Work from anywhere

IF YOU’RE given the freedom to move around, sit anywhere you want in the office, work from anywhere, even in the cafeteria, would you abuse that privilege? How, as an employer, would you be able to monitor what members of your staff are doing?

Ever since they moved into their new headquarters in Shah Alam, Selangor, in July this year, DiGi Telecommunications employees have not had fixed seating, and there are no cubicles, not even for the bosses. The office adopts an open concept whereby tables are laid out across an open area. Employees can choose to work at a workstation or on their own notebooks. They can even plonk themselves in any of the other levels or departments. With wireless technology, communication is no problem.


Adzhar Ibrahim: ‘In terms of the contingencies of life, everybody has the same needs, everybody falls sick, and everybody needs time off for vacation.’
“It’s a chicken-and-egg situation,” said Adzhar Ibrahim, director of human resource development. “Do you trust people first and hope that they return the trust, or do you say, you prove to me that you’re trustworthy and I will trust you? I think our philosophy is that, ‘Hey, you’re a decent person and we will trust you.’ If it becomes a problem, then we’ll deal with it.

“But surprisingly, I don’t think we’ve had any issues of people running away or not working. You can’t hide. Where are you going to hide? And if you need to read the newspaper, you can go ahead and read it. But on the other hand, if you read the newspaper the whole day, everybody will see. So there is some peer pressure.”

Adzhar related an incident whereby a group of senior management staff visited the building, and one of the employees was sitting at a desk reading a newspaper.

“We walked by and she didn’t even look up!” he laughed. “That was so remarkable, because in other organisations, even if you deserve a rest after working long hours, the moment you see your boss, you will quickly get back to work. The assumption is that if you are here reading the newspaper, you have a good reason for doing so. You don’t have to explain.”

He admitted that the system is not perfect, and there will always be a few who will take advantage of it. He said the decision was whether to have rules that cater to a small minority but inconvenience everyone else, or to have rules for the majority and deal with the minority on a case-by-case basis.

The DiGi headquarters, known as D’House, is the physical manifestation of the company’s idea of a “flattened organisational structure.” There is no physical differentiation between the workspace of a head of department and those under him or her. In fact, Adzhar proudly proclaimed that all employees share the same benefits, regardless of position.

“Our main argument is that in terms of the contingencies of life, everybody has the same needs, everybody falls sick, and everybody needs time off for vacation,” he said. “Many women will get pregnant. So we don’t want people to differentiate each other based on their benefits.”

He said the move from the old to the new was quite drastic, after identifying the good and the bad in the company. Things like communication barriers and silo thinking were eliminated.

“Along the way, we pushed the boundaries so far that we ended up in pretty unknown territory,” he said.

The building, with its wood, steel and glass design, has an ultra-modern look, as does the interior with flowers and paintings almost everywhere.

“We had a Family Day a few days ago,” he added. “I have two teenage children, and they said ‘This is cool, I don’t mind working here.’ Teenagers! They don’t agree with me on anything, yet they think the place in which their father works is cool!”

http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2007/1/2/lifeliving/16327908&sec=lifeliving

D'House surprise

Far from being a distraction, the open working environment at DiGi’s headquarters is inspiring and conducive to work.

THE first thing I asked when I walked into the office spaces of the DiGi Telecommunications headquarters in Subang Hi-Tech Industrial Park in Shah Alam, Selangor, was: “Where are the bosses’ offices?”

The answer is, well, there is simply none. No cubicles, no delineations, no physical or visible hierarchy; just a bunch of people working. When I was taken to meet the Head of Human Resource Development on one of the four levels of D’House (yes, the building even has a special name), he was just sitting in a corner of the huge office space, unassuming.

If I hadn’t been told that he’s one of the heads of the company, I wouldn’t have known. He didn’t have a high-back chair or a larger computer screen. In fact, everyone has the same working space, the same kind of chair, the same kind of table (sometimes shared by three or four persons), the same kind of computer. No one person stands out. Yet, each and every person gets to do his or her own thing, so to speak. They can sit anywhere; yes, even in the cafeteria or rest areas (otherwise known in more hip terms as “chill areas”).

It’s not unusual to see employees sitting in the lounge area, enjoying the open air and the sound of the waterfall in the background, pastry and coffee next to them, and a notebook or laptop in front of them. Which brought me to my second question: “How does anyone get any work done?”

They don’t know, said the staff, things just somehow get done. Which can probably be attributed to the open environment that can be quite inspiring and conducive to work. In fact, on the morning of my visit, my guide, Heather Sario from corporate communications, and I did see two members of the staff enjoying the morning air in the courtyard next to the lobby, having their breakfast while carrying on a discussion.


This ‘chill area’ is a garden-like place in the middle of an office space in the DiGi Telecommunications headquarters.

“Are you guys working?” we asked.

“Yes!” they replied with big smiles. OK, they might not look like they are, but we didn’t doubt them.

If one is reminded of the Googleplex, the world headquarters of Google in California, then one is not very far off from understanding the basic concept. Both of these organisational structures and their physical attributes challenge the traditional idea of a corporation. While D’House may not have candy-dispensing machines everywhere as apparently can be found in Googleplex, it is still very different from any other local office.

D’House looks more like a college (and in some areas, a hotel) than a corporate headquarters. Apart from long, windowless corridors that are strangely cold and uncharacteristic, the rest of D’House is warm and inviting, with big spaces, large windows that let in generous amounts of natural light, and some very colourful décor, especially up on the call centre where the floors are brightly coloured like in a kindergarten.

“Their job is the most stressful,” Sario explained. So their chill areas are also especially friendly, and one even has a television and a large teddy bear in one corner.

In D’House, there is a surprise at almost every turn. I walked into the stairwell and was greeted with colourful drawings on the walls, some of them done by the children of the employees (or DiGizens, as they are known; yes, they’ve thought of a name for almost everything!). I could have been in a pre-school. On stressful days, said Sario, they take the stairs to cheer themselves up.

The area on the ground floor known as the Concierge is where the receptionist is located, as well as the technical support team. But the area looks more like a cafeteria. When you walk into the Concierge, among the worktables loaded with computer screens and keyboards, there is the almost out-of-place smell of coffee and pastry wafting in the air, and ? well, well, a bakery, of all things!

For lunch, Sario suggested that we head for Reload. What’s that? Well, Reload is the creatively named cafeteria that is a semi-circular platform built into the side of the hill at the back of the main building. It looks like a proper restaurant rather than an office cafeteria, and the menu is huge.

The landscaped hill at the back is also a recreational area where DiGizens can have a jog, and where there are guards to keep the area safe. And the greenery there makes for a nice backdrop for some of the glass-panelled meeting rooms in the main building. From that vantage point, the headquarters looks more like some sort of a holiday resort than an office.

The meeting rooms, too, are very creatively named – Caribbean, Trinidad, Tobago, Sipadan, Koh Samui. Paradise islands. We walked into one of the meeting rooms and there, among the notebooks and organisers, were food and drinks. They might not be pina coladas under a coconut tree, but it sure sounds like paradise to a corporate denizen.

After lunch, I was off to discover what the Townhall is. I discovered that it is simply a large indoor sports arena, which is a basketball court, badminton court and volleyball court in one. The DiGizens also have their company meetings, and aerobic and kickboxing sessions there. There’s a nice communal ring to that name, and all they need is probably an official town crier who goes: “Hear ye, hear ye!”

It might all sound like too much, but the land area on which D’House stands is 2.6ha, and the built-up area is 30,225sqm.

Perhaps the most memorable thing about D’House is that there are flowers practically everywhere. And the fact that everyone I met said the same thing: “You have to try the coffee at the bakery!”

No, I did not get to try the coffee, but D’House was enough of an eye-opener without any amount of caffeine.


http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2007/1/2/lifeliving/16324199&sec=lifeliving

Flush Toilet in D'House

Mini Cooper

Mac

Cool Furniture

Chairs

L4 Toilets