a space of one's own

We recently completed a treehouse for our 10-year-old daughter in our garden. It's about seven square meters of real estate located two and a half meters above the ground. It has two windows, one of which opens with a special mechanism and a door that locks from the inside, as well as being fitted with a padlock on the outside, of which our daughter is the only one with a key. She loves it and has already spent a significant amount of time out there with a friend, concocting Harry Potter-style potions.

This evident desire we as humans have for a space we can call our own got me thinking about the trend towards flexible workspaces that we're seeing in the work world. These flexible workspace initiatives often mean that people don't have an assigned desk and so desks are available on a first come-first served basis. I can understand this from a company perspective. If you have a department where people don't sit at their desks all day because, say, they're out servicing customers or teaching for most of the day, those empty desks are a waste of precious office space.  However, these plans often don't take into account the human side - how territorial people are and how they want to have a space they feel is theirs and where they feel they belong. These flex-desks can be a very upsetting thing for many people.

Flexible working and unintended benefits

Fast paced modern life

Back in 2001, I wrote "Time Out: the case for time sovereignty" with Richard Reeves. We argued that organizing work by time rather than task arose from and belonged to the Industrial era. In the past, work was organized by task and we made a case for organizing work in the future in a more flexible way.

There are very good reasons for questioning the time structure and schedule of work. Not least, because it challenges the simple equation of hours in equals productivity. It questions whether there is a linear match between longer hours and more productivity. We all know that there is a point where working more is not the same as working smart or efficiently. In addition, measuring work by hour in rather than output can encourage behaviours like presenteeism. This is when people are present, their bums are in their seats, but they are not actively engaged in their work.