ABSTRACT
This chapter describes an effective working environment. The drive towards providing staff with a choice and range of office worksettings to improve their effectiveness is admirable. The actual design and layout of this new style of working environment is absolutely key to its effectiveness. Desk-sharing of course is only one, perhaps topical and emotive, element of workplace change that is required to exploit the opportunities around creating an efficient and effective workplace. Technology is also, of course, essential to workplace effectiveness. Without the appropriate harnessing of technology by an organisation, much of the assumed workplace and work practice developments are hampered, even impossible. The role and effectiveness of the office workplace takes on a whole new meaning and its ability to compete and be attractive, as a destination of choice, will be all-important. Above all, a workplace has to support the work being undertaken by an organisation and its workforce, in whatever form, shape or distribution that organisation might take.
