The Workplace You Need Now. Sanjay Rishi
to influence corporate building exteriors. By the 1960s, companies like IBM were building unique headquarters designed to embody their brands. Completed in time for the 1972 Olympic Games, BMW’s famed world headquarters building in Munich, Germany, resembles the four cylinders of a car engine. However, the brand concept was typically expressed only in the exterior architecture of these facilities, rather than in the experience of the workplaces inside.
By the 1980s, large corporations had mostly shifted once again toward a focus on productivity, with profitability as the primary motive, per economist Milton Friedman’s mandate that the primary objective of business is to maximize returns to shareholders. In an era of junk bonds and leveraged buyouts, Wall Street investment banks became infamous for working their junior associates around the clock. Cubicles shrunk in size while their walls grew higher, isolating workers from everything but the task at hand.
With the focus on profitability and productivity, it’s no wonder that the cubicle rose to prominence. The C-suite viewed workplace as a cost and utility with limited choice, not a creative, inspired, or desired product with a compelling value proposition for the employee-consumer. At most companies, regardless of industry, purpose, or workforce demographics, offices were homogenous and bland. Employee workplace enjoyment, comfort, and collaboration were not prioritized.
Office environments remained unimaginative through the end of the twentieth century. Layouts of desks and furniture were of varying generic styles and formats, with some private offices, a smattering of conference rooms and a vending machine, café, or other simple and fixed amenities situated under the glow of florescent lights.
The dot.com boom and bust sent the cubicle walls tumbling down. By the 2000s, young technology companies began pioneering creative offices designed to attract and retain the best and brightest in-demand talent. These companies quickly realized collaboration among these sought-after workers resulted in better ideas, faster innovation, and seamless information sharing. Cubicles gave way to open work areas and bench seating that fostered an open dialogue – and provided greater flexibility and higher-density space to accommodate rapid growth.
As their companies grew, Silicon Valley technology leaders looked beyond the office interior to design unique suburban campuses that attract and inspire talent, bringing their corporate mission and culture to life, often in spectacular fashion. Creative companies took the opportunity to incorporate fun and whimsy – sometimes to the extreme – through art and engaging installations like large aquariums, living walls of plants, or game rooms. Flexibility trumped privacy and focus, and, occasionally, practicality.
The sprawling “Googleplex” in Mountain View, California, headquarters of Google and its parent company Alphabet became a poster child for the new age of technology workplace. In 2015, Facebook hired then-86-year-old architect Frank Gehry to build its new “airplane hangar” headquarters in Menlo Park, California. In 2017, Apple upped the ante, delivering its futuristic Norman Foster-designed “spaceship” headquarters in Cupertino, California, at an estimated cost of $5 billion. Similarly, Microsoft’s headquarters campus in Redmond, Washington, has continually evolved for 35 years and remains an iconic symbol of innovation.
These technology innovators were also workplace innovators, recognizing that the office was not just a place to work but an environment to spark creative thinking. Botanical gardens on rooftops and in courtyards, free premium and craft food options, and games and entertainment galore were designed to motivate talent to shape a unique culture.
Many amenities and perquisites introduced into the workplace had a well-intentioned purpose. On the frontlines of technology innovation, employees are expected to work long hours to meet aggressive product delivery deadlines. While technology companies weren’t the first to recognize that providing live-work-play amenities could enable employees to be more productive, they raised the bar for workplace possibilities that made being on the frontlines of innovation more enjoyable.
Outside of the technology sector, other companies with unique brands and products have made similarly bold statements with their headquarters. Nike’s world headquarters campus in Beaverton, Oregon, for example, embodies the company’s mission to “bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world” with buildings and fields named after many of the world’s greatest athletes, along with sports performance centers and research labs where the company fuels its innovation. Similarly, Lego opened the first phase of its new corporate headquarters in Billund, Denmark, in late 2019 with the goal of creating a workplace that is playful and fun to inspire creativity. Lego bricks are incorporated into the building’s exterior walls, and are referenced throughout the interior, from brightly colored staircases to Lego-created sculptures that adorn common areas.
In conjunction with the rise of the amenities-rich office emerged the idea that standard desks and chairs weren’t the only path to productivity. Residential-style furnishings and activity-based workspaces for different kinds of work could also be highly beneficial. WeWork helped pioneer these concepts with its coworking spaces, complete with huddle booths, open spaces, benches, private offices, meeting rooms, and a comfortable design aesthetic.
Forward-looking companies began investing in humanized workplaces with creative layouts encompassing different kinds of workspaces and seating options. These new kinds of workplaces were intended to appeal to highly skilled and sought-after employees, while providing the right kinds of workspaces for collaboration, heads-down solo work, and private calls or meetings.
Only over the past decade has the idea of aligning the workplace with a company’s mission and purpose spread beyond a select few brands. For some, the effort was more superficial or experimental than substantive, limited by cost pressures and financial performance concerns.
Nonetheless, these efforts formed the important prototypes of purposeful and experiential workplace environments that elevate the office above its roots as a place to get work done. The workplace has become part of the company brand and expression of its ethos, motivating the workforce to gather and achieve a common mission. The action office has evolved to the intelligent office, supporting multidimensional work, from deep concentration to customer engagement, “showroom” activities to extended reality experiential work.
As is usually the case, the future of the workplace had arrived – but even now, it hasn’t been evenly distributed.
The Value of Location
As workplaces have evolved – or should evolve – to more closely address the needs and preferences of employees, location has become part of the workplace strategy, too.
Over time, the location preferences for corporate offices have shifted, depending on the value equation, or the balance between the cost of real estate and the opportunities of a location in terms of the quality of the space, convenience, safety, and proximity to talent, customers, and jobs.
In the United States, for example, central business districts (CBDs) were the growing focus for decades as the centers of commerce and industry. Yet, many US urban areas lacked vibrancy and were perceived as challenged by crime and lack of cleanliness.
By 1960, the interstate system had opened the suburbs to urban workers, allowing them easy access to affordable and spacious housing, green space, and safety. Suburbia created a compelling value proposition for aspiring families throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Employers soon followed, establishing campus settings within easy drives to convenient suburban locations, often near highway interchanges.
The preference for the suburbs persisted until the 1990s and 2000s, when enterprising mayors and civic organizations revitalized urban areas with 24/7 amenities and a greater sense of safety. Cities once again became attractive to residents and employees, especially younger generations looking for a dynamic urban “vibe,” cultural amenities, the convenience of public transportation, and a compact, high-density, live-work-play environment.
Employers were quick to follow employees back to the urban environment, as evidenced by the rush of corporate campus relocations and expansions in CBD and emerging urban locations during the past 20 years.