Hoteling Variation Works for Employees on the Go

About 230 employees of Compaq Computer Corp. work in an improbably small space--half of one floor in a South Bay office building. Fortunately, most of those employees drop in only occasionally.

The office is the carefully designed prototype for a regional sales headquarters combined with a customer service center that Compaq executives call the El Segundo model.

A variation on the “hoteling� concept that is already familiar in the accounting and advertising industries, Compaq’s El Segundo office is a work environment in which the typical staff member has no permanent desk.

Instead, the company’s regional staff of 200 sales and customer-service representatives work from their homes and “touch down,� as the Compaq expression goes, only occasionally, with a wireless laptop under one arm and a wireless phone in hand.

The strategy allowed Compaq to consolidate two offices into a single location in half the space required earlier.

Visiting employees let themselves in with key cards and stow their gear in square steel lockers similar to those found in a gym. Visitors can then choose a seat along a window wall, snap open their Compaq Armada M700 laptops--standard issue among the sales staff--and check their e-mail.

The office is not entirely transient, however--a staff of about 30 full-time employees works at the far end of the office, out of view of the touch-down staffers.

No telephone plug-ins are needed for the computers. The office is equipped with wireless communications equipment, eliminating the need for unsightly cords. The boxes that contain the wireless technology resemble large smoke alarms and are mounted conspicuously on the wall like artwork. Special “follow-me� software allows employees to use their own phone numbers, regardless of their location.

Even the design process involved technology. Therese Zehnder, senior designer at HOK architectural firm, conferred weekly with senior Compaq executives in Houston, Cupertino, Calif., and Phoenix who viewed the evolving design via online presentations.

For all its emphasis on au courant technology, however, this is not a nerdy space. In a nod to L.A.’s Art Moderne tradition, the office is sleek and streamlined, with a curving floor plan and such designer colors as pale cobalt blue and sage green.

The image of the office is one of “intelligent creativity,� said Regional Vice President Leigh Morrison.

One incubator of creativity is the centralized coffee bar that serves as a place to socialize and share ideas. In the Compaq office, the curving black cappuccino bar is stationed right in front of the entrance, to be used by both visiting staff and customers who may want to unwind from intense training sessions.

Perhaps the cappuccino bar is too public for some employees. The full-time staff has its own coffee bar--an unpretentious cubicle, with a microwave and a refrigerator, tucked away in the rear of the work area--which serves as a company watering hole.

“It’s the commiseration bar,� Morrison said wryly.