Deskless Works

NEC -- I think it is stupid to spend money in building walls and buying desks for college staff. So does NEC at its head office in Japan. At NEC, you can forget about a plush corner office. The company is running a demonstration project involving 500 employees of its broadband division. They have no chairs in the conference room -- standing cuts down on meeting length. Second, there are no conference rooms -- just open plan space.

The 500 workers don't have permanent desks, and phones have been banned. Employees place their VoIP calls through headsets connected to their laptops.

Rather than pass out memos or draw on whiteboards, workers use collaborative software to manipulate documents on plasma screens that also function as videoconference systems.

NEC says the reconfiguration has saved it money -- paper costs and meeting time are 20% lower than those of other comparably sized NEC groups, and travel expenses are down 15%, in part because of increased use of videoconferencing.

We have some of these forces at work now because we have desk space for no more than 70% of staff assigned to work at our smaller campus. Those who turn up deskless spend more time with students. There is no harm in that. CNET -- "Office space gets new meaning at NEC in Japan"
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