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Weekly UpdatesApproximately, 34% of time is spent in an individual or personal office. 25% of working time is spent in an open-plan area. 15% of working time is spent in team working room. 6% of working time is spent in an informal meeting room. 12% of working time is spent in formal meeting room and 8% of working time is spent in an outside office situation. In the analysis section, this information will be used to discuss the implications of working time spent in different areas, including a suitable desk allocation ratio for SLAB.
4.3. Percentage of different working area
The current survey collected information on the percentage of different workspace types of traditional layout and modern layout offices for comparison and to provide some observations on current workspace management practice. Further analysis of the current survey reveals that, in the traditional layout office, approximately, 54% of head-office working area is an open-plan area. 34% is individual or personal office area. 9% is a formal or informal meeting room. Only 3% of all working area is a team working area. However, in the modern layout office, 90% of head-office working area is an open-plan area. 3% is a formal or informal meeting area. 5% is a team working room. Only 2% of all working area appears as individual or personal office.
4.4. Short-term and very short-term rentable area
In addition, as indicated by all relevant respondents, short-term rentable and very short-term rentable areas are not available for any type of working area in head-offices of SLAB.
4.5. Percentage of relocation type in local authority's head-office
As indicated by OGC and IPD (2005b), there are four different relocation types as below:
Briefcase--only personal effects, storage with perhaps some telephone/IT equipment;
Briefcase+IT--personal effects, storage, telephone, IT, equipment but not including furniture;
Briefcase+IT+Furniture--personal effects, storage, telephone, IT and most furniture/equipment;
Refurbish+Construction--personal effects, storage, telephone, IT, new walls/partitions, new aditional wiring or communication systems and furniture/equipment.
The current survey collected data to compare the proportion of relocation types between traditional layout and modern layout offices. According to the traditional layout office, approximately 3% of staff relocation is of the briefcase type, 40% of staff relocated by Briefcase+IT, 41% of staff relocated as a Briefcase+IT+Furniture type and 15% of staff relocation is a Refurbish+Construction type. Nonetheless, in the modern layout office, there is only one type of relocation, which is briefcase relocation. The briefcase relocation means staff are able to relocate by moving only his/ her personal effects but not ICT equipment and furniture. This is likely to reflect the lowest relocation cost. This information is used in the analysis section for providing implications regarding the workspace arrangement of both office types.
5. DATA ANALYSIS
5.1. Working area occupation
As shown in Figure 6, SLA's officers spend their typical week in many different areas, including individual working area, open-plan area, team working room, informal meeting room, formal meeting room, and outside office.
To find out whether this is representative for all management areas, a statistical analysis of the above data has been undertaken. Since the data is not normally distributed the Kruskal Wallis Test was used for testing this non-parametric data (Field, 2005; Black, 1994). As shown in Table 3, the data of time spent in different areas was ranked and the mean rank of each group was calculated (Property, ICT, and HR).
After that, the data of each working area was calculated its sum of ranks, based on the Chi-Square distribution. The sum of ranks, H, can be calculated from:
H = 12/N(N + 1)[k. summation over (i-1)][R.sup.2.sub.i]/[n.sub.i] - 3(N + 1) (1)
where: N is the total sample size; n is the sample size of a particular group; [R.sub.i] is the sum of ranks of each group, and k is the number of group.
As shown in Table 4, the sum of ranks (H) of each working area can be displayed in the 'Chi-Square' column. Each H value was used to evaluate its significance of mean comparison. Where degree of freedom (df) is 2, the asymptotic significant value of time spent in each area is more than 0.05 as well as the significant value estimated by Monte Carlo simulation. Since the analysis shows that there is no significant difference of means amongst property, ICT, and HR management areas, the proportion of time-spent presented in the pie chart above can be representative for the different management areas.
The proportion from the pie chart can be implied that about 25% of the typical working week of respondents is spent in meeting and outside office activities. This means respondents' desks or workstations are not being occupied during these activities. Consequently, there may be an opportunity to manage the temporarily unoccupied area more efficiently. For example, in one typical week, four staff desks/workstations may have a total 36-hour idle time (or one working day approximately). Theoretically, this may reflect an opportunity to bring in another member of staff to share the desks on condition that the person adopts a suitable flexible-working time scheme. Therefore, the maximum desk allocation, based on the current survey results, is about 1 desk per 1.25 people (i.e. one member of staff + 25% of a second member of staff's time).
5.2. Performance benchmarking for flexible working
The benchmarking data is important to monitor and manage three office resources, which are workspace, ICT and HR (NAO, 2006a). Lacking this data may lead to vague property and financial information causing poor management decision-making (AC, 1988a,b; AC, 2000). According to organisations successfully adopting flexible working, important performance benchmarking data includes annual occupancy cost per area ([pounds sterling]/sq.m.), annual occupancy cost per workstation ([pounds sterling]/workstation), density area per full-time equivalent (sq.m./ FTE), density area per workstation (sq.m./ workstation), churn cost (Relocation cost - [pounds sterling]), and staff satisfaction (% satisfied staff) (NAO, 2006a,b; IPD, 2005a,b).
According to the current survey, respondents cannot provide most of this performance data because the data may not be collected or prepared in their performance records like Property Performance Indicators (PPIs) in Asset Management Plan. Therefore, any SLAB aiming to take-up flexible working need to collect this information in the future to enable them to manage their office resources more flexibly and effectively.
5.3. Combination of workspace-flexibility concept in practice
As stated in the literature review, there is an opportunity to include flexibility into each workspace type. Workspace management concepts aim to provide a suitable workspace proportion based on staff activity (Laing et al., 1998; Ward and Holtham, 2000). Portfolio flexibility aims to arrange the suitable workspace proportion based on organisational business needs (Gibson and Lizieri, 1999; Gibson and Lizieri, 2000; Gibson, 2000).
Based on the survey results indicated in Section 4.3, Figure 7 presents the proportion of workspace type of traditional layout SLA offices. According to relocation in the traditional layout office mentioned in the section 4.5, it can be implied that arranging people to the wrong workspace type may affect, for example, high churn rate and cost, low staff satisfaction, and ineffective resource management (NAO, 2006a; Gibson and Luck 2004; Szarejko and Trocka-Leszczynska, 2007). According to Laing et al. (1998) and Ward and Holtham (2000), because various churn types occur in this building type, this means that the current workspace proportion may not reflect a proportion of staff activity.
According to the survey results indicated in Section 4.4, Figure 8 presents portfolio flexibility of SLA's offices. Clearly, portfolio flexibility of workspace in both short-term and very short-term does not appear in any SLA. As commented by SLA staff, restrictions of legislation, regulation, and working culture in SLA may be barriers against adoption of the model at present.
[FIGURE 7 OMITTED]
[FIGURE 8 OMITTED]
6. DISCUSSION
6.1. Combined resource management
The analysis shows that, in the context of SLAB, portfolio flexibility, especially short- and very shot-term rentable areas is not adopted at present. Therefore, to manage the SLA office resources better, the original models, which are portfolio flexibility and workspace models, should be adapted to be used in the SLA context.
6.1.1. Adapted portfolio flexibility model
The original concept of the portfolio flexibility model proposed by Gibson and Lizieri (1999) cannot be used to effectively explain the current working practice of SLAB. The current survey results show that none of the SLAB apply this concept to its office management practice. Arguably, trying to introduce SLAB to share or let some office area may not be warmly welcomed. Consequently, the original model should be adapted to use with an organisation which intends to occupy its office space individually. An adapted portfolio flexibility model is presented in Figure 9.
[FIGURE 9 OMITTED]
The model contains three levels of flexibility, which are:
Low flexibility workspace
According to the OGC and IPD (2005a,b), the desk allocation ratio of public offices should not exceed 1 desk per 1 person. This means that a member of staff should not own two or more working desks/workstations in the organisation office at the same time. Moreover, as described in the analysis in Section 5.1, the current research suggests a desk allocation ratio of 1 desk: 1.25 FTE (4 desks per 5 people, based on full-time equivalent calculation) may be used as the maximum desk allocation ratio in the lowest flexibility workspace area. Staff who are suitable to work in this area should, ideally, spend time at their desks at least 75% of their typical week. Where suitable staff can be arranged to work in this area, therefore, a higher degree of occupational efficiency is likely to be achieved.
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