SUN MICROSYSTEMS No need for a work station in flexible office of the future
Sun's chief believes the concept boosts productivity while slashing costs.
MENLO PARK, Calif. (AP) -- Amy Greene has a blatant disdain for her workplace. She shows up at the address on her business card only for mandatory meetings.
"I don't like going into the office," said Greene, a computer systems manager for Sun Microsystems Inc. "You just end up talking to people in the hallway. It's unproductive."
Such an attitude could get many employees in trouble.
But Greene's bosses applaud the 12-year Sun veteran for rejecting her assigned office across a traffic-choked bridge. She works instead at the company's leafy campus closer to her Palo Alto home.
Scott McNealy, Sun's chairman and chief executive, wants all 35,000 Sun employees to be prepared to abandon permanent desks in favor of flexible work stations and telecommuting. Proponents of the idea say it is a prototype of how millions of Americans will work within a decade.
Boosting productivity
McNealy has long believed that companies could boost productivity and slash costs by eliminating regular desktop computers and giving workers access to centralized machines.
In the past year, he has become a downright zealot, preaching the benefits of Sun's "iWork" program at industry conferences and pitching clients on the virtues of the gadgets and software Sun has developed to connect its employees. He's transformed Sun into the most extreme example yet of workplace flexibility.
"Mobility is already a fact of life," McNealy wrote on Sun's Web site. "We're simply responding to the current reality."
Although critics, including some Sun employees, blast iWork as a morale-sapping gamble, the increased availability of high-speed Internet access at home has made telecommuting easier than ever. Almost 32 million people telecommuted full- or part-time in 2002, an increase of 2 million from 2000, according to research firm Cahners In-Stat/MicroDesign Resources.
Numerous banks, government agencies, universities and companies have purchased Sun's "work force mobility" technology.
AOL Time Warner recently bought Sun's technology for a call center. Several public universities in Canada have iWork-like programs for professors and other mobile employees. Kodak, British Petroleum and Citibank have studied iWork and are considering it for some workers.
Central idea
IWork is based on the idea that few employees need file cabinets or bookshelves to store data that can reside on central computers, or servers. With secure access to servers, workers don't need fragile laptops, desktop computers or even conventional desks.
Sun gives workers microchip-embedded smart cards and has installed computer monitors and card readers at thousands of workstations, even in the company cafeteria in Menlo Park.
IWorkers check e-mail and work with documents wherever they can find an access point -- at home, 93 flexible offices and nine "drop-in centers" in urban areas around the country.
Desks are reserved online on a first-come basis, and the phone system forwards calls to any location. The first 85 people who reserve seats in a San Francisco center, for instance, can avoid the 45-mile haul to Sun's Santa Clara headquarters.
And although employees enjoy the flexibility to work from home when kids are sick, several engineers said they missed the spontaneous brainstorms and "nerd bonding" over lunch or informal meetings.
Employees must request cubicles two days in advance and clear out when they leave. Forgotten umbrellas, briefcases and paperwork are often stolen or thrown away. The austerity of some of the beige, windowless offices -- bereft of plants, photos or personal touches -- would make Dilbert shudder.