The wave of flexible work for white-collar employees kicked off by the 2020 pandemic has led thousands of companies to rethink their approach to offices. At Riverside, we treated it as an opportunity.
Like most financial companies, Riverside is truly a sum of its individual talent. Attracting and retaining great people and helping them make each other better is our lifeblood. And we strongly believe that where and how people work matter.
As our leases have expired in some of our 15 locations around the world, we’ve considered what we as a firm require from each of our offices and converted those ideas into new spaces. Most important, we’ve gathered input from our colleagues, compiling a wish list that shaped where we leased and every facet of each space.
The most visible and dramatic of these reimagined offices is our new home atop Key Tower in Cleveland. Riverside wanted a more cohesive, open and flexible workspace with a new lease. Cleveland is one of our largest worldwide offices, and we were eager to build an exceptional space for collaboration, hosting our clients and prospects, and inspiring the best from our people. What we ended up with is both literally the highest office space between Philadelphia and Chicago and what we think is the zenith in terms of a modern workspace.
We were able to reimagine our new space from scratch, applying lessons from what has worked in our offices around the world, best practices for modern workplaces and input from our team to build a flexible and inspiring new home. We know that spaces matter when it comes to doing incredible things.
Most notably, our European headquarters in Brussels completed a similar move and transformation a couple of years ago that made a great impression on our colleagues there. As with the Cleveland office, Brussels has a lot of flexibility, easy access to public and private transit, and lots of on-site amenities.
The new Cleveland space is just over 13,000 square feet, down from more than 16,000 square feet in our prior office, but it feels and functions larger. Our office is all about collaboration where possible and privacy whenever necessary. The hub of all activity is a massive space that effectively serves as a company living and dining room, fostering social and business interactions that deepen bonds and help spread ideas across teams and talent.
Sitting more than 800 feet up, Riverside employees can enjoy amazing views from countless different perches while more than a dozen nooks, conference rooms and private meeting spots allow for privacy whenever necessary.
Our design architect was complemented by several “cultural architects” to ensure that the spirit of the firm shines though. We have a “secret” lounge and conference room, showcases of our portfolio companies’ products, celebrations of our community support efforts and original artwork expressing the fun and whimsy we try to incorporate in our everyday work. The result is a place people want to be.
After our first summer in the space, the early returns are all that we hoped for. Our large class of interns had a richer experience, the office is bustling and visitors have been uniformly impressed. We think it shows in our work, too. ●
Graham Hearns is Chief of Staff at The Riverside Company, a global private investment firm
