A visit to the Google development center.
The company with the highest brand value in the world has its own ideas of how we will work in the future. And the market-leading search engine offers its employees in Europe some things that aren’t yet a reality even in Silicon Valley. Disparaged by some as a lax office setting, Google aims to maximize employee satisfaction at its Zurich location, where not only the future of the famous search engine itself, but also products like Google Earth and Google Maps are developed. At 99%, employee satisfaction levels seem to be outstanding, in fact, although the employees are aware that the figures will end up being quoted in the media. But that itself shows a strong bond with the company…
A spa with a masseuse, espresso machines costing several thousand euros standing by everywhere you look, with a whole host of different kinds of coffee on offer (which Bernd Thomsen, CEO of TGISC®, tested right away, as shown in the above photo), but cheap floor coverings and furniture, some of it secondhand, plus free full-service meals. The different floor levels are connected by fireman’s poles, which are much faster than any elevator and fun besides. The conference rooms are reminiscent of the primeval forest, and there are break rooms where employees can lie back in bathtubs and gaze at soothing aquariums – which did end up having to be permanently installed, though, because Google employees overfed the fish and they died. Now the professionals handle it. And because open-plan offices can make talking on the phone difficult sometimes, people can slip into decommissioned ski gondolas for a few minutes of privacy.
Even those who find this atmosphere irritating will agree with the findings of the THOMSEN GROUP, repeated time and again for the past 15 years, that the offices of the future are changing, perhaps out of necessity. Not only demographic change, which is leaving younger employees in short supply, but also, and above all, a lack of highly qualified employees are making new solutions for recruiting employees and ensuring their loyalty a must. But if the question is whether employees will necessarily have to trade in their suits and leather shoes for T-shirts and sneakers, Google and its fans of fireman’s poles are probably the only ones to have a clear-cut answer.
A visit to the Google development center.
The company with the highest brand value in the world has its own ideas of how we will work in the future. And the market-leading search engine offers its employees in Europe some things that aren’t yet a reality even in Silicon Valley. Disparaged by some as a lax office setting, Google aims to maximize employee satisfaction at its Zurich location, where not only the future of the famous search engine itself, but also products like Google Earth and Google Maps are developed. At 99%, employee satisfaction levels seem to be outstanding, in fact, although the employees are aware that the figures will end up being quoted in the media. But that itself shows a strong bond with the company…
A spa with a masseuse, espresso machines costing several thousand euros standing by everywhere you look, with a whole host of different kinds of coffee on offer (which Bernd Thomsen, CEO of TGISC®, tested right away, as shown in the above photo), but cheap floor coverings and furniture, some of it secondhand, plus free full-service meals. The different floor levels are connected by fireman’s poles, which are much faster than any elevator and fun besides. The conference rooms are reminiscent of the primeval forest, and there are break rooms where employees can lie back in bathtubs and gaze at soothing aquariums – which did end up having to be permanently installed, though, because Google employees overfed the fish and they died. Now the professionals handle it. And because open-plan offices can make talking on the phone difficult sometimes, people can slip into decommissioned ski gondolas for a few minutes of privacy.
Even those who find this atmosphere irritating will agree with the findings of the THOMSEN GROUP, repeated time and again for the past 15 years, that the offices of the future are changing, perhaps out of necessity. Not only demographic change, which is leaving younger employees in short supply, but also, and above all, a lack of highly qualified employees are making new solutions for recruiting employees and ensuring their loyalty a must. But if the question is whether employees will necessarily have to trade in their suits and leather shoes for T-shirts and sneakers, Google and its fans of fireman’s poles are probably the only ones to have a clear-cut answer.
