worker had 90 square feet
of work space in 1994, but by 2010, that same worker was down to just 75 square
feet of personal space in which to stretch out on the job.
Nor are office drones the only casualty of this spacial downsizing trend.
Senior company officials have seen their offices shrink as well, from an
average of 115 square feet in 1994 to 96 square feet in 2010. Oh, the humanity!
The shrinking workplace is yet another cost-cutting measure that employers have
pursued for years under the theory that smaller workstations are cheaper to
maintain to especially as commercial rents spiral upward.
The same quest for space-based cost-reduction is what gave us the cubicle in
the first place. But some business thinkers point out that there's a bright
side to the inhospitable cubicle; with technological breakthroughs enhancing
worker mobility, employees can spend more time working outside of the cramped
confines of their workspaces.
Indeed, students of modern office culture report that the ability to work
outside of the office has surpassed the size of one's office as a workplace
status symbol. What's more, they point out that managers have implemented some
work space shrinkages in order to boost employee morale. Last month, for
example, the New York Times profiled tech giant Intel's revamped work spaces,
as a strategically planned effort to "inject a little more fun into [Intel's]
offices" and "make them places where employees can be more collaborative."
"To promote innovation, Intel wanted to create plenty of space where people
could work in groups, rather than be isolated at their desks," the Times'
Kristina Shevory wrote. "One newly redesigned floor of Intel's campus can now
accommodate 1,000 people, up from 600. In some departments where employees are
often on the road, two people may be assigned to a desk."
Of course, some office habitues aren't contending with a space scarcity on the
job. The IFMA says that during that same 1994-2010 span, office space for
senior company executives has actually increased, though at a rate well shy of
the explosion of executive pay.