Scott McNealy, Sun CEO

Flexible Office Strategies... Sun Microsystems hopes to reduce its real estate costs dramatically by moving from 0.8 employee to 1.8 employees per office. That's the message delivered by CEO Scott McNealy recently (CNET News.com, August 13, 2002). Holy cow. Does that mean that Sun will need half of the space that it currently occupies? Could similar "knowledge" companies also reduce
their space requirements?

For some insight, I called Mattias Bergman, Manager of Work Telepresence at Sun, who confirmed that Sun is trying hard to reduce its space requirements. Internal studies show that Sun might even be able to achieve a ratio higher than 1.8 -- maybe even 3.0 employees per office. Wow. In theory Sun might only need a third of space currently occupied.

In reality Sun is currently running at a ratio of 1.0 employee per office because of excess space leased before the current economic slowdown. Even so, Sun calculates that roughly one-third of its space is vacant at any given time. (Definition: No person has touched a computer or phone in that office within the last four hours.) Although technology plays a role in reducing square footage needed, the far greater challenge is changing workplace practices.

Bergman is always looking for positive stories about the benefits of flexible offices, and he recently ran across a great example. One of Sun's newer star salesmen reported that his success was partly due to flexible officing. If he wanted to learn something from a senior person, he requested a nearby office, and that accelerated his learning curve. You can't do that with static offices. ... Stay tuned for another flexible space success story on Thursday.

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--Peter Pike