KeyCorp's new offices at the Higbee Building in downtown Cleveland put a focus on mobile employees. American workers have become less tethered to offices, as technology, corporate cost-cutting and changing workplaces have made it easier for people to work from home, a coffee shop or the road.
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View full sizeMembers of KeyCorp's community banking team work in a media room at the bank's new offices in the Higbee Building. Employees working in these rooms can plug in their laptops to work on collaborative projects on large screens. The media rooms are one example of the collaborative workspaces available to mobile employees in the Higbee space.CLEVELAND, Ohio -- One of Cleveland's old department stores has become a laboratory for the modern worker equipped with a laptop, a cell phone and the ability to work from anywhere.
Nearly 1,000 KeyCorp employees have moved onto three renovated floors of the Higbee Building, the historic department store on Public Square. Many of those workers, in technology, real estate services, marketing and human resources, have traditional offices littered with knickknacks and pictures. But several hundred are "mobile," hopping from one building or city to another, or spending a day working from home each week.
The Higbee project is Key's first attempt to build flexible workspace from scratch. The bank, based in Cleveland, has allowed employees to work from home for years. But the new offices are tailored to floating employees, who can plug in at 172 shared desks called touchdown stations, stow their belongings in lockers or slip into private "huddle rooms" for a phone call or a two-person meeting.
Workers across the country are becoming more nomadic. International Data Corp., a research firm, expects three-fourths of the U.S. workforce to be mobile by 2013, able to work from home, various corporate offices or the road. Moving toward a mobile workforce can reduce costs for companies while providing workers with a more flexible schedule, said Justin Jaffe, a senior analyst following small and mid-size businesses for IDC.
"You really don't need to be sitting at your desk with all of your notebooks and binders and everything else around you," said Jaffe, a mobile worker who lives in Portland, Maine, and occasionally travels to IDC's headquarters in Massachusetts. "You're able to access that with a click of a mouse."
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View full sizeKeyCorp and landlord Forest City Enterprises transformed three floors of the Higbee Building into offices that emphasize collaboration and mobility. Instead of being tethered to desks, employees can plug in their laptops at bar-style tables or in informal meeting areas. The offices include 172 shared desks, called touchdown stations, for people who travel, work from home or move between various buildings during the day.The percentage of workers who telecommute rises and falls with the economy, Jaffe said. In 2008, about 12.5 million U.S. households included mobile, home-based workers, many of them telecommuters. IDC expects that number to approach 13 million by the end of this year and to keep rising as the economy rebounds.
"The data shows that corporate workers tend to seek the security of a main office ahead of a downturn," Jaffe said. "If you're a telecommuter, and I actually am so I can kind of relate to this, there's a sense that when things are looking tough, you look to alleviate your own anxiety by being present in the office."
Mobility can be a blessing and a curse. Laptops and cell phones make workers available at all times, blurring the lines between the workday and personal time. Companies give up some control over the work environment, and a home office or coffee shop can be fraught with distractions. But going mobile can mean less travel time, fewer tanks of gas and a better work-life balance for some employees.
"I have my suits in Cleveland, I have my shirts in Cleveland," said Peter Hemme, Key's director of real estate services and a mobile worker who lives in Louisville, Ky., has an office here and travels often. "It's been a great adjustment for me. I live and die with my BlackBerry. I think that's probably the most important thing for me. And then you've got your laptop computer. Between those two things, I can do business anywhere."
For Key, a mobility push made it possible to accommodate more people in less space. On the sixth, eighth and ninth floors of the Higbee Building, Key is leasing half the space, per worker, that the bank uses at other corporate facilities. A corporate designer estimates that Key eventually could fit 300 additional people into the building, further reducing the bank's cost for housing each employee.
The Higbee space, nearly 221,000 square feet, replaced 400,000 square feet of longtime Key offices at the neighboring May Co. building. The bank did not provide cost-savings data related to the move, which involved a complete overhaul of the Higbee floors to reduce water and energy use, improve air quality and incorporate recycled materials.
Hemme described Higbee as a pilot for a larger mobile program. The bank, which employs 5,500 people in Greater Cleveland, is considering a mobile area at its Tiedeman technology campus in Brooklyn and floors for mobile workers at Key Tower, its headquarters building on Public Square. And Key already has moved some employees to Higbee from an office building at 800 Superior Ave., a property where Key hopes to leave six-and-a-half floors by late 2011.