Microsoft transforms office in radical revamp

SINGAPORE - The cubicle is set to go the way of landline phones and the eight- track, Microsoft reckons.

Employees at its Marina Boulevard office are free to roam with laptops across an open-plan space that looks more like Starbucks than white-collar purgatory.

If this internal effort - called New World of Work - takes off within Microsoft, the external payoff could be even larger.

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The labyrinth of the newfangled that such an office needs - video conferences, meeting room bookings, and an app that helps you locate a colleague in the office - runs on a dense network of Microsoft software that other firms might soon find they need.

Already, enterprise customers have trooped into the Singapore office by the hundreds, trying to wrap their heads around how such a work environment can be adopted.

This revamp of the local office is part of a global undertaking by the software giant that has seen more than 70 Microsoft offices transformed into cubicle- less workspaces.

At workstations scattered throughout the several storeys occupied by Microsoft Singapore, desk phones are conspicuously absent. Employees are kept connected through laptops and smartphones, and have a wireless earpiece for phone calls.

Every day, employees - senior management or not - go forth and find a spot to work at, anew.

This is the way people are increasingly inclined to work, especially if they are expected to work with each other, Microsoft believes.

"We really started to be able to collaborate and use technology to its fullest," said Davina Yeo, a senior manager at the Asia-Pacific headquarters.

Post-revamp, 54 per cent of local employees believe that productivity has increased and 77 per cent feel that the working environment has improved.