Sun Microsystems is most often known for its technology, but a study that's been going on there since 1990 may have even greater implications for the way that people work than the technology that Sun makes.
Sun was planning to move to a new campus in Menlo Park, California. At that time, they put together a small group headed by a fellow named Eric Richert, and asked them to study how employees interact with the facilities that they work in.
That was the start of an initiative, which has grown into dozens of initiatives, numerous pilot programs, and other projects for the entire corporation. Sun, you see, employs about 40,000 people. The idea of the study is to find out the things that are important about how people interact with their environment; and, using that information, to help Sun attract and retain talented people.
The start of this whole project was a bit of insight. Richert noted that the way most companies organize work facilities is really very much like a factory in the industrial era. There are main campuses (factories) to which employees commute.
Richert didn't think that was a good way to organize things. He wasn't sure that getting a bunch of knowledge workers in the same place was the way to make them most effective. So he began to study how Sun's employees actually work.
So what has Sun learned?
Well, the big thing is that folks use their offices a lot less than you might expect. To get at where people actually work, the team studied data on identification badge swipes that allow access to space. When they did that for a period of 39 consecutive workdays, they found that almost a third of the company's employees don't go to their assigned place of work each day. A small number of those - 5 or 6% -- are either on vacation or sick. The rest are working.
And where might that be? A bunch are on airplanes, for example. Others are working at home, or in hotel rooms, or on client premises.
During the 1990s, Sun developed drop-in centers in residential areas on the other side of Bay Area traffic congestion. These centers allow hundreds of Sun employees to spend at least part of their workweek outside their assigned offices on the main campuses. They turn out to be immensely popular.
They're popular because folks don't spend a lot of time commuting, something almost no one loves. Sun employees say they save an average of 90 minutes every time they use one of the centers. How much of that does Sun get? Richert says it's about 60% or a bit less than an hour.
There are two big findings that come out of this according to Richert. First, folks don't need to be in a central place to work effectively. That's true of course, but it doesn't address the fact that many times folks need to be in a central place to work effectively together. Central campuses and central cities provide an ease of informal interaction that no technology can match yet.
Second, many times they don't want to be in a central place. Anyone who's ever worked in a large office knows that sometimes you just can't get any work done there. To me, it seems especially hard to be productive at your individual work if you're stuck in one of those cubical farms where everyone else's noise filters into your world.
Richert thinks that the basic campuses are designed first to support individual work, and second to support group work. He thinks that should be reversed. Part of the way to do that for Sun is to allow more folks to work at home, using tools that allow them to share information and work product with each other.
The company is rolling out worldwide an elaborate work-at-home program to do just that. Sun will provide extensive equipment and other support for folks who would prefer to work at home a significant period of the time.
I'm not sure this is the answer. The real challenge that I see, for Sun and every other large organization, is finding out how to maximize both individual and group productivity. I suspect there is no one perfect way, no formula, to do this.
Individual knowledge workers need time for reflection and fairly large blocks of time (about 90 minutes) to work on projects. Those are fairly universal. There are substantial individual differences in how much interaction with others adds to effectiveness.
Groups need time to blend and bond to be effective. They also need easy ways for informal communication to happen. Those are fairly universal. There are substantial differences between groups when it comes to how to work out the mix of individual and joint effort.
For now, at least, I think it's most important for you to know how you work best. If you understand that, you can seek situations, environments and arrangements that foster productivity. If you understand that, you can choose technology that helps you work most productively. If you understand that you can find ways and places and projects that let you build on your strength and be most effective.
This feature appeared on 25 June 2001
