Integrated Workplace Strategies

Many organizations make initial forays into alternative officing by focusing on one type of unconventional workplace approach. The choice may be home-based telecommuting, some form of hoteling or non-territorial officing, a specially-designed team environment, telework centers, or another alternative. In fact, few people work in a single location. An Integrated Workplace Strategy (IWS) conceives the workplace to be a system of loosely-coupled work settings. The diverse settings are linked by the physical movement of employees and the electronic movement of information. The IWS concept views the workplace system as dependent on and shaped by information technology, management practices and organizational culture, work processes, and workforce demographics. The IWSP research program has examined:

* the range of work settings which comprise effective workplace systems;
* the ways employees use the different settings available to them;
* when and where employees choose to work, given the opportunity to choose;
* employee responses to Integrated Workplace Strategies;
* the roles technology, organizational culture, and Change Management play in creating high performance workplace systems.