Check out the coolest recruitment office ever!

I remember it vividly.

It was the darkest hour of the Covid-apocalypse in Australia. Mid 2020.

Collapsing revenue. Staff losses. Lockdowns. WFH. WTF!

At people2people, the pain was severe, as with all recruiters. However, more than 1,000 temps and a robust consulting team with deep relationships, combined with intelligent and swift cost-reduction, kept the business in shape.

But now a colossal decision loomed…

The lease of our office at 261 George Street, Sydney, was up for renewal. The landlord wanted a 5 to 7 years commitment. The rent was hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

But no one is in the office right now! Will they ever come back?

Around the Board table, the debate raged. On one side was the view we needed to let the lease lapse. The money saved! And staff will never come back anyway, they felt. Others believed that ‘the heartbeat of the business’ was at stake. We need a home. People are social at the core, they said. Some argued for taking a smaller space. Some felt a ‘We Work’ type scenario would suffice.

In the end, it was decided.

We will keep all the space.

We are a robust, 16-year-old business, and we will weather this storm and rise much higher still. We must have a real home!

We need a base for people to congregate. Learn. Banter. Socialise. Share.

However, what we had before won’t do. We need flexibility. We need comfort. We need a place people want to come and work.

And so, over Christmas 2020, the staff were sent back home for three months, and the office was gutted and refurbished.

And it was designed with a post-covid, ‘new agency-new-workstyle’ vision in mind.

And it is magnificent.

The pictures don’t do it justice. It’s a revelation. But let me talk you through the features;

Reception.

There isn’t one. You walk in from the lifts, and you are in a modern coffee shop. The kitchen and bar are left and prominent. There are ‘diner-like booths. Plenty of plants shield the back area, but there is no sense of ‘lobby’. Visitors are not ‘kept out front’. They are immediately ‘inside’. The consultants can see through to the ‘coffee shop’, and one of them leaps up to greet a visitor. The staff have lunch there. Candidates come in for briefings. Clients too. I arrive at 5 pm Friday when the beers are opened.

The interview rooms.

Have been reduced from 8 to 3. ‘What!’ you say? Isn’t this an office with 25 recruiters? Yes, indeed, but we believe candidates will never come back to the city to be interviewed face to face in the numbers they once did. So, we have lovely interview rooms and a magnificent Board Room, all with state-of-the-art conferencing technology, but we also have this…

Zoom booths.

Yes, a bank of Zoom booths lines one wall. Comfortable, nicely furnished, soundproof booths, with screens and even a light outside to signal if occupied. When a consultant is interviewing via video conferencing, this is where they go. So, no masses of ‘wasted’ interview room space. No background noise and distraction when the critical business of interviewing takes place.

A podcast room.

People2people has always led the way with podcasts, webinars, video interviews and the like. So, the new office has the best resources. Tech-laden, soundproofed and even an ‘on air’ sign outside.

Break-out areas.

All over the place. Quality, comfortable sofas and lounge chairs for ad-hoc meetings, coffee with customers or even just different space to work or chat.

Dynamic desks.

The idea is the company will have maybe 45 staff working from the office but only desk space to accommodate 30 (My numbers may be off. Just conceptual). A third of people will be working remotely on any given day. Consultants will have laptops and big desk monitors to plug them into. They can work from home, from a café, or they log into the system at work. They have a locker to store their gear. You may not sit in the same seat every day. Desks can be standing or seated.

Celebrate good times. Come on!

There are TV screens scattered. ‘Wins’ across the company are announced there in real-time. People2people has six offices across 5,000 kilometres, so it keeps people connected. Consultants nominate their favourite music, which plays when they close an order. I nominated ‘Don’t you think I am sexy‘ for myself, but it was already taken…

There are many more features. A breakfast bar. A ‘high’ bar for those who like work at a higher level (see what I did there?). Free fruit and quality coffee all day.

I love going there.

One of the ‘booths’ I have annexed as ‘Greg’s Office’ and I take up residence when I arrive.

I don’t even work at peopel2people!

The staff are happy and proud of their workplace. It’s achieved the goal of being an attractive place to work, a practical workplace that allows work with candidate and clients to fit a post-covid norm. It has all the technology required for this new world of work, and flexibility to enable us to add staff above the number of ‘seats’.

There has been a lot of debate about what a recruitment office will look like in the future

Well, who knows, but people2people have laid a stake in the ground, and it’s working just fine for now.

The design and construction  of the new people2people office done by morphos

********************************************************************************************************************************************************

Want to know how people2people started? And grew to a $100M company?
Well, it is all in my book!
I was there every step of the way, although I never did a days work.

Get The Savage Truth now

*************************************************************************************************************************************************************************