This year's Meet & Greet event took place on a blustery Tuesday night at Quartino Ristorante & Wine Bar in River North. Meet & Greet events are a perfect opportunity for prospective members to witness the benefits of becoming a CoreNet member first-hand, as well as enjoy some good calamari and pizza! Members who brought a prospective new member were given free attendance to the event.
The April 10th luncheon about the workplaces of Groupon and Gogo was a great success with over 160 attendees (and walk-ins being turned away at the door). The corporate make-up of attendees was comprised of individuals from companies such as KPMG, CBRE, Studley, Northern Trust, Allstate, Colliers and various other members from the corporate real estate community. The following is the tally from the mobile-app polling during the luncheon:
| End User Real Estate Professional |
7% |
| Architecture & Design |
31% |
| Construction |
2% |
| Brokerage |
14% |
| Furniture Manufacturer |
17% |
| Other Professional |
29% |
Two of the panelists, Groupon and Gogo, shared workplace war stories from their recently completed or soon to be constructed spaces.
Groupon's Doug Stanley started the conversation by providing us with a brief look at the real state and staffing history of the company. Groupon opened its doors in 2008. Currently they operate in 47 countries and just celebrated having 11,000 employees and populating over 1.5 million square feet of real estate. Their design culture is based upon their corporate culture of: "Very Open, Flexibility, Economic and FUN!" In the past year, Groupon experienced a 180% churn rate. The flexibility of the environment makes their workplace philosophy possible: get-up, pick-up, plug-in, go.
Groupon has experienced challenges such as how to address speed, flexibility and economics. As they grow and evolve, current challenges remain the same as past, but they have also added the new workplace philosophy of: "staying lean, being adaptable and adopting procurement processes". With the increased size and maturity of the company, Groupon created additional organizational levels and in turn, established a small amount of hierarchy. While private offices have been introduced into the mix of the office set-up, they only account for 1%-2% of the work spaces. They are also implementing additional "heads-down" space that is utilized for the times when the benching buzz of the open office is prohibitive to focused tasks. Nonetheless, they have also discovered that one size fits most, but not all. It's about figuring out how to accommodate the "all."
"We would take an office environment as-is," Debbie Fangman, facilities manager for Gogo shared with us. Gogo, as a concept, was first born in 1991, but came into full fruition in 2006. As of 2013, they have over 700 employees. While still a younger company, Gogo is committed to planning and building their future offices to reflect their culture of being "agile & lean." The company embraces an environment of "straight talk" (say what you mean) which Debbie experienced 1st hand as they as they worked through the planning strategies for the upcoming moves of 111,000 sf in Broomfield, CO and Chicago at 111 N. Canal.
The fly on the wall experience will be unrecognizable from current office to future environment. Today, when teams run out of conferencing space, they meet in the corridors after they drag a white board over to supplement their conversations. While the "older" real estate culture has been to take the leased office space as-is (which sometimes included workstations that were larger than 10'x12'), going to regulated sizes, benching styles, etc. will be the "new" regimen. In the future, there will be more dedicated project team rooms (with LOTS of writable surfaces), "destination locations" to promote the community, quiet rooms for focused activities, as well as a large group area which will open to a roof top terrace. Gogo plans to have their new space up and running in 2015.
Shilpi Kumar of Herman Miller was the third panelist, and further supported the findings and experience from Groupon and Gogo. Shilpi's research identified the three Intrinsic Motivators for the work environment as:
| Inspiration & Stimulation |
48% |
| being excited and refreshed |
| Effectiveness and Efficiency |
15% |
| tools needed for perceived control to make changes |
| Connection and Sense of Belonging |
37% |
| pride in connectivity or being valued |
It does seem that both Groupon and Gogo are creating environments that not only support their culture, but also support the inherent sociologic needs of the human worker. Good to know that the Brave New World is still around the corner and that the human element is omnipresent.