By Karen Dybis
The Detroit News

Sandra Harmon has a love-hate relationship with her cubicle. There is never enough space for her stuff.

"I tend to be a pack rat, which isn't good," said Harmon, a compliance filings analyst with Meadowbrook Insurance Group Inc. in Southfield, Mich.

Because Meadowbrook is moving to a new office in December, her work area will get even tighter.

Offices and workstations nationwide are shrinking as companies try to maximize their space and save money, according to a recent study by the International Facilities Management Association.

Since 1994, executives have lost the most elbow room, the study shows. Their offices shrank 17 percent from an average 289 square feet to 239 square feet.

Flat screens and smaller computers have made deep desktops and corners good only for collecting dust bunnies, said David Daugherty, executive vice president of Facility Matrix Group, a planning firm in Bloomfield Hills, Mich.

He said companies are using space gained from smaller desktops and offices to create worker lounges and casual conference rooms so people can discuss projects in a relaxed setting.

Offices are "shrinking, but they're much more efficient," Daugherty said.

Trend has ramifications

Companies spend about 5 percent of their annual budget on facilities, so every square foot counts. But those who study office space say the trend toward smaller offices has long-term ramifications.

When a company compresses, it affects air quality, ventilation, power needs and even health.

"It's like packing a firecracker tighter and tighter. At a certain point, you're not going to be able to go any smaller," said David Fik, an interiors developer with Ideation, a group funded by Holland furniture maker Haworth Inc. to study workplace issues like space planning.

And studies show workers' resistance to change tends to increase when they feel their needs are being compromised to save a buck.

"There are three key areas to facilities management: People, process and place. You cannot change one without having a significant effect on the others," said Craig A. Steele, a facilities management professor at the University of California Berkeley.

The biggest shift will be the number of walled offices, said Sue Cubbin, vice president of human resources. Meadowbrook will go from about 75 in its current location to only 24. They are being moved to the building's interior so more workers have access to daylight.

"We wanted to put supervisors closer to the people they're working with," Cubbin said. She noted that the change helps Meadowbrook avoid the expense of building dozens of office walls at its new location.

Compuware's workers gained a few niceties when the software company moved from suburban Farmington Hills into Detroit. Overhead florescent lights were replaced with desktop task lighting, and worker conversations are masked by a recording of falling water.

"People love their little caves," said Carrie Mermuys Finney, Compuware's director of global procurement. "We just wanted to make them more modern, efficient little caves."