Taking a look at the office of tomorrow.

Imagine: a company in which the team of professionals all work from home, where weekly staff meetings are held on the Metroliner and monthly retreats to update plans and strategy are held wherever - on the beach, on the sea, on top of a mountain. Michael Bell, Director of Corporate Real Estate for Dun & Bradstreet, cited this as one example of the changes that are ahead in the concept of "the office."

The keynote speaker for "Integrated Office '93," a series of seminars, workshops and exhibits co-sponsored by the Greater New York Chapter of IFMA, the International Facility Management Association, and the International Design Center of New York (IDCNY), Bell gave a broad overview of the changes which are afoot. The reasons for these changes are many. The advance of technology is certainly one of them, but others include lifestyle changes, the economy and concern for the environment. Together they are propelling a movement towards many different "alternative officing" strategies, including: telecommuting, virtual office, remote telecenter, satellite offices, free address, shared space, hoteling, and group address.

As with any new technology, the limitations are two-pronged; a natural resistance to change and an infrastructure that lags behind the technology in sophistication. One striking example of the latter, cited by J. Clifford Gauntlett, chief engineer at AutoDesk and another keynote speaker, is the personal jet. This vertical take-off and landing vehicle, according to Gauntlett, "can fly at altitudes of 4,000 feet, cruise at over 400 miles per hour and get 17 miles per gallon." This concept is not a fantasy but rather something currently being tested that could be manufactured by the end of this year and come on the market at $17,000. Gauntlett said, "Although approval for such a vehicle has been received from the Department of Transportation and from the Federal Government, there is a slight problem. The Civil Aeronautics Board has not issued its approval because the FAA computer systems cannot handle the load that would be added."

Gauntlett, a chief engineer at Auto-Desk, which sells the product Auto-CAD, was an apt speaker given the program's emphasis on the office and the changes which are ahead. He not only works for a company which sells a technologically sophisticated product, but his style of working - dependent as it is on sophisticated communications - would also be considered technologically sophisticated. Gauntlett travels hundreds of thousands miles a year managing projects around the world. Constant fax, phone and computer communication and the ability to have everything at his fingertips at all times ensure the necessary interaction.

Although many of us believe that technology is way ahead of us, Gauntlett pointed out that we are being "trained" to keep up in very subtle ways. He noted, "If you watched an interview news program on television in 1980, it took you about 1-3/4 seconds to recognize the name of the person being interviewed. Today, the name is flashed up there and is gone in 1/2 second because our eyes are becoming trained to respond more quickly to information passing in front of us." Whether we realize it or not, technological innovation is having an impact on the way we work.

Michael Bell quoted some statistics on the changing workplace. "In parallel with the growth in technology, the growth in the home based work force is equally exhilarating. In 1992, Link Resources, a market research company, estimated that 25 million Americans generate their primary income from their homes... Telecommuting has grown at 40 percent over the last five years and is expected to grow by 20 percent over the next five years. And certainly, the Clean Air Act of 1992 will encourage this growth in many targeted regions where the law will require establishments with over 200 employees to reduce commute mileage by 25 percent by 1996."

According to Edward Norton and C. Jaye Berger, speakers in the seminar entitled "Legal Issues and Liabilities in the Decentralized, New Age Workplace," home offices pose certain legal risks. Berger explained, "You may be exposed to more risks in your home than you might be in your workplace because your workplace is geared to having employees and people from the outside visiting and may be structurally set up in a way that is safer."

Other issues that need to be addressed include whether you will be considered an employee or a consultant; who will be responsible for paying insurance; who will buy the equipment; would any injury be covered under Worker's Compensation; and who owns the work you do, i.e., the copyright. Berger asked rhetorically, "If your office is in your briefcase and you are moving it to the beach and to the park, you are increasing risks and hazards because the environment is changing moment to moment. Is the employer responsible for all of that?" The two admit that answers to questions such as these will evolve as the issues become a more permanent part of our lives. Until then, they advise being cautious and carefully addressing each one as it applies to a specific situation.

One note of caution that was reiterated more than once was that workers need a sense of community. Working from home and working from the road and working from the air or sea is terrific in terms of flexibility and optimum use of time, but, according to Bell, "The water cooler phenomenon is a critical aspect of employee morale and productivity. The informal encounters at the cafeteria, in the corridors, or on the elevator provide critical opportunities for communication and idea sharing. And the powerful dynamic of group work may be diluted by a virtual workforce which only stays in touch through the network or on the phone."

Such issues, Bell continued, "are not trivial and will demand innovative changes in organization, work design, management and physical work spaces both at the office and at home." Then he issued the challenge, "It is perhaps those of you in the office design and furnishing industry who can, more than anyone, help mitigate these issues."

Thomas, manager of Real Estate, Design and Construction for Bell Atlantic Network Services, Inc., gave some real life examples of changes being implemented in his company to stay competitive in a seminar entitled "Pinching Pennies in the '90s: Infrastructure Re-Engineering and Reducing Corporate Overhead."

"Throughout the seven state business we created one real estate organization, which meant that we got the critical mass, the leverage and the ability to get our arms around the total costs of real estate to the business. We understood our occupancy cost. We found that 30 percent of our costs were in operations - things like repair, maintenance, energy costs - the day-to-day keep-the-doors-open-lights-on operational stuff, but we spend 80 percent of our time managing 30 percent of our cost. It didn't make any sense. Seventy percent of our cost structure was in things we didn't think we could impact; things like depreciation, property taxes, leasing, capital expenses, engineering, salary and wages. Based on this insight, we created what we call 'break-through goals' to re-direct people's attention to the areas that have the highest strategic value for us in managing our cost structure."

The effort for change and improved competitiveness is not confined within Bell Atlantic alone, explained. "Ultimately our goal, as a service provider, is to control our cost structure, which is price... If our cost structure is too high for the quality of services we provide, as is also true with your firms, we will not have a customer. So, we see ourselves, the real estate community, the design community and all of our vendors, as being partners in providing quality service to our customers. We are really after creating those quality partnerships."

Sometimes the changes that make the biggest difference are not high tech. During the seminar entitled "Blazing Technologies: Investing In Integrated Workplaces and Promised Productivity," a quote made by the Chairman of Goldman Sachs and reported by the Wall Street Journal was repeated. "The single best investment we ever made was when some genius in our operations bureau came up with a bold new idea. If you had people sit a little bit closer together, you could save a lot of space. The profit from that space saved by moving one chair was higher than any leveraged buy-out. It was incredible."

Speakers Mary Brewer, vice president, and Canthi Froggatt, director, of Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum, offered some informative case histories during the seminar entitled "The No-Collar Worker: Getting Started in Alternative Officing." The examples cited of each alternative officing strategy were instructive:

* The Federal Government pioneered a telecommuting program under which employees averaged three days a week of working at home. Among the benefits voiced by the participants and their supervisors were a reduction in commutation costs and improved quality of personal and work life. many participants found that their most productive time periods occurred outside normal business hours. The downside to this arrangement included inadequate work settings and the feeling that remote management is a challenge.

* DuPont's experience with a virtual office arrangement involving 120 field sales staff was an unqualified success. Outfitted with laptop computers, cellular phones, fax machines and systems networked to home office, business centers and each other, employee morale went up and the company avoided construction of a new building and saved millions in occupancy costs.

* To address the mandate of the Clean Air Act, a Telecommuting Development Program was instituted in the San Francisco Bay area which makes remote telecenters available to all employers in the region. The primary benefits appear to be that telecommuters are more productive and that decreased travel reduces pollution, traffic congestion and infrastructure repair.

* The Travelers Corporation in Hartford, Connecticut implemented two satellite office locations at the request of employees. The result was improved productivity of the staff, who reported fewer distractions and less stress from commuting; access to an expanded labor pool and reduced lease costs because the satellite offices were in lower rent areas than the headquarters.

* An experiment in shared space by Corning, Inc. assigned 3 to 4 engineers to a single workstation. Possible because the engineers are often out of the office supporting remote sites in the U.S. and overseas, the company was able to avoid the construction of a new building. While some employees were reluctant to give up their own space, other groups have expressed interest in getting involved in the experiment.

* Hoteling is akin to shared space, except that there is no permanent assignment. Employees call ahead to reserve workspace when they need it. Anderson Consulting saved 68 percent in annual lease costs by assigning 70 systems consultants to 13 offices. The carrot was an increase in office space from 115 square feet to 196 square feet. The downside was that storage and access to personal reference materials was sometimes problematic.

These few brief descriptions give a sense of the possibilities that lie ahead of us. Only our own imagination will limit the parameters of our work environments in the future. Success for any of these new work arrangements, however, will depend on the positive outlook of those who participate. Both management and employees must perceive these new strategies as positive steps. There will be hurdles and there will bc backsliding, but if the focus is maintained and if there is motivation for all involved, the goal will be attained.