R chief Lisa Brummel is introducing innovative office designs that allow employees to reconfigure their workspaces for the task at hand

Nerds need doors. Microsoft land of right lobes—has always honored this received wisdom. Nearly every employee gets a private office. That's pretty cush for a tech company, considering how engineers are stacked on top of one another at Google and the proles at Hewlett-Packard are stuffed into depressing, dungeon-like cubicles. 

Yet the days of everyone wanting the same standard-issue box are long over. So HR chief Lisa Brummel is creating Microsoft's next-generation workspace: the elastic, meet-my-mood office. Here too she is going far beyond what most companies consider: open plan or not? Instead, she's creating a hybrid workplace of sliding doors, movable walls, and urban-loft-like spaces tailored to individual needs.

A Custom Workspace  It all starts in the Workplace Lab, a kind of parade of homes for offices where "Microserfs" can pick and choose their new digs. The lab also functions as a kind of workplace Freud; employees are divided into four worker types: providers (the godfathers of work groups), travelers (the types who work anywhere but work), concentrators (head-down, always-at-work types), and orchestrators (the company's natural diplomats). From there, managers and teams can pick the kind of workspace—down to carpeting that doubles as a golf green, Xbox lounges, or souped-up kitchens—that works best for them. Modular features mean spaces can be opened up and buttoned back together depending upon one's need for privacy or collaboration. Since most people verge on bipolar—needing privacy one day, yearning for company the next—glass windows have a frost-up feature for when prying eyes walk by. Continue At Source

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