How satisfying millennials could save PwC $850 million

Kitchen laptop

Amanda Miranda, an associate in charge of recruiting for PwC, says she spends an average of one to three days a week in the office. When she's not traveling, the 24-year-old either works from home, where she can bring her laptop to the kitchen while cooking dinner, or at the library, or once, in the waiting room while accompanying her boyfriend to a dentist's appointment.

"In comparison with my friends, I have a lot more flexibility at my job," she says. "It's a definite selling point."

The Boston office where Miranda officially works was designed to support the new policies. It's smaller than the company's previous building by about 18,000 square feet, with a variety of spaces from café-style seating to cubicles to conference rooms that can be reserved online. Miranda's favorite is the planted patio overlooking Boston's harbor and the city skyline. She says she comes in for meetings with local colleagues or just to get "human energy."

Less space

The no-office office may be a logical extension of the trend toward ever-less personal space at work. Workers in Manhattan, where real-estate costs are particularly high, have about 25 percent less space than they did in the mid-1990s, said Ken McCarthy, principal economist at Cushman & Wakefield. 

"The younger generation likes an open environment," he said. "They have been raised in an environment of much more stimulus around them all the time."

Sawdye, 52, says she too takes advantage of the flexibility. She's in the company's New York headquarters only about half the time, and, when not traveling, she works out of her home in Savannah, Georgia. Once she learned the finer points of Google Hangout, she said, "it's amazing."

To contact the reporter on this story: Laura Colby in New York at [email protected] To contact the editors responsible for this story: Lisa Kassenaar at [email protected] Janet Paskin, Brendan Case