Case study
The MojPosao office was redesigned to achieve an ideal balance between the privacy needed for focused work and situations that require the cooperation of a larger number of employees, and the number of jobs themselves has, in the same square footage, almost doubled.
After researching the state of the commercial real estate market, assessing the costs of potential relocation and analyzing the functioning of the teams – which was carried out by the consulting company DC&T in cooperation with the Human Resources Department of the Tau online company, better known under the MojPosao brand, that company decided to remodel its current office space according to the model of engaging employees in accordance with the activities they have to perform every day to perform their tasks. “Furthermore, the employees, who really liked not having to move, participated with their ideas in designing the renovation, thereby reflecting the company’s culture in the new design,” says Timi Kovačević, director of the company DC&T.
The company MojPosao has 700 square meters of net office space, which was formed into a series of closed, mutually separated rooms in which several (from four to twelve) people worked. “These were rationally arranged and charmingly decorated “enclaves” in which each team – marketing, development and IT, sales, etc., created their own worlds in which each employee expressed their own creativity in designing their workplace. The problem with that was that these spaces, although arranged to be comfortable for the employees, were not efficient enough. There was too much empty, underutilized space in each of the offices, and they did not encourage enough collaboration between different teams and departments,” says Vedran Družina, creative director at DC&T.
MojPosao was previously arranged in such a way that it had room for about sixty people (approximately 11 square meters per employee). In addition to employee rooms, it had the director’s office and a meeting room, a dining area for ten people with two kitchenettes, one room for working on projects and one for spending time in, making presentations, and conducting employee meetings.
“MojPosao has been redesigned so that every space in it, by its very design, encourages as much interaction between employees as possible. In this approach, we did everything we could to create zones for formal and informal collaboration, and the kitchen and dining area (in addition to their primary functions) got an additional multifunctional effect reflected in socialization, hanging out, cooperating, and resting, says Vanda Lugarov, head of the Human Resources Department at MojPosao. In addition,“MojPosao now has four rooms for working on projects located next to the areas of the teams that use them, eleven focus rooms, a redesigned meeting room with a new reception desk, a brainstorming zone, a room for collaborating, making presentations and holding meetings, as well as a warehouse-workshop for the IT team, who got a much more functional space to perform their tasks in”, says Vedran Družina.
In terms of job positions, 60 shared workstations, arranged in clusters by teams, were retained, but eleven new “hot spot” ‘places for occasional work were added, as well as the possibility of setting up nineteen new seating workplaces in focus and project rooms. Moj posao now has about ninety workplaces (approximately 7.6 square meters per employee) designed according to the activities these people perform in the course of their work.
“Through research and analysis of the company’s work, we established how many people are in the office at any given moment, during which periods of the day and week, how much time they spend on meetings, how much on individual conversations with users and colleagues, and we came to an estimate that showed us how many common spaces MojPosao needs, and how many spaces for special purposes, such as quiet rooms, telephone rooms, meeting rooms, etc., it requires. We made a comprehensive assessment on the basis of which we made a humane redesign of the space adapted to the employees – a solution that will meet all their needs and be within the budget of remodeling the space”, said Dubravka Kovačević, operational director of DC&T.
“Regarding the details of interior design, we decided to apply collage as a method of arranging wall surfaces, and for this purpose we used cork as a material because it is pliable and other materials and contents can be easily applied to it. We consciously decided on a darker shade of blue for the walls in order to emphasize the contrast of the red color in the logo of the company MojPosao, which is now shown through elements of metalwork, furniture, carpets and other elements. Also, a lot of existing elements were retained, especially the furniture”, says Vedran Družina.
Space occupancy is now, on average, 50 percent, which means that half of the people are in the office while the rest are working from other locations. “We will make a new analysis after twelve months after the implementation to see how much and in what way our design solutions have come to life and how much and in what way they have affected the efficiency and productivity of employees – we will measure how many people come to the office, whether they come more or less than before, how much certain zones in the office are used, and, if it turns out that some spaces within the newly designed office are not efficient enough, we will propose interventions to solve this,” says Dubravka Kovačević.
The business premises of MojPosao was redesigned to achieve an ideal balance between the privacy needed for focused work and situations that require the cooperation of a larger number of employees, and the capacity of jobs themselves has, in the same square footage, almost doubled.
