Technology Impacts Real Estate and the Workplace

The changing nature of how and where people work is transforming corporate real estate. Nearly 40% of employers expect their knowledge workers - those who contribute intellectually to a business, rather than manually - to work remotely by 2010.

Advancing technologies that allow workers to accomplish tasks from anywhere has spurred major employers to rethink the real estate paradigm. Many companies feel that a majority of their infrastructure that supports mobility.

As an example, Sun Microsystems, needed a solution to a slowing work product problem as a result of heavy traffic tie-ups in the San Francisco Bay Area. This was remedied by creating a network of small "drop-in centers" enabling employees to work from various accessible locations.

Employees simply log in at remote work kiosks. Incoming phone calls are routed from a main call center to their temporary workstation.

This new multi-office system has eliminated 7,000 workstations. One employee station now serves 1.5 employees. This has resulted in a reduction of about 1 million, saving $71 million in excess real estate costs in the last year.

(Source: National Real Estate Investor)