Employees can reconfigure this office to support their needs

For the UK-based technological solutions company Cognizant, this trend collided with another reality. Before its recent move into a new headquarters, the company operated eight traditional business spaces scattered across London. “The offices were used by different teams. Some of them were used by everyone. And some were just super-siloed,” says Penny Tonks, associate director of real estate strategy and asset management for Cognizant’s European region. The situation posed challenges of workplace communication and cohesion, to be sure. But it also created friction that sparked a quest to redefine what a workplace could be. “It was an opportunity to bring people together,” Tonks says.

Even before Covid, Cognizant had begun planning to consolidate its workplaces. “We knew we had under-utilization in some of the offices that came with acquisitions,” Tonks says. “And our teams already had the flexibility to work from home.” As a result, the new space could be more efficient, unburdened by the need to accommodate all of the company’s staff. It could be nimbler, too, allowing the ability to transform desking and cubicles, walls, and even complete rooms from public meeting areas to private workspaces and back again.

A workplace should be a place where people want to be. Cognizant chose a location in Spitalfields to be close to clients. “It’s right at the edge of Shoreditch,” Tonks says, referring to a hip neighborhood that attracts creatives. “And we’ve got easy access across the city, with the Elizabeth line. It was really important to get the best commute for people that we could.”

Working with a London-based team of designers, the company conceived a three-floor headquarters created, Tonks says, to support talent attraction and retention. This meant incorporating the best strategies for individual and collaborative working: Soundproof pods replicate the focused intimacy of working from home, and tables sized for paired conversation anchor small meeting rooms. “Just to be able to close the door and be in your own space, rather than an open space, is really beneficial,” she says. “People still need to find the quiet time they need.” But they also want community. Circulation paths create possibilities for intentional coincidences via open labs and communication visibility.

Larger meeting spaces, with adjoining and flexible desking and lockers, can be booked in advance, and their whiteboards can be rolled into storage. “It was intentional to not allocate spaces to any of the business units or teams, but to make them as usable as possible for everybody,” she says. Teams can book rooms for an entire day, and even the boardroom is uniquely flexible: It can turn into a workshop with a flip of its bespoke table.

The project was built to BREEAM Outstanding and WELL Platinum standards. “That was particularly important to recent grads and other early-career recruits,” Tonks says. “It was important to practice what we preach on that front and invest in the right sort of space.”

One strategy involved furnishings. The design team piloted new furniture in Cognizant’s previous location in Paddington, incorporating workers’ feedback via QR code. The most successful new pieces were then mixed with existing furnishings from the various offices, resulting in an environmentally friendly 40% reuse rate and ensuring the new workplace felt both familiar and fresh.

But the new headquarters’ most successful feature might just be its most public. On the fifth floor, a flexible event space allows Cognizant to transition from renting venues to hosting in-house. “It’s off the charts in terms of utilization,” Tonks says. “To be able to bring people, whether they’re clients or industry colleagues, into our space to showcase our way of working makes a world of difference.”

The best workspace, then, isn’t just an office in the right part of town. It’s a place you want to show off and share.