It’s about keeping workers happy

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This article was published 10/05/2010 (5812 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A growing number of companies is calling in moving vans in a bid to keep their employees happy and productive, according to two local office leasing specialists.

Wayne Sato and Mike Passingham said most of their office clients used to stay put when their leases came up for renewal because of the high cost of moving and the disruption it brings. But now those concerns are taking a back seat to the need to attract and retain good workers, the two Cushman & Wakefield agents said.

One way to do that is to provide a more attractive, efficient working environment, which sometimes means moving to new quarters.

“We’ve had 10 different clients in the last 15 months (that had leases expire), and 25 per cent of them moved,” Sato said. “Before, maybe one in 10 moved.”

One of the latest to go that route is Wardrop engineering — the official name is Wardrop, a Tetra Tech Company — which will be pulling up stakes this summer after 20 years at 386 Broadway.

Wardrop has leased three full floors and two half floors — 32,000 square feet in total — in the former Bank of Canada building at 161 Portage Ave. East. Although it’s already taken possession of some of the space, it won’t be moving in until August when major renovations are completed.

Stephen Segal, the firm’s vice-president of marketing and communications, said the company is spending million of dollars — he wouldn’t say how much — to renovate and remodel the space to suit its needs. The offices will feature an open layout, with more meeting rooms and fewer private offices. There will also be an amenities floor with a fully developed lunch room, a boardroom, a training room, a central library, and a games room with Ping-Pong tables, video games and a television.

“We want people using this floor during the day,” Segal said. “We want people when they take their lunch or coffee breaks to come up or down to this floor and spend some time together.”

Segal said it’s Wardrop’s way of trying to create a nicer, more efficient work environment for its employees. And that will hopefully make it easier to attract and retain good workers.

“There is lots of competition out there and you’ve got to compete to keep your employees.”

Although it had the option of staying and renovating its offices, Segal said Wardrop officials decided it would be easier and less disruptive to lease space in a different building, gut it, and rebuild it to suit its needs rather than try to renovate and run a business at the same time.

The new space is roughly the same size as the old space, even though Wardrop’s Winnipeg office expects to add up to 24 more employees this year. But Segal said that shouldn’t be a problem because the layout will be more efficient and able to accommodate more workers.

He said the prospect of being within a stone’s throw of Winnipeg’s premier intersection also appealed to company officials. “We like the location of Portage and Main because it’s central and has so many amenities nearby. We’re excited about what the Richardsons are doing on their corner and want to be part of that.”

James Richardson & Sons Ltd. owns the former bank building as well as the nearby Richardson Building and the underground Lombard Concourse that connects the two.

It announced last month it would spend $10 million to upgrade and refurbish the concourse, the former bank building and a 700-stall parkade it owns on Lombard Avenue.

Passingham said tenants aren’t the only ones adding new amenities in a bid to keep workers happy. Building owners are too, because happy workers usually means happy tenants.

The Richardson Building, for example, has a conference centre for its tenants to use, and will be adding an even bigger one as part of the concourse redevelopment.

It also has an upscale restaurant on the main floor — Hy’s Steakhouse and Cocktail Bar — and the nearby Canwest Place office tower has a new 15,000-square foot Goodlife Fitness centre opening soon.

“Five years ago, the demand (for Class A office space) was such that to allocate 15,000 square feet to an alternate use — I don’t think it would have even been considered,” Sato said.

But with fewer corporate head offices in Winnipeg now, building owners are trying to attract more non-traditional tenants that will make their buildings more appealing to traditional office tenants such as Wardrop.

Know of any trends in the local office, retail, or industrial real estate sectors? Let reporter Murray McNeill know at the email address, or at 697-7254.

murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca

Trading spaces

Here are some of the features tenants are looking for in an office building:

— An open-floor plan with few support columns

— Flexible space suitable for a variety of uses

— Good lighting and air-quality-control systems

— Additional on-site or nearby amenities, such as a fitness centre or restaurants

— In the case of downtown buildings, connection to the pedestrian skywalk system

Here are some of recent trends in office design:

— More open-style work spaces and fewer private offices

— Reversing the traditional placement of the common work area and the private offices so the common areas are on the perimeter of the building, where there’s more light, and offices are in the interior

— Making offices smaller and less lavish and using that extra money and space for meeting rooms and informal collaborative spaces where employees can gather, relax and exchange ideas

— Centralized reception area, mail room, and printing station, rather than one on each floor

— Fully developed lunch room and a games/TV room

— Source: Wayne Sato and Mike Passingham of Cushman & Wakefield Ltd.