IIDA Perspective - Fall/Winter 2016 - 21

Photos by: Hedrich Blessing
CannonDesign's mindful design
of Oakland, California, USA-based
Clorox's outdoor area opened
a second workspace option
to the company's employees.
"Immediately accessible outdoor
spaces mean being able to
push the reset button and be
refreshed," Hirons says.

Commercial real estate giant
JLL's new headquarters in
Chicago, Illinois, USA includes
"studios" that take the place of
traditional desks and open-office
floor plans. Castered furnishings,
adjustable-height desks, monitors,
and sound-absorbing privacy
panels encourage flexibility and
movement within the partially
enclosed space.

Reservation-required "huddle
rooms" in JLL's new offices
counterbalance larger, more
traditional meeting areas such
as conference rooms. "Today's
workforce is collaborating
more than ever," says Ed Nolan,
managing director of workplace
strategy at JLL. "Our employees
need to be less tethered and
more agile."

Café booths on all floors of
JLL's offices foster the flexible
coexistence of private, solitary
activity with open, public, trafficheavy spaces. "If you're not using
the workplace to engage your
people and offer them choices,
you're missing an opportunity to
connect them to your culture,"
says Nolan. "And that's the fabric
of any successful business."

attempt to push forward the movement. "Showrooms are meant to be living, breathing examples of how we put
these principles into place," says Busch. "The newest showrooms coming out are active working spaces. Teknion
just opened several in Toronto, [Ontario, Canada], Boston, [Massachusetts, USA], and Los Angeles, [California,
USA]. It's a great opportunity to walk the walk."
For firms without showrooms, corporate tours can also be a particularly effective strategy.
"We invite people to our offices; we consider it a living lab," says Mark Hirons, IIDA, AIA, principal/global
design principal of corporate interiors at CannonDesign, Chicago, Illinois, USA. Cannon calls these types of
guided tours "experience plans" and uses them as another chance to buoy its position on the project and as the
experts in creating settings that connect with people. "Curate the tour," he says. "Craft that message and story so
it touches the observer."
Hirons and his team identify and experience certain spaces from different perspectives, such as that of a visitor,
a recruit, or a client. "Are they viewing the scene actively or passively?" he says. "Can they see employees working
and interacting, unscripted? Are they walking through the public space in order to get to the more private?"

Make HR Your BFF
When launching these conversations-and trying to relate all that data to the companies you're working
with-you're going to need to call in some allies. The best-case scenario is that representatives from various
departments, including human resources, are at the table, says Douglass. "Human resources can contribute how
they track employees, turn- and churn-over rates, employee satisfaction rates, sick rates, and work-from-home
numbers," she says. "A lot of times they are involved in wellness initiatives. HR gives insight that we couldn't be
aware of on our own-and sometimes the client isn't either."
HR is also the most logical launchpad for any new employee data mining, including preliminary surveys,
workplace observations, and focus groups. "We do a lot of pre-project surveys when a project is just beginning,"
Douglass says.
That was the case when software developer Zendesk redesigned its San Francisco, California, USA
headquarters with a focus on employee happiness. The HR team-referred to as People Operations at the
company-was a key part of the design process.
"HR was able to be a voice for what makes people happy and what they've observed in the past that didn't
necessarily work so well," says Hanley of Blitz Architecture + Interiors, who served as the designer for the project.
"It gives you a much more holistic view of the company. We want to create a very functional environment. We
also want to somehow capture the spirit and energy of the organization-we call that the vibe-which is kind of
an illusive thing to chase. And we also want to represent in three dimensions the brand of the company."
Hanley says HR and the rest of the Zendesk team he worked with, including the company's creative director,
have a very strong voice from that perspective.
The HR team was also enlisted to observe, identify, and discuss work-behavior trends among its 1,000-plus
employees.

fall/winter 2016

perspective

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IIDA Perspective - Fall/Winter 2016