The days of having a grand corner office with your name stencilled on the door are on their way out, as an increasing number of companies ditch desks to cut costs and give workers a greater say over how they want to work.
Sun Microsystems is leading the way with its iWork programme, a mix and match scheme that gives its employees a number of options as to where they can work. Those options range from working from home, to using remote worksites called iWork Cafes, to occupying empty offices for meetings in any of Sun's buildings around the world.
At Sun, each work station has the latest in computer and communications tools as well as traditional items like post-it notes and pens. Says Leila Chucri, Sun's marketing manager for desktop solutions, "I can be here in Menlo Park, I can put my card in, work, take my card out, go to another building anywhere that Sun owns, and put my card in and again my whole services are following me everywhere. Not only from a desktop perspective but from a phone perspective."
So far about 17,000 out of 35,000 of Sun's Santa Clara-based employees have dumped their desk for the roaming office.
[Source: BBC]
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