Links: GlobalPost.com Article /

Just as the individual office was replaced by cubicles and the omnipresent cube farms made famous by Scott Adams and his iconic character Dilbert, it appears as if alternative work environments, or agile space, may replace cubicles as the favored work environment. What will Dilbert do? Who will replace him as the icon of agile space?

(Photo: Amway employees work at a company cafe in Taipei, July 31, 2009. Increasingly, corporations are providing employees with alternative work environments, or "agile" space, which evolved from the dot com revolution and describes how software designers sit at tables facing one another with their computers in order to collaborate. (Nicky Loh/Reuters))

Large, international corporations are doing away with cubicles. How will the shift affect workers and the quality of their work?

NEW YORK - Two years of the Great Recession have done more to liberate workers from their offices than a decade of stressed-out employees pleading to telecommute. Dilberts worldwide are losing their cubes.

When executives at Unilever noticed that much of their office space was either unused or unoccupied as workers traveled, they took away 36 percent of their employees' personal space. The company's offices in Leatherhead, England, now feature "agile" space: a largely open office where workers rearrange themselves throughout the day depending upon their tasks. They can collaborate with one another while sitting at a table, take a break in a curvy "vitality" space or concentrate alone in a small individual work area.

The company's design for its corporate offices in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., resembles a large house more than a cube farm. Renovations in Bogota and Singapore are scheduled to be finished in 2010.

(Source: GlobalPost.com)