As more and more people started to work from home, the company realized it didn’t need so much office space, so it consolidated, saving $8.5 million a year in real estate costs, said Karen Kelly, a workforce mobility consultant at the health plan. But even then, there were rows upon rows of empty work space in the head office, since some people worked from home only sometimes, and still had desks. So the company is now launching a program which would get rid of permanent desks for many workers. Instead, they’re given a laptop and a rolling locker that they can use to store coffee mugs, pictures, and other belongings. When they want to work in the office, they can log onto a calendar and reserve a mobile desk.

The new set-up saves money while getting more productivity out of workers, Kelly said. Surveys that the company did indicated employees “were less distracted and more productive working in the right environment,” she said.

Kelly works from home most of the time now. She has gotten back around two hours of personal time now that she doesn’t have to commute she says. She lost 10 pounds since she can go to the gym more, and spends a little more time working, since she doesn’t have to spend so much time in the car.

A study by Stanford researchers published earlier this month affirms that allowing some employees to work from home makes them more productive. Chinese travel agency C-trip allowed a random sample of call center employees to work from home for nine months, and the researchers studied the results. Working from home led to a 13 percent performance increase, partly because people worked more minutes per shift since they didn’t take as many breaks or sick days—and partly because they were able to make more calls per minute because they were less distracted.

Another new type of work style that’s changing the way the office looks allows people to come in when they want to, as long as they complete assignments.

“We really have this one-size-fits-all version of the way work is organized,” said Phyllis Moen, a sociology professor at the University of Minnesota. “Why does everybody go to lunch at 12, why do we all get in our cars like lemmings and start leaving for work or home at the same time? It’s so ingrained, the clockworks, calendars are socially constructed, we think they’re rigid and set in stone and that we can’t change them.”

But this instinct can be changed, Moen found. Moen studied a pilot program by Best Buy that allowed workers to show up to work when and where they wanted, as long as they accomplished previously agreed-upon goals. This experiment, called a Results-Only Work Environment, reduced turnover in the period during which it was in place.

Companies that focus on results, rather than hours worked, can get more productivity out of their workers, said Jody Thompson, who helped develop the Results-Only Work Environment for Best Buy. (It’s worth noting that Best Buy did away with its ROWE program last year).