As hybrid working becomes the norm in the post-pandemic landscape, several major companies have opened new Chicago offices they hope will give employees a reason to ditch their fuzzy slippers and head downtown.
Cisco and Accenture are among those seeking to earn the commute and redefine the workplace with communal settings, creative amenities and seamless technology they hope will blow away your home Wi-Fi. Both share a collaborative vision far removed from the dystopian cubicle farms of yore.
In the office of the future, there are plenty of seats, but no assigned desks at all.
“No one ever loved to go to their office because of their desk,” said Todd Heiser, 48, co-managing director of architecture firm Gensler’s Chicago office, which designed both spaces. “But I think people would go to the office because of the great experience they might have using a cafe, or incredible technology.”
Tech giant Cisco Systems opened its 130,000-square-foot space in the Old Post Office in July. Accenture, the global consulting firm, moved into its new 264,000-square-foot Chicago headquarters in the renamed Accenture Tower last month.
The openings follow Meta/Facebook, which launched its new Loop headquarters in June, covering 263,000 square feet across 11 floors at 151 N. Franklin St. In March, Edelman, the world’s largest public relations firm, fully moved into its new 92,000-square-foot loft space in the Gogo building, a century-old former warehouse at 111 N. Canal St. in the West Loop.
The offices were conceived before the pandemic and reshaped during it to reflect the reality of a hybrid workforce. They offer such features as locally sourced cafes, rooftop desks, cozy nooks, sweeping views of the city and endless meeting rooms to reconnect with long-lost colleagues. Large video screens adorn the walls to loop in remote holdouts.
Hallway sinks, ubiquitous hand sanitizers, touchless doors and air purification systems stand ready to quash germs, while masks remain optional. Crowded elevators and other choke points make social distancing a distant memory, however.
Despite gleaming new facilities, the companies may have their work cut out for them luring employees back to the office after two-and-a-half years of remote working. Empowered by a robust labor market, employees have embraced the flexibility afforded by a home office, while companies have treaded lightly with mandates that they return to their corporate confines.
A McKinsey study published in June found that 58% of U.S. employees are able to work from home at least one day a week, while more than a third can be fully remote. That means 92 million employees have the option to work remotely for all or part of the week.
Nearly 9 out of 10 employees given the option work remotely at least three days a week, according to the study.
That has translated into record downtown office vacancies in Chicago, with companies continuing to shed space as long-term leases come up for renewal. For the second quarter, vacancy rates in the central business district rose to 19.3%, while the Chicago metro ticked up to 21.6%, according to a Newmark report.
Things are getting a little busier at offices in recent months, as workers are “encouraged” to return more frequently. A study by Kastle Systems, which tracks entry badge swipes, found that the number of employees at Chicago office buildings is at 42.6% of pre-pandemic levels as of Aug. 31.
Tuesday and Wednesday are the busiest days for hybrid workers to hit the office, according to the study.
Early employee returns are modest but encouraging at Accenture, which has 710,000 employees worldwide and more than $50 billion in annual revenues.
Chicago houses the largest U.S. office for Accenture with 6,500 employees. In August, the company left its longtime home at 161 N. Clark St. and moved into its West Loop headquarters at 500 W. Madison St., taking over seven extensively renovated floors in the 40-story, Helmut Jahn-designed high-rise above the Ogilvie Transportation Center. The 10-year lease included naming rights.
Accenture, which got a foothold in the building with its 2013 acquisition of Acuity Group, announced its expansion plans in July 2019 — just months before the pandemic would scatter its workforce to remote home offices. The build-out incorporated the hybrid evolution.
“We knew it’s going to be very rare that every meeting in the future has everybody in a room,” said Jim Coleman, 56, senior managing director of Accenture’s Chicago office. “We enhanced the tech a fair bit and we enhanced the collaboration capability.”
A centerpiece of the new communal experience is a cafe featuring locally sourced, chef-prepared meals and flexible seating for up to 400 people. While meals run about $20 per person, Accenture has been offering free lunches as an introductory perk. A recent weekday lunch featuring panzanella salad and lemon caper chicken drew a long line of hungry employees snaking out of the dining area and into the future home of an innovation hub.
Other amenities include murals by Chicago artists, a mothers suite with four private nursing rooms and a neighboring interfaith room. The office also features a broadcast studio rivaling network TV, where Accenture can livestream videos for remote employees and produce content for clients.
Open seating and meeting rooms are scattered in clusters with panoramic city views.
Since opening Aug. 15, Accenture has averaged about 700 to 1,000 employees in the office per day, or about 15% of the Chicago workforce, Coleman said. Accenture is encouraging but not mandating employees to come into the office. If everyone associated with the Chicago office showed up on any given day, there wouldn’t be enough seats, or lemon caper chicken, to accommodate.
“We’d be in trouble,” Coleman said. “I think our fire-coded number is 3,000 people.”
Last summer, California-based Cisco Systems announced it was moving its main Chicago-area office from suburban Rosemont to the redeveloped Old Post Office at 433 W. Van Buren St., which has been a magnet for corporate relocations in the West Loop.
The repurposed, century-old building, which encompasses 2.5 million square feet of office and event space, reopened in fall 2019. Cisco occupies half of the seventh floor, which it christened with a party in July. The lease runs for 10 years.
The sprawling office is filled with huddle rooms, break rooms, kitchens and conference rooms that recognize when you enter, reserving them in real time and instantly connecting you to the virtual world via giant video screens. In the real world, giant windows afford sweeping vistas of the Eisenhower Expressway, which bisects the building, creating an effect reminiscent of a tollway oasis.
The space is mapped out with sections named after Chicago neighborhoods. Cubicles and traditional offices are nowhere to be found, but there are 750 workstations spread across large open rooms. Seating is hot desk, or hotel style, with a green marker signifying the desk is clean and ready for new coffee spills.
There were plenty of spaces available on a recent weekday morning visit.
An interactive video touch-screen map senses how many people are in the office and where they are located. The busiest days, Tuesday and Thursday, might welcome about 200 of the 1,100 or so employees who call the Chicago office home base.
Christian Bigsby, senior vice president of workplace resources for Cisco, said the company is rationalizing its national real estate footprint for the post-pandemic landscape, with plans to reduce it by 30% over the next three years. The downsizing process began during the pandemic.
“We exited a lot of our sales offices, a lot of the locations that truly were just people-dependent, that we weren’t able to use anyway, because we had sent everybody home,” said Bigsby, videoconferencing from his North Carolina office. “We also took advantage of any other leases that were lapsing or places we thought we could reduce space.”
A consolidated Midwestern hub for Cisco, the new Chicago office serves as an engineering talent center and a base for Meraki, a networking company it acquired in 2012. It’s also a sales center to showcase products for customers.
Daily attendance is not mandated or expected, Bigsby said.
“They’re not going to come there out of habit anymore, they’re going to come there more for events and for purpose,” Bigsby said. “We don’t believe there’s a lot of people in the company that are going to wake up earlier, wear different clothing, groom differently, commute for an hour to show up and be by themselves.”
Amit Kramer, professor of labor and employment relations at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said remote productivity varies by occupation, but some companies still need employees in the office for mentoring and brainstorming.
At the same time, he was skeptical that the new communal workplaces would incentivize many “top-talent” employees to forgo the flexibility of remote work.
“I think some employees want to go to work, close the door and not see anyone else, and I don’t see how that can happen in this new space,” Kramer said. “The workplace going only collaborative, no ability to isolate yourself for a few minutes or an hour, I’m not sure that’s a great way to bring back employees to work.”
Beyond collaboration, Kramer said some companies are looking to reel employees back into the office to keep a closer eye on potential slackers. While so-called “quiet quitting” has been going on for years, it is harder to know if someone is working on the Penske file or soaking up sun in a backyard hammock when they are remote.
“It may take a longer time to identify these employees and if need be, dismiss them or give them feedback about that,” Kramer said. “If they are spending their time looking for a new job on their computer at work, at least you can see that.”
Cassidy Beadle, 37, of Glen Ellyn, a 15-year veteran who leads the innovation team at Accenture’s Chicago office, has been coming into the new office two or three days a week since it opened last month. It is a major change after working remotely for much of the last two-and-a-half years.
While some colleagues have had trouble getting over “the inertia” of leaving their home and hitting the road to work, Beadle said she found her commuting groove came back quickly. The cafe and the variety of meeting rooms and workspaces have been draws, but the pull that gets her to make the daily 50-mile round-trip journey is the collaborative mission of the new office.
“Although the amenities are great, I think it’s the energy and the collaboration with my colleagues that has really been a dramatic effect,” Beadle said. “I don’t think I realized sitting at my desk by myself, even with my kids at home, how much I was just missing out on that part of work.”
