Dyer Brown recently turned their workplace strategy expertise inward to redesign their own office. Taking themselves through the same engagement and visioning workshops they apply to their efforts for clients, Dyer Brown investigated their own company culture revealing preferences among the staff for a space that supports employee well-being, productivity, and satisfaction. The innovative workplace design that emerged from this comprehensive process is tailored specifically to the firm, emphasizing Dyer Brown’s unique culture and drawing inspiration from the firm’s hospitality portfolio to create a cozy yet professional setting. 

The project's lead designers conducted a series of comprehensive, LEAN-inspired design exercises and various surveys that Dyer Brown's entire staff took part of, a process that ensured everyone’s voice was heard. The team anticipated some of what the process would uncover, but many key insights were unexpected – for example, the preference for comfortable and even “cozy” spaces that the staff believed would foster creativity and spontaneous conversations. 

The result is a space that offers Dyer Brown staff a variety of furniture options to suit individual work styles and encourage various seating postures. Employees avail themselves of mezzanine workstations with sit-to-stand desks – illuminated by overhead fixtures constructed from noise-attenuating materials – as well as lounge spaces with charging ports for devices, hoteling areas, uniquely appointed small ‘speakeasy’ meeting rooms (available to book using a web-based scheduling app), and wall-inset individual upholstered cubbies. 

When not engaged in heads-down work, Dyer Brown’s staff now also have choices for meetings, eating, relaxing and personal care. The reception area is designed as a front-and-center ‘café’ with counter seating, chic pendant lighting and still and sparkling water on tap – a space with a distinctly informal feel, like a coffee bar. The new programming also offers eight reservable meeting spaces of varying sizes, doubling the number of rooms previously available to book for formal and informal meetings with clients and/or coworkers, and the hospitality inspired design scheme offers a variety of seating and furniture types to ensure comfort and enhance productivity.

Finally, in support of employee well-being and productivity, the redesign includes amenities such as lockers, a shower room, a mother’s room, and a ‘wellness room’ for quiet reflection, meditation, and catnaps. The revamped headquarters also serves as a kind of living portfolio, making it a uniquely robust tool for engagement, education and business development. Another technological innovation s the color-temperature-tunable lighting in the ‘design library’ that allow designers and clients to observe finish materials in the anticipated environment of a completed project.