I've been working with Office Interiors lately. If you're not from Atlantic Canada, Office Interiors is our region's leading supplier of office furniture and equipment. They also have a fantastic little division called Constructive Solutions that provides all manner of interior modular construction and assorted other services... this allows you to tear down the inside of your office, reconfigure full walls, etc., and never send anything to landfill. All the stuff is produced in a zero waste manufacturing facility to boot. Very cool. While, for many, being environmentally friendly is more of a post-Al Gore / Inconvenient Truth idea, Office Interiors has been at this for a while.
All of this is happening at a time when most every product out there is 'good enough'. Most every desk works fine, and most every copier is as good as the next. The very definition of a market that is becoming commoditized in our surplus society.
So, we're going to be doing some work over the next while to start what Hugh would call a 'Smarter Conversation' about how the space you work in, and the equipment you work with, has a dramatically significant impact on the results your organization gets. To get this going, Jim Mills, President and CEO of Office Interiors, has started a new blog. Jim's a good friend of mine, a fantastic guy, and he has a ton of knowledge about how to make the physical workplace function at the highest level possible. And how to do so while reducing your organization's impact on the environment.
All in all, I think the blog will develop to be a great source of information, ideas and conversation about making workplaces work better. And since most organizations cite HR as their #1 expense, it would seem to me that having a productive place for them to work is a pretty good idea. I'm happy to be a part of it.
(Disclosure: While Office Interiors is currently a client, I was their Director of Marketing from 2004 to 2006.)
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