The Three Amigos of the Destination Office

But when it comes to making sure that the Destination Office has a strong social heart – there’s three workplace settings that work together brilliantly.

They are the forum, the gallery and the coffee shop.  Here’s each in turn:

• The Coffee Shop – Is the convivial social heart of an organisation – providing a place to meet, mingle, eat, drink and relax.
• The Gallery – Is the showcase space for an organisation – so that the vision, values and purpose can be brought to life for visitors and colleagues.
• The Forum – This is a multi-use and adaptable space, designed to help organisations bring people together for events, informal gatherings and more formal townhall or company-wide meetings.

Although all different – these three spaces work together to capture, reflect and enable positive workplace cultures to thrive. In some organisations these might be individual, distinct spaces, spread across a floorplate – in others, like ourselves – they are all as one.

Our forum, gallery and coffee shop space is called Quench and it’s the social heart of our business.  It’s where our team hosts fundraising breakfasts, where we gather for lunch or a break, where we host informal meetings and where we bring our 100-strong team together for company-wide updates.  It captures our personality and our brand and shows the value we put on shared experience – whether that’s grabbing a quick coffee or participating in a quarterly state of the nation meeting.

We chose to bring these spaces together in our office interior design for a number of reasons – not only does it best fit our floorplate, but it suits the highly social nature of our teams and how our business works. It is the very definition of the  Claremont experience.

Employee experience is a crucial consideration in the design of a destination office. In total, the destination comprises eight different workplace settings (you can read about the others here) and they are all geared towards facilitating productivity, community and culture.  While there must be the right facilities and spaces for people to thrive – businesses striving to make their workplace fit the new world order, would do well to think in more experiential terms.

They need to ask themselves:

• What experience do I want people to have in the office?
• How can I make those experiences valuable and sought after?
• Which aspects and activities must the office enable and support?
• How is it going to capture, reflect and showcase our values so that even the most remote workers or occasional visitors feel connected to the brand?

It’s this shift in thinking that will determine the success of the destination workplace.   We talk about this concept frequently, and how the office must now offer something that home-based or remote working cannot.  Without question, that something is being with others.  Finding ways to experience each other socially and professionally, as well as the employer brand also fits changing expectations from the talent pool. It’s no secret that younger generations in particular want to work for businesses with positive values, who have supportive, friendly cultures, who trust and empower their people and who offer a sense of belonging.

The post-covid workplace has to be different. The way we work has changed forever – and so too have our wants, needs and expectations of our employers and environments we occupy.   For businesses striving to boost productivity and belonging – the answer lies in making sure the workplace is rich in experience and the beating heart and social hub of your business.

If you’d like to find out more about the rebirth of the office following Covid and the eight components that make a successful destination office, download our whitepaper here