Agency Tips: How to Invest in People, Culture, and the Workplace

As the workplace continues to change, organizations are consistently challenged to create and invest in spaces that can be flexible enough to meet the ever changing needs of their employees. It’s not enough for offices to be crafted just to host meetings and the casual lunch with others. Now, visitors, clients, and an abundance of space types must foster creativity and make the workplace a place where people love coming to work, and get a lot done. At Cramer, a brand experience agency just outside of Boston, that’s the mentality that went into renovating their 70,000 square foot studios.

Their primary goal, according to Brent Turner, the SVP of Solutions at Cramer, was to “find the intersection of what coworking spaces deliver with the sophistication and structured flexibility that an agency demands.”“The office is part of your brand statement,” Turner said. “How we work, and how our culture and studios bring clients into our work, is critical to the success of our projects. Clients demand to be part of the process. And when they come and visit, we want them to quickly see and feel the unique tenor that we’ve designed into how we work.”Cramer and their architectural design partners at SMMA, say they carefully avoided the “circus-like” experiences many agencies have established for their offices.

In the traditional design, clients and prospects visit the agency to see the teams in action and watch from a distance. For Cramer, by pulling forward the best traits of coworking spaces, their clients can quickly plug-in and become natives in the space. They can easily grab a room to take a call, eat lunch, or get their hands dirty alongside their Cramer team who is working with them on a project.Here’s a bit of how their office is set up:

Open floor plans, smart offices, remote work forces -- these are all things that have changed workplace design, and are now mainstream. If you’re thinking about how people work, it’s all about all about flexible environments. Phone booths, cubbies, boardrooms, etc. Walls, no walls, open but tight, open but loud --  this is now expected.And for Cramer and other professional services firms, these expectations are held not just by their own employees but also their clients, freelancers, and partners. Today’s expectations are for an adaptable office environment that tells the story of their brand’s culture while delivering the modern methods of collaboration.

Telling a story, starting with the workplace

Companies are investing in how people work today and how they'll want to work in the future. Want to see how to build an office around your employees? We wrote a post on this here.