1 Introduction
2 Drawing a conceptual model for collaborative workplaces
3 Research methodology
Case | Industry | Sources of evidence | Respondents | Collaborative workplace initiatives | Deployment areas |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
# 1 | Banking | Transcript of the telephone interview (approx. 1 h) Interpretative notes | HR Manager Innovation Manager | In 2017, the company started implementing CW initiatives in the main office in Madrid, by developing a pilot initiative that targeted approximately 40% of the IT staff. The main ingredient of the change was the provision of flextime and flexplace arrangements to all the employees involved in the pilot, who could autonomously organized their working time and spaces according to the business objectives To sustain the change in work practices, the company also carried out a set of parallel initiatives to develop the needed set of managerial soft skills for leading in the new CW | Stage Pilot, IT
Deployment areas
Organizational culture and structure HR and work practices |
# 2 | Banking | Notes collected by one researcher during the interview (approx. 1 h) Field notes collected during company visit Interpretative notes External online documents | HR Manager | In 2015, the company moved its employees in Madrid into new headquarters conceived as a smart building. This represented an opportunity for the company to start changing the way in which 6000 people work in the headquarters. The new space was designed as a platform to enable new and fluid collaborations across hierarchies and functions, while promoting openness, transparency and customer-centric values. Additionally, the company introduced state-of-the-art technologies for virtual collaboration and new work concepts borrowed by the lean start-up, and heavily experimented with agile and scrum approaches | Stage Regime Headquarter
Deployment areas
Organizational culture and structure HR and work practices Physical layout and facilities ICT |
# 3 | Telco | Transcript of the face-to-face interview (approx. 2 h) Field notes collected during the company visit Interpretative notes | 2 Facility Managers | In 2016, the company renewed one of its buildings in Madrid, implementing a flexible office to sustain collaboration between different areas and departments in order to reduce the time-to-market, and facilitate the cultural mix of the employees coming from the two companies that were merged. The new building, which hosts approximately 800 employees, was designed using an activity-based model and has open landscape features. Private offices were banned and managers and employees were collocated in open plans with standard furniture. As the pilot-building was successfully completed, the Company is currently planning the roll-out to other buildings within the hub. Additionally, the Company is also working on the implementation of a telework pilot aimed to save costs | Stage Roll-out
Deployment areas
Organizational culture and structure HR and work practices Physical layout and facilities ICT |
# 4 | Education | Transcript of the face-to-face interview (approx. 2 h) Internal documents on the new office provided by the respondent Interpretative notes | HR Manager | In 2017, the company redesigned one office floor of its school in Madrid, to enhance collaboration between and within teams. The project involved 22 people in the Area of Educational Programs, divided into 1 head of the area, 3 directors, 8 program managers and 10 technicians The new space has been conceived as a collaborative space and digital office, aimed at enhancing collaboration and reducing the environmental impact This initiative couples with the provision of flexible working schedules with core hours, and with an ongoing talk regarding the possibility of providing employees’ with greater flexibility, to autonomously work across different locations | Stage Pilot, educational programmes area
Deployment areas
HR and work practices Physical layout and facilities |
# 5 | Consulting, Engineering & Architecture | Transcript of the face-to-face interview (approx. 1 h) Field notes collected during the company visit Interpretative notes | Managing Director | In 2011, the company moved one of its main offices into a new building in Madrid. The new office was designed as an open and transparent space, which supports dynamic collaborations, awareness and diversity. In this office, only a few top directors have private offices; employees and managers are located in open plans, organized into reference areas where people belonging to the same department but with different profiles are mixed Most recently, the company introduced new software to support distributed collaboration: a cloud-based tool for collaborative project design, which allows people to co-edit a single shared file on a server | Stage Regime, Headquarter
Deployment areas
HR and work practices Physical layout and facilities |
# 6 | Consulting | Transcript of the telephonic interview (approx. 40 min) Interpretative notes | Partner | The company works in an open space office with enclosed meeting rooms. It recently introduced a set of tools to enable distant collaboration, including a tool for knowledge management that works as a project and skills repository, to support information sharing, as well as global collaboration and staffing. Also, it revised the incentive system to align it to collaborative goals | Stage Regime, Company-wide
Deployment areas
Organizational culture and structure ICT |
# 7 | Consulting | Transcript of the face-to-face interview (approx. 1 h) Field notes collected during the company visit Published articles and interviews Interpretative notes | Innovation Manager | In 2016, the company opened a new innovation center conceived as a creative, collaborative and flexible space to develop creative activities. The environment was designed for 70 people and 10 managers in approximately 400 sqm, where people work flexibly and collaboratively, by arranging their activities, working times and locations according to their needs. The main objective was to create a collaborative and flexible space to better adapt to company’s and customers’ needs, able to nurture interpersonal relationships and foster cross-pollination of ideas among employees but also with the clients, who are invited to occasionally work in the innovation center | Stage Pilot, innovation hub
Deployment areas
Organizational culture and structure HR and work practices Physical layout and facilities ICT |
# 8 | Insurance | Transcript of the face-to-face interview (approx. 1 h) Field notes collected during the company visit Interpretative notes | HR Manager | In 2016, the company moved its employees, who were previously spread into three different buildings around Madrid, into a new office. The new office is configured as an open space with assigned seats and a few private offices, for the executives. The main rationale behind the movement was the willingness to bring people together in a space designed to favor formal collaborations and informal interactions among colleagues, to improve knowledge sharing and organizational climate In the meantime, the company also developed a set of in-cloud systems and tools, including a collaborative platform promoted by the HR department and used for internal communication, knowledge management and informal learning. This platform is the first step in the creation of a common digital workplace that would be needed as the company grows | Stage Regime, Headquarter
Deployment areas
ICT Physical layout and facilities |
# 9 | Financial Advisory | Transcript of the telephonic interview (approx. 1 h) Interpretative notes | HR Manager | The company workplace is quite traditional, with a mix of open space, private and shared offices, but it is working on the organizational culture by spreading distributed team work and collocating managers and employees in shared offices. Recently, it introduced a new telephone system for phone calls and it’s on the verge of launching some IT-oriented projects, to improve the remote work and collaboration among different offices | Stage Planning
Deployment areas
Organizational culture and structure ICT |
4 Findings
Case | Deployment/investment areas | Internal barriers | Internal enablers |
---|---|---|---|
# 1 | Organizational culture and structure HR and work practices | Strict technology requirements Control-oriented middle management Presence-based culture Individual resistance to change Low degree of perceived job fit Infrastructural constraints | Integrated trial-and-error approach (user type, culture, innovation and change, workplace configuration) Internal communication Top and middle management commitment Budget allocation Deployment and surveillance |
# 2 | Organizational culture and structure HR and work practices Physical layout and facilities ICT | Control-oriented middle management | Top and middle management involvement Deployment and surveillance Integrated trial-and-error approach (culture, innovation and change) |
# 3 | Organizational culture and structure HR and work practices Physical layout and facilities ICT | Control-oriented middle management Individual resistance to change Strict technology requirements Low degree of perceived job fit | Top and middle management commitment Cross-functional project team Participative design Internal communication Integrated trial-and-error approach (user type, workplace layout/facilities, culture, innovation and change) Deployment and surveillance Budget allocation Management-by-objective approach |
# 4 | Physical layout and facilities HR and work practices | Individual resistance to change Strict technology requirements Control-oriented middle management Lack of top management sponsorship | Top and middle management commitment Internal communication Participative design |
# 5 | Physical layout and facilities ICT | Strict technology requirements Presence-based culture | Budget allocation Management-by-objectives Top and middle management commitment Integrated trial-and-error approach (culture, innovation and change) |
# 6 | Organizational culture and structure ICT | Individual resistance to change Inadequate organizational structures | Trial-and-error approach (incentive system) Budget allocation |
# 7 | Organizational culture and structure HR and work practices Physical layout and facilities ICT | Individual resistance to change | Top and middle management commitment Participative design approach Management-by-objectives approach |
# 8 | Physical layout and facilities ICT | Presence-based culture Strict technology requirements Control-oriented middle management | Participative design Integrated trail-and-error approach (user type, workplace configuration) Budget allocation Top and middle management commitment |
# 9 | Organizational culture and structure ICT | Strict technology requirements Inadequate organizational structures Low degree of perceived job fit infrastructural constraints | – |
4.1 Internal barriers
4.1.1 Control-oriented middle management behaviors
The emergence of this barrier was also linked to managers’ difficulties in trusting employees and to the additional challenges that managers face in guaranteeing the smooth development of work-related collaboration in flexible environments.We are a young company but have very senior practices. (…) We are very traditional, too traditional in our way of working with managers with closed offices, and controlling people here (…). So, it is not easy for us to launch a project with flexible measures. Facility Manager, Company 3
There are bosses that if they do not have the persons in front of them, under their view, they consider that these (people) are not working. Or they perceive that if the persons are not exactly (physically) there, then you cannot check their working time. HR Manager, Company 4
4.1.2 Strict technology requirements
The low support offered by IT systems for flexible work may also generate the perception that flexibility hampers collaborative work by limiting the possibility to quickly involve distributed workers in ongoing situations.The big problem in this new way of working (is that there) are several systems that now we cannot move to laptop. But in a short period of time, we will recall (overcome) this problem, and then we will be able to extend the new way of working to operations. HR Manager, Company 1
(Regarding workplace flexibility) sometimes, it can slow down the work itself, because it is necessary to take precautions to get an inclusive working environment, even without having physical proximity. HR Manager, Company 9
4.1.3 Individual resistance to change work behaviors
Additionally, the interview in Company 7 suggested that the lack of structure and reference points in CWs may present an additional challenge for some individuals who prefer a structured work environment.One of the barriers is what they call hyper-connectivity. (…) It creates anxiety, in the sense that everybody is expecting a super-quick response to any request (…). But then people tend to overreact… like “I do not take my laptop (home) for the weekend”, or “I do not take my mobile (home) for the weekend”, or whatever… which is in my opinion an overreaction because I think that it is our responsibility to be accessible. But it is difficult to find the optimum equilibrium between being reachable and sitting by the phone all the time. Partner, Company 6
Finally, one of the main reasons behind the emergence of individual resistance to change was the impossibility to use CW to display status and identity due to the use of standard furniture and clean-desk policies that limit workplace personalization.We tried to test hot desking, since it is the fashion of the moment; however, hot desking did not work for us. The fact is that people need some reference points. So, we used assigned desks that can be freely used by others. Innovation Manager, Company 7
They lost the “my desk”. You know, “my picture”, “my sons”, “my plant here” and “my space”. The only thing that they have here now that is “mine” is the locker where they put their things in the morning and the afternoon. When you go home, you put everything there. Facility Manager, Company 3
4.1.4 Lack of top-management sponsorship and presence-based culture
The lack of top-management sponsorship could be considered symptomatic of an unsupportive workplace culture characterized by a low degree of management flexibility and a high degree of perceived formalization. However, interviews suggested that a team culture can paradoxically obscure CW performance, particularly in those contexts where the collaborative dynamics develop throughout frequent face-to-face interactions enabled by colocation. In these cases, CWs might be perceived as undermining the extant culture and organizational identity.The General Director does not understand flexible work; he believes that people who go to their home won’t work… because they are going to do the minimum. HR Manager, Company 4
From a cultural point of view, we are a very open organization; we are very collaborative, but the way we have traditionally cooperated has been the one-to-one mode, physically speaking. (…) People will question, as we reached this level of success by being together, what would happen if we just stop having more interactions in a visual way (face-to-face)? HR Manager, Company 1
4.1.5 Low degree of perceived job fit
I surely see some difficulties (in implementing workplace flexibility). In the sense that if we take into account our main business, this is a type of job that is mainly performed in teams, and it benefits from the fact that we have daily personal contact. (…) Then, we surely have some roles, like mine in HR, which could be done more easily remotely. HR Manager, Company 9
4.1.6 Inadequate organizational structures
An additional challenge was represented by the inadequacy of the incentive system, which does not support collaborative goals, as highlighted by the Partner in Company 6.We saw that we had problems with communication between areas and departments and with time-to-market. (…) And people perceived that there is a big gap between managers and people. Facility Manager, Company 3
Another problem is when you have a business in which your incentives are relatively biased toward individualism; then, collaboration is a challenge. Partner, Company 6
4.1.7 Infrastructural constraints
Ours is a very small reality… We can say that the fact of being in a historical building influences a lot (our possibility to change the physical workplace to create CWs). So for us, the location is very important… Thus, it is difficult in the current space to make changes. (…) And people tend to adapt very easily. HR Manager, Company 9
4.2 Internal enablers
4.2.1 Top and middle management commitment
Thus, empirical findings suggest that organizations might preliminarily implement a set of initiatives to engage the senior leaders in shaping CW strategies. This creates an environment conducive for other types of change management initiatives that target middle managers.(The change is driven) from the CEO. If the CEO is not convinced about this kind of break, this (the development of CWs) won’t move. Facility Manager, Company 3
4.2.2 Integrated trial-and-error approach
4.2.2.1 Culture, innovation and change
The (name of the change management initiative) is a project that has a lot of targets, but one of these targets is to develop the soft skills of the managers for managing others in a different way. Different ways mean a more flexible way, a more open way, a more collaborative way. Innovation Manager, Company 1
4.2.2.2 Workplace configuration
Companies may also experiment and provide some structure using zoning to divide and control functions and activities and combine spatial distinctions. These shared spaces are an attempt to create a better fit between the available space and work processes.For example, here we tested this (structure creating an enclosed area for small teams) that did not work very, very well, so we will probably change it. This one was much better because it is much more confidential. (…). This is one of the (zones that) we are going to improve so that it can have more confidentiality that we have not gained here yet. HR Manager, Company 3
4.2.2.3 Incentive system
(Talking about the need to revise the incentive system) you need to find the optimal (incentive system) setup, between mutualized factors and individual performance and accountability, while at the same time fostering collaboration, and this is a challenge. Managing Partner, Company 6
4.2.2.4 User types
We tried to search for different profiles of the departments. (…) The main reason is to test this model with different kinds of people, not only with technicians, not only with human resources, but a mix of sellers, commercial, finance and very different profiles. Facility Manager, Company 3
4.2.3 Budget allocation
In addition, companies should allocate part of the budget to sustaining the aforementioned change management initiatives that are aimed at adjusting managers’ mindsets to collaborative and flexible ways of working.You also need to invest in tools (…). You need, for example, to also change the fixed phone system completely. (…) We are investing 1 million euros now to change the laptop. (…) You have to invest a lot of money. Facility Manager, Company 3
4.2.4 Participative design approach
For example, this enabler was enacted through the use of surveys aimed at detecting specific issues to be addressed throughout CW initiatives. Change leaders that have the responsibility to deliver and receive managerial feedback throughout the whole process can also be used.It is not true that people hate to change. They hate to be changed by others. But this is exactly what we are trying to get here, in the Innovation site: facilitate people through the provision of the proper space. Empower them in a way that they become the agents of change. Innovation Manager, Company 7
4.2.5 Internal communication
Companies may also use internal communications to convey employee empowerment, which anchors CW to concepts that broaden the scope of the implemented initiatives, such as freedom, flexibility and innovation.People become very nervous when they get to know that they are going to change their place: where am I going to stay, how this is going to change…. Thus, the more (first-hand) information they get and the more explanations you provide, the better it is. HR Manager, Company 4
From a cultural point of view, we do not want to refer to (the pilot CW initiative) as ‘remote work’ because we just want to talk about flexibility and about freedom. The freedom to autonomously arrange your work according to your objectives. HR Manager, Company 1
4.2.6 Management-by-objective approach
The person has to be a responsible person as well, as he should be capable of organizing himself in terms of work. The boss has to be a boss who delegates, who is able to set and being oriented toward results, and who is able to say to the person what he has to do. HR Manager, Company 3
4.2.7 Deployment and surveillance
We have installed movement sensors in the desks. (…) We are going to use this information from the position of sensors to check the occupancy and the behavior of the people. (…) We want to know the dynamics of this building to improve and increase the occupancy and to check if the behavior of the people is dynamic or not. Facility Manager, Company 3
4.2.8 Cross-functional project team
We have been working with human resources from the beginning, almost 1 year so far. We have been sponsors of the change because the main change at that moment was this space but very close to human resources. Facility Manager, Company 3