The talent crisis and employee preferences for WFH means workplaces need to utilise office spaces as a tool to connect with staff. In Better Workplaces, AdNews looks at how agencies are utilising office design to entice staff to come in and create a company culture worth staying for.
Digital marketing agency Impressive has a lively office with an industrial aesthetic complimented by staff art, local coffee beans by the kilograms and an in-house podcast studio.
The office, just off South Yara’s bustling Chapel St, was designed with Acquila Interiors alongside Robert Tadros, founder and CEO of Impressive.
The end goal was a spacious and modern space for the teams to work in that was also well designed for the growth and expansion of the team.
The office currently seats 70 and is expanding to 76 desks to ensure every staff member has an assigned desk within their pods.
Most desks are complete with an optional electric standing desk.
Impressive’s branding is lightly integrated throughout the space with the agency's company values written on the outside of meeting rooms in the brand's colour and font. Each meeting room is named after one of the values which ensures "they’re always front of mind".
In the kitchen, the industrial aesthetic continues with a generous display of snacks and a very on-brand coffee machine for Melbourne with a different rotation of local beans every week organised by office admins.
Anna Witley, executive assistant at Impressive, said the staff’s favourite part of the office is: “the town hall area because it's a multi-functional and super useful area that can be transformed in many different ways.
“It's been a great area for morning huddles, informal catch ups, larger group training, fun Friday events and throughout the week is a relaxing area with couches, a ping pong and a foosball table."
The Impressive team in the town hall space.
The town hall space features an impressive collection of the agency’s memorabilia collected over the years.
As part of the agency’s team building initiatives, staff had a paint and sip night, with some of the paintings kept in this communal space to reignite good memories.
What’s a digital marketing agency without Google merch? The more a Google account spends, in return an account owner receives points which they can cash in for some branded merch, such as a Google bike…
Or a branded foosball table.
The town hall area also has a must-have agency perk, a ping pong table.
A podcast studio, tell me more!
The motivation behind the in-house podcast studio was that Impressive has two successful podcast series run in house.
One with the Impressive CEO and founder Robert Tadros called Growth Masters and the other with Impressive's general manager for the US, Russ Macumber, called SEO Success Stories.
Tadros is an advocate for face to face connections, so he was passionate about having a space he could record his podcast in-person, as during COVID, he had to do the majority of his podcast recording virtually.
The studio provides Impressive with the option of connecting with local guests and can also facilitate a virtual recording as well through the TV.
The space accommodates three people on a podcast recording, has a TV, casual sitting area and has been fully sound-proofed using acoustic panels.
In-room equipment includes the RØDEcaster pro podcast production studio, with RØDE microphones and Yamaha headphones.
Impressive has also provided the space free of charge to other podcast hosts previously, but haven't investigated renting the space out to clients as the agency is still getting back into the groove of face to face meetings being possible again.
However, the space can also have dual-use as when Impressive isn’t recording, as the room makes for a fantastic informal catch up area for the team.
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