Furniture

ou're not imagining it: Your office or cubicle is getting smaller. According to the Facility Performance Group, an Ann Arbor, Mich., research and consulting firm, workspaces have shrunk 20 percent to 30 percent in the last decade. Office designers are packing more people into less space and devoting more space to shared areas in the hopes of promoting teamwork.

In your smaller space, you'll be facing some truly nontraditional goods. Furniture giants Haworth, Herman Miller and Steelcase (outsold in the federal government only by the Bureau of Prisons' brand Unicor), are dreaming up lots of stuff on wheels (for easy rearranging), visual storage systems and chairs that promote movement (sitting still is bad for you).

Churn-the percentage of workers who change workspaces each year-is also up (now at 44 percent, says the International Facility Management Association). So not only does furniture need wheels, it needs to be easily wired and ready for whoever may sit there, even if it's someone new every day.

Haworth, Herman Miller and Steelcase each provided one-third of the furniture for the National Partnership for Reinventing Government's new offices.

Contacts

Haworth
(800) 344-2600

Herman Miller
(888) 443-4357

Steelcase
(800) 227-2960

Unicor
(800) 827-3168