By Kelly Ennis, Erin Deason & Abi Knipscher

A Brief History of Work and the Office

In 1905, in a work called The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana, he wrote the following phrase:

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Elsewhere in the book, Santayana criticizes industrialism, accurately noting, “Indeed, the industrial ideal would be an international community with universal free trade, extreme division of labor, and no unproductive consumption.”

He was right.

Less than four years this initial publication, Frederick Winslow Taylor (known as the godfather of efficiency) published The Principles of Scientific Management. The mechanical engineer’s theory on scientific management arguably set the stage for what became the modern office. 

A quick Google search for “a brief history of the office” yields almost endless results, and some are really worth looking at. Generally, they begin with a statement reaching back to ancient times, then reference Taylorism as noted above, and proceed through conventionally accepted advancements toward the modern office.

A history of the office in one sentence could be:

 “Modern offices originated next to factories and adopted their organizational efficiencies, which remained even after the factories were no longer attached to them.”

Offices densified with the arrival of skyscrapers, rigid floorplans relaxed into open offices after WWII, and infinite layouts became possible with new technologies like electrified panel systems and personal computers.” Thus began the slow crawl through the mundane “Dilbert” mentality of open offices through the 70s, 80s, and most of the 90s.

In the late 90s and early 2000s, it was the collision of wide-spread internet access, email, the Blackberry and iPhone that spawned a new generation of workers (Generation X/Y) influencing the evolution of office space. With soaring and opinionated caffeine habits, these workers could work anywhere and anytime, though lagging corporate cultures and policies all but prohibited it.

Enter the Coworking Mindset.

Coworking and the Office

As stated in a recent interview, coworking isn't just about a particular space. It's a mindset that embraces progressive ways of examining how workplaces function. It's a concept that applies equally to emerging firms and Fortune 500 companies.

The Coworking Mindset is a way of thinking about the future of work as both a community and spatial framework of beliefs. These beliefs can foster sustainable communities based on trust where businesses, entrepreneurs, and technical communities can work together.

Today, over two-million people are coworking from thousands of spaces all over the globe, which were largely unavailable before 1995. Coworking communities and the physical spaces that support them vary from boutique and niche, to large and extensive. Some examples include IndyHall in Philly, Spark (Baltimore) and WeWork.

Throughout its growth, the underlying value systems have remained. The Coworking Mindset and the physical spaces that support them provide a community-based environment that encourages high performance, increased productivity, and strong relationships. Additionally, via curated social, educational, and training programs typically developed and managed by a community manager, experiences are created that benefit the users and guests of the space. With particular attention to wellness, collaboration, and business networking events, the spaces can support economic, workforce and business development.

Wellness, collaboration, high performance, and strong relationships are also relevant to corporate tenants who occupy more traditionally leased office space. These organizations are currently reevaluating the capacity with which they need to lease larger offices 24/7. BOMA conducted a survey in 2022 of over 1,200 real estate decision makers. 70% of them indicated that they planned to reassess how space is being used and 51% noted that they are likely to reduce their square footage.

In the reconsideration of real estate or reductions, it is time for corporate end users to look inward and program their spaces for what they actually need. This means doubling down on strategic conversations that are about an organization’s function, its purpose, and its people. This strategic effort will help encourage conversations around brining people back to the office and building back an office culture and community that will thrive in strategic, well designed and activated spaces where people truly want to be; not somewhere where they have to go.

There is a big difference between the two.

A well programmed and designed space informed by a proper strategy and program is an asset and a tool for business. An uninformed space without strategy is simply design for design’s sake, leading end users to lease real estate they don’t need and buy furniture they won’t use; a tragically short-sighted waste.

With the acceleration and acceptance of flexible work and the clear need for social and structured collaboration, we could be perfectly poised for corporate end users to approach real estate selection, planning, strategy and design much more intentionally and informed by the Coworking Mindset. 

As leaders in workplace design, we increasingly have discussions around the use of space, noticing a shift from ideas about ownership to ideas about access. Always ahead of the curve, we have not only been part of the increased growth in the coworking, innovation and managed space sectors, but our research based approach supports an argument for substantial growth in the Coworking Mindset over the next few years, whether through a third-party space, custom enterprise solution or a complete office re-evaluation.

If you are considering right-sizing, down-sizing, re-thinking or reducing your real estate footprint, now might be a good time to consider the Coworking Mindset as part of your organizational space/real estate strategy. Reach out. We'd love to share thoughts and understand your needs.