How might we design a workplace that will bring more innovation and productivity to a traditional corporate environment?
WISE project was implemented at Dow Chemical Latin America Headquarters during nine months in 2014, renovating a building with 13,081 square meters designed for more than 900 employees. The project goal was to enhance productivity and operational cost savings with collaborative spaces and flexible workspaces.
Before WISE project, Dow Chemical office had a lack of available meeting rooms, collaborativebooths and misused spaces. To solve those issues, we count on employee insights and a workspace consultancy company to improve the office.
New working policies were developed along with human resources, addition of collaborative rooms, implementation of flexible desks, cafeteria renovation and massive communication with employees were some of the additions of the project. Those resources had a great impact on productivity and satisfaction of employees.
ROLE
Project Management, Project Finance Control
TEAM
Daniel Pedrozo, Silvia Dohly, Renato Farias
CONTEXT
Dow is in Brazil for more than 60 years, and in 2014there was a need to prepare the office for a growth for the next five years. Instead of using the growth model that has been used for the past years, our Workplace Services team decided to better understand employees’ behavior and avoid unnecessary spaces and workstations. With the support from senior leadership and the global team, we started a renovation.
RESEARCH
With workplace trends arriving to Brazil at that point, we partnered with Haworth, a company that is expert in furniture and workspaces, to develop our employee research. During 2 months, we sent surveys, guided interviews, and map the office utilization through an observation study.
IMPLEMENTATION
Even with several challenges such as time and budget constrains, the hardest one was the implementation of an organizational change. In a company with such a large number of senior leadership, workplace changes such as eliminating private meeting rooms can be challenging. We developed a SAC just for the project to hear feedbacks and find solutions in the shortest amount of time as possible.
OUTCOMES & SCALE
As a personal outcome, I learned how to work with construction teams to create a better synergy and trust.
For employees in general, they were more engaged with the new innovative workspace which led to a better well-being at work, and better productivity. More important than numbers of new meeting rooms or spaces, was to create a pleasant space that reflected every employee feedback.
In a scale, WISE project affected all employees atthe Latin America Headquarter office. However, with the positive outcomes, it was replicated in other offices in Santiago de Chile, and Minneapolis.