Intel's New Office

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The new cubicles won't even have trash cans. Instead, workers will use tabletop trash trays, from which they will carry their coffee cups and candy wrappers to a central trash bin located in a common area. The idea, already tested with 5,000 Intel employees in Ireland, is to encourage recycling, starve mice and other pests, and to simplify and speed up trash collection.

Splash of Employee Optimism

The cream office partitions with glass inserts and light-colored furniture should result in an airier feel. Contributing to that will be new, brighter lightbulbs. Grayish ceiling tiles will be replaced with white-colored ones. Most gray walls will be repainted white, while some will enliven the environment with accent colors such as yellow, green, purple, light orange—and, occasionally, Intel's trademark bright blue. "We are trying to provide an environment that feels more comfortable and energized," says John Scouffas, design principal at designer Gensler, which created the new look for Intel. Gensler also has designed offices for Cisco Systems (CSCO) and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ).

In communal areas, certain glass partitions—white or blue—will feature Intel logos. Other dividers will be of mesh glass and wiring, resembling wafers—just like the silicon plates from which Intel cuts its chips. "Right now, once you enter the building, it's a gray world," Scouffas says. "[After the redesign], it will be obvious that you are in an Intel space."

The blue-gray carpets will be ripped out and replaced with carpeting that's crème, yellow, and beige. CEO Otellini, who himself inhabits a standard cubicle, signed off on the color scheme. "The reason Paul liked this color palette is, it's not in your face, and it can last 15 years," Tunmore says. Teams in various locations will be able to choose from a select set of colors and fabrics.

The facilities in Oregon and California will undergo a complete face-lift, getting new furniture, carpeting, and paint. But in Arizona, Intel won't go to that extreme. Instead, the company will experiment by simply changing the layout of the furniture throughout the facility. The idea is to better understand which new design elements make the biggest difference for employees.

Cost-Cutting Designs

The hope is that the new design will increase productivity, raise worker satisfaction, and reduce costs. A recent Intel survey found that 60% of the company's cubes are empty at any given time. Most employees work from their office an average of three days a week, with the remainder spent in off-site meetings or working from home. By using shared space, Intel hopes to house 20% more employees in the same space, Tunmore figures.

Other costs could drop as well: Cisco, which piloted flexible work spaces with a group of 140 workers several years ago, found that its office furniture expenses dropped by 50%, while real estate and workplace-service costs each fell by 37%. Staff satisfaction increased as well. "Our goal is to make people excited not just about the work, but about coming to work," says Chris Kite, a Cisco vice-president. Cisco plans to expand its pilot into other offices in the company.

With more workers increasingly mobile, many corporations have begun to revamp their offices in the past two years, says Kevin Schaeffer, a principal and managing director at Gensler. "This seems to be a fairly hot issue in the corporate world."

Competitive Surroundings

Will the new design work for Intel? Even within the company, the effort remains highly controversial. Tunmore's recent posting about the project on an internal blog quickly became the most discussed entry, with more than 150 comments in the first morning. To designers' chagrin, employees immediately began to concoct strategies for hijacking phone booths and unassigned conference rooms for their personal offices. One bright idea: to make it the responsibility of an assistant to grab the nicer office spaces early in the morning, before the bosses come in. Others worried the setup will increase noise levels and lead to more frequent interruptions.

Yet, the status quo doesn't work, either. An internal survey of 4,500 staffers done in May showed that only 12% of Intel employees are content to leave their work surroundings as is. (Intel's human resources department began to consider a redesign after receiving many employee complaints and watching applicants opt for jobs with other companies that have more comfortable offices.) About 55% of the staffers surveyed liked the idea of an open working environment and lower partitions. Another 33% liked color changes but not lower partitions.

The three-month-long pilot will be evaluated throughout 2008. If the response is positive, Intel may eventually decide to splurge on a revamp of all its offices, a project that could cost about $300 million in the U.S. alone, where Intel has 6.5 million square feet of office space.

Of course, Conan O'Brien is sure to find something to tease Intel about even then.

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Kharif is a reporter for BusinessWeek.com in Portland, Ore.