Over the years, and having worked in several different types of creative agencies, I’ve begun to question the real value of the effect environment can have on staff morale, culture and performance. I’d heard so much about it but never truly seen it in action, and surely a group of like-minded people regardless of the environment is enough? Surely a great ECD can work his magic no matter what? And to some degree that’s true but what our environment has done is seismically shift how our people see their role and ultimately therefore, how they behave.
At J. Walter Thompson Sydney, collaboration amongst our staff and with our business partners (our clients) is actively promoted. And that’s not just a pie in the sky statement. We actually see it. By working together, by bringing experts together, we forge strong partnerships and ultimately better, and arguably, stronger creative work.
In our business, we have only truly harnessed the power of this principle over the past 16 months since our move into our new office space in Pyrmont - a space specifically designed to knock down department barriers, create a more free-flowing, adaptable working mantra and importantly, a space our clients can use and share whenever they/we like or need.
But the design didn’t come about by accident, it took a lot of thought and collaboration with staff, the architects and the design agency involved
In developing the design brief, we wanted to ensure the new space brought meaning to J. Walter Thompson’s philosophy The Antidote to Indifference: providing an engaging, eclectic and interactive space which embraces agile working and will make a difference to the way our people create, communicate and collaborate among themselves and with clients.
We practice what we preach and that’s only achievable through the design of the workplace.
Specifically the new space promotes the need for project teams to work as one with our clients – solving problems quickly, effectively and smartly. An open-plan environment with a mix of different sized banks of desks from pods of four through to a large bank of 10 not only creates variety from a design aesthetic but allows for varying sizes of teams to work as one.
Each new day brings a new collective together, or allows an existing project team to stay together, all facilitated by the principles of agile based working. It allows us to bring together core disciplines with subject matter experts plugged in from the outset to solve a particular challenge or opportunity. Put simply, it’s fast-tracked our process, saving clients time and money.
It’s also given us the benefit of broadening our horizons and our solutions – there are new possibilities that present themselves from a more eclectic grouping of skillsets. By simply mixing people up, we’re organically learning from one another, and therefore becoming more well-rounded and well-versed in what we do each and every day. We believe in curious, obsessive browsers, and now we’ve given our people the ability to do just that.
Not only that but it offers our clients an opportunity to observe and immerse themselves in the everyday working life of the agency. They understand the thought process better, they get to see creativity in action and ultimately it creates greater collective ownership of the solution. We’re in it together, we believe in it together.
Moreover, our workspace has catapulted us out of traditional ways of working. We’re solving problems quickly, readily and effectively and more often than not, we’re getting it right first time quite simply because we have the right people working round the right table.
Critically though, design has brought other advantages in terms of wellbeing and balance. We’ve maximised the amount of light through large gallery windows and opening up the majority of the floor to the full double height.
We have natural ventilation as well as enabling outdoor work, meetings or respite time. We work hard and wanted the space to give room and headspace where it can in what can be a frenetic industry.
More and more, my belief is workplace design has become an essential tool in creating ideas that solve business problems for clients, their brands and their businesses. More importantly, providing the best workplace can go a long way to ensuring collaboration can be developed, and fostered in a way that brings real business benefits.
A cleverly designed workplace has truly allowed us to embrace our future, work as a holistic team and ultimately create better ideas to solve our client’s problems. And that to me, is collaboration well and truly in action.
Jenny Willits
General manager Sydney
J. Walter Thompson