As a prominent commercial real estate company in St. Louis, JLL knew their office wasn’t only a place to work—it was a statement of their brand’s culture and an advertisement to current and potential clients.
“The location was great,” said David Steinbach, Managing Director of JLL’s St. Louis office. With space right downtown in One Metropolitan Square, redesigning their current location was ideal over moving the company to a new building. However, with space already tight, JLL needed to rethink their workplace strategy in order to make room for incoming teams that would be consolidated under one roof.
By staying in the same location, JLL used the redesign of their space as an opportunity to shift the company’s culture in dramatic ways.
While the older space was dated, closed off, and isolated levels of management from the rest of the team, the new design focused on creating an environment where people would want to be and bring others to, as well as provide a more collaborative open-office footprint where the most junior employees work alongside senior management, with a variety of working areas to choose from.
To begin, JLL removed all private offices to make space for a collaborative floor plan. This allowed for more collaborative spaces and made their leadership more accessible to mentor employees by removing the physical barriers between them.
They then looked at ways to tie their signature red into the office landscape while paying homage to their St. Louis location. When considering furnishings, they wanted products that would last—both aesthetically and physically—with colors and materials that told their company story.
In addition to incorporating red throughout the space, each of their conference rooms were named after St. Louis icons and the in-house marketing team created graphics to tie each to their namesake. Some of the furniture was ordered in their signature color—Cardinal Red, which JLL shares with the St. Louis team—and red stitching was used in the manufacturing of additional seating. When entering the office, guests immediately understand the strong connection to location and brand.
While traditional office furniture in neutral colors were used for employee workstations, JLL wanted to provide an array of meeting spots and task options to give employees more flexibility in how they work throughout the day. Quick-seating in the form of poufs and lounge chairs dot the floor plan, and small-meeting spots, complete with monitors for laptop integration, can be found throughout the office for both impromptu and planned team meetings.
The result is an energetic open-office environment that is able to accommodate the whole team, and a space employees are excited to be and bring others to that speaks to the company’s commitment to the St. Louis region as well as their forward-thinking aesthetic, collaborative attitude, and ability to sneak some fun into serious work.
Ultimately the office has become the best recruiting tool when working with potential clients. While the team avoided having meetings in their old space, today it is used to showcase the company’s culture and sensibility. “As a commercial real estate firm, we should have one of the best office spaces in St. Louis. I think we achieved that with the redesign,” said Steinbach.
According to Steinbach, what could have been a strenuous and stressful project was instead fun and easy. “Allsteel gave us a few smart choices and saved us a tremendous amount of time in making decisions.”
Project Details
Corporate Office:
St. Louis, MO
35 Employees
Partnerships:
MBI
Gray Design Group
Product Solutions
Seating:
Acuity®, Evo®, Scooch™
Workspaces:
Terrace®
Tables:
Altitude®, Transfer™
Storage:
Essentials™, Involve®