We recently moved our Detroit-based team into a new office space in a Class A+ tower located downtown, across the street from the Cobo Center and the GM Renaissance Center.
After visiting about 10 available offices, we chose one in a beautiful building with many amenities, which included a People Mover station and garage access — both of which can make all the difference to commuters, especially during Detroit’s harsh winters.
Our 17th floor office happens to have the building’s only patio, providing great views of the sunset and the city’s fireworks on the Detroit River.
Upon leasing the office, we immediately enlisted Chris Mitchell, an architect with M+M Creative Studios, to transform the workspace into an ideal one for our corporate culture.
The hope was to facilitate innovation and collaboration while celebrating and supporting our most valuable asset: our employees.
The new office and our Santa Monica “Edquarters,” both of which can be virtually toured via our website, include bright, colorful, open workspaces and a variety of informal meeting places where innovation flows freely. Our team and visitors enjoy free gourmet coffee and snacks, daily deliveries of fresh fruit and many other amenities.
We firmly believe that the Edmunds.com’s office culture is one of the reasons that our company is regularly named one of the best places to work.
Turnover — particularly among our office-based employees — is remarkably low, as people really appreciate having a comfortable, uplifting and inspiring setting in which to collaborate and achieve goals.
Not only does a thoughtfully designed workspace generate pride, loyalty and productivity, but it can also be less impactful on the environment, as well as save money.
The ‘Green Imperative’
Our Detroit office was designed in adherence to what Darrell Hawthorne of Architecture and Light calls the Green Imperative.
We use LEDs rather than fluorescent and halogen lights, with an estimated annual energy savings of more than 13,500 kilowatt-hours. We anticipate this to translate into thousands of dollars of savings per year.
With a useful life of approximately 60,000 hours, it is typically 21.8 years before an LED light needs to be changed. Conventional halogen would require a lamp change every 1.8 years. This reduction in maintenance means no disruptions and no risk of light-changing accidents in the workplace.
“The average person may not recognize it, but the various wavelengths that electric lighting provides greatly impact our physiological and psychological levels,” Hawthorne pointed out to me. “With LEDs, you simply see better with less eye strain. It is well-documented that large increases in visual comfort are directly related to increased productivity.”
In this era of big data and conscientious out-of-the-box thinking, it isn’t hard to find opportunities to make a real difference in your team’s success.
Based on our experience at Edmunds.com, I assure you that the workspace matters. ●
