November 2022 Chapter Meeting – Brookview Program

IFMA MSP was fortunate to have a panel that shared their unique experiences with the new way of working along with a furniture expert to talk about how the space itself is changing in our November chapter meeting.

Marte Byrne, Sr. Director Corporate Services at Allianz Life, shared the many ways in which Allianz Life has been working to bring people back into the office with a True Balance approach.  Looking at the health, community, and financial aspects of an employee’s experience.  Some of the unique things Allianz is doing is doggie daycare discounts, onsite health clinic, corner market, happy hour Thursdays, free onsite fitness center and on campus sponsored events.  They are also focusing on employee retention through learning programs and their SOAR (supporting ongoing achievement and recognition) program.
Donaldson’s approach is different as well. Bill Coldwell, Facility Engineering and Project Development at Donaldson, described their approach as more of a “picking up where we left off”.  They are bringing back the in-person events they previously had that their employees appreciated and looked forward to.  These events included a United Way Campaign, Walk-tober event and junior achievements.

Each company is also looking at ways to design for the new way they work.  Allianz’s corporate offices are testing out these new design concepts one floor at a time.  They are creating community space, agile space, and open collaboration spaces.  They also looked at the different types of work styles regarding assigned, reserved, and touch down spaces.  They knew this new way of working was also going to require quiet rooms huddle rooms, focus spaces and lockers.

Donaldson on the other hand, has a lot of lab space with employees coming into the office throughout the pandemic.  They are starting to look at their lobby and front offices to make them more attractive to their employees and visitors with a more relaxed atmosphere and redefining what remote, hybrid, fully onsite looks like for the employees. They are taking a more conservative approach with concerns about maintaining enough space long term.  Allianz has those same concerns – what if everyone wants to come in on the same day for an event?

Annette Barrelet, Manager, Workplace Strategy at Teknion, ended the session with some furniture concepts to allow for the unknown future of the workplace.  She stressed the fact that one size does not fit all.  As discussed with our panelists above, not every company is taking the same approach to the new way of working. A couple of concepts Annette discusses was destination collaboration, flexible timelines, choosing your experience and meeting to meditation. Knowing that office is a great place for collaboration, but also knowing there is a need for quiet or heads down space while you are there is critical.  You need to be able to adapt your space for the difference ways we all need to work.  Teknion provided some examples that fit all these categories.

Overall, we are all figuring out what works best for each of our businesses.  We know that things can change again in the future and that being flexible and adaptable will be important moving forward. There is no one right way to move forward so talk to your peers and business partners to learn about the options out there and keep working to make the best decisions for the way you need to work.

Click here to view the November presentation.