Capital One and the Future of Work

Tom Davenport, a professor at Babson college, says there are “three primary influences on knowledge worker productivity: Management, Information Technology, and Workplace. Workplace is the least understood, researched and studied.” He’s right but there are some companies that are making breakthroughs.

Capital One is one of the most innovative companies in the workplace industry and some of their best ideas are captured in a program they call “Future of Work.” They took a hard look at their workforce and they saw three key trends:

1. The workforce was becoming more distributed through alternative work and increased use of technology. At any point in time between 40% and 60% of their workspaces were empty – people were working, just not in their dedicated cubicles and offices (When I hear stats like this I am always reminded of that old adage about advertising spending: half of it is wasted, we just don’t know which half.)

2. The war for talent would drive companies to be more accommodating of their associates’ needs and their competitor’s offerings

3. People were literally running out of time. Because they were working more hours and spending more time on chores and errands, people’s free time per week was cut in half.

The folks at Cap One saw an opportunity to create a program that would meet the changing needs of their colleagues, support their improved productivity and reduce their real state costs. They called it ”Future of Work” and built it around these core components:

• Greater integration between IT, HR and Workplace and the collaboration to create new tools and programs to support Future of Work throughout the company
• New work settings including collaboration rooms, technology rooms, dedicated offices, quiet zones, lounges, and huddle and enclave rooms.Not only did Cap One workers have better tools, they had more choice about where and how to apply them.

The “Future of Work” people carefully measured changes as a result of the program implementation and found workers were more productive and more satisfied. The quality of their work improved and their company operating costs decreased.

This all sounds too good to be true but the findings are similar to those Best Buy discovered with its “Results Oriented Work Environment.” When you give people autonomy and flexibility they actually produce more and are happier, all while saving the company money. Why aren’t more companies catching on?

Capital One is one of the pioneers. Learn more about their program here…