[MUSIC PLAYING]
SPEAKER: Offices and the ways we use
them are constantly evolving.
There is nothing natural or fixed about the spaces
where we work.
[WHISTLE BLOWS]
In fact, reporting to a building to do knowledge-based work
is a relatively-recent idea.
AGUSTIN CHEVEZ: When you look at the buildings in the city,
you take for granted that work occurs in the office.
Then you realize that work has occupied so many
different spaces, so many different environments--
that the office is just a short blink in the history of time.
SPEAKER: Architect and workplace design researcher Agustin
Chevez says we need to remind ourselves that offices
had to be invented.
And over time, they have evolved to meet our own changing needs
and expectations.
Now that COVID-19 has upended office life worldwide,
we thought understanding the ways the office has evolved
could help us frame the changes happening today.
With the help of historians, architects, and stories
from HBR readers, we took a look at four key moments
in the history of modern offices.
In the 1960s, the Herman Miller Furniture Company
introduced the Action Office.
It was a flexible combination of desks, tables, and walls--
offering workers flexibility and privacy.
But the need for office space was growing quickly.
Other furniture companies introduced copycat versions
of the Action Office, and companies eventually
started using them to simply jam more people into less space.
The modern cubicle was born.
CLEMENCIA VILLAMIL: Now, when I started with a cubicle,
it looked nice when I walked in.
But when I started working, it didn't help my productivity.
SPEAKER: Clemencia Villamil, who worked in HR in Venezuela,
remembers transitioning from a big office
to the isolation of cubicle land.
CLEMENCIA VILLAMIL: It was difficult to make that link,
with people being in a cubicle and being
separated from everybody.
It made my job easier, probably--
so I could concentrate with my interviews
when they were phone interviews.
But it didn't help my social skills.
SPEAKER: Another unintended consequence of cubicles.
CLEMENCIA VILLAMIL: You know, I'm 5-feet tall.
So for somebody who is 5 feet, a cubicle
is really, really a bad idea.
Because most cubicles must be about 5-something.
So everybody could see over the cubicles and socialize.
And there I am having to go around every single cubicle
to see somebody else.
SPEAKER: The concept of telecommuting
was first proposed during the oil crisis of the early 1970s,
as an alternative to gas-guzzling commutes.
By the 1980s and '90s, technology
had made teleworking viable for more jobs.
And many companies began experimenting
with remote-work programs, to reduce office expenses
and offer employees greater flexibility.
REX GOODMAN: I've really never worked
in an office, my entire adult life.
SPEAKER: Rex Goodman was a remote sales
rep for United Airlines in the 1980s.
He plotted-out his sales visits with little blue dots
on road maps and hunted for pay phones,
checking-in with the office receptionist for messages.
REX GOODMAN: There was no voice mail or anything at that point.
And then return those calls to the client that called you.
But the first thing you had to do was find a pay phone.
SPEAKER: Rex's life changed when cell phones came along.
He got his first one in 1995, but it
wasn't an immediate liberation.
REX GOODMAN: Kind of amusingly, we really weren't
allowed to use them that.
Minutes were so extensive.
SPEAKER: In 1936, Alan Turing published
a paper the proposed something called an automatic machine.
If someone could encode a problem on paper tape,
Turing's machine could solve it.
And in the decades that followed,
computers slowly made their way into offices.
In the 1950s, companies could rent
gigantic IBM data-processing machines, for about $15,000
a month.
That's the equivalent of about $160,000 today.
By the 1980s, computers were much more common in offices,
but you needed specialized skills to use them.
ROY ILLSLEY: You used to have to go to a computer room.
You used to have to sort a program using tape or cards.
So you would take your cards, load them in the card reader,
load your program, execute your program,
run it on a screen and keyboard in the computer room.
Take your printout back to your desk,
and then trawl through the errors.
And then three-days later, repeat it.
SPEAKER: Roy Illsley, who worked in IT in the '80s,
also noticed that personal computers changed
the way people worked together.
ROY ILLSLEY: When you go back before the personal computer
was there, you didn't have a desk with a computer.
You had to go and talk to people.
But as soon as you got the personal computer,
your mobility slowed down.
You stopped walking in, doing stuff.
You became a lot more insular, because you
were focused on the task at something-- sat there doing it.
And when email came, it was even worse.
SPEAKER: In 1965, researchers at MIT
discovered how to share files and messages between computers.
But it wasn't until the mid-'90s that free electronic mail
started to become widely available.
ROY ILLSLEY: Nobody got up to go and talk to somebody.
You'd send them an email.
They were probably only three desks down from you,
but you wouldn't go and speak to them.
You'd send them an email.
PETA SWEET: It's just a complete shock was instantaneous way.
It was an instantaneous way of communicating,
without having to go through somebody's secretary, or book
a meeting.
So it sort of felt a little bit scary, really.
SPEAKER: Today, we rarely think about email.
It just is.
But as with so many other innovations
that have revolutionized the way we work,
electronic mail was once uncomfortably, excitingly new.
LUCY GILL-SIMMEN: I remember one day this guy
walking in to the office that I was working in
and asking me to move out of the way,
because he needed to get me on to electronic mail, or email.
And I didn't really know what this meant.
But it basically meant that I would
be able to send messages electronically
to people all over the world.
And so I said, oh, let's try the colleague in New Mexico.
I came back in, in the morning.
And I always remember this voice saying, you've got mail.
And I had one email.
Hey, Lucy, good to hear from you.
And I remember just like being completely
blown away with excitement.
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