Why should you have your own desk?

Illustration

Must every office worker have his own desk? Today, definitely not. He may even have a different view from the office every day. Irdeto, a global software company, is an exapmle of such a "deskless" company. In its offices in Ottawa, Canada, even senior managers do not have their own desks. 140 local employees sit in an open space at long tables equipped with computers. Anyone can sit where he wants. At the and of each day, workers must  clean their working places and store their things in lockers.

The offices of Irdeto in Ottawa include 33 different sized meeting rooms equipped for different purposes and 10 informal seating areas with armchairs and couches. 190 lockers, 2 printers, a kitchen, a dining room and 4 showers are available to employees. The company's offices in the Netherlands, China or the USA were equipped in the same manner. The company wants to encourage interaction between employees and the informal exchange of information this way.

It also proved that the departure from traditional open space with cubicles brought more silence to the office. Employees with no walls among them are more aware of how they behave to their surroundings.

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Article source Ottawa Citizen - news and information from Canada's capital
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