New Insurance HQ's Design Serendipitously Accommodates Social Distancing

With its lease expiration looming, global business insurance provider Assurance saw an opportunity to make a change, so it turned to long-time design partner and national architecture firm HED to collaborate on a new space that would reflect its vibrant corporate culture and maximize square footage.

The result is a 75,000-square-foot headquarters for the 525-person insurance operation just outside Chicago. While some experts have recommended offices shoot for around 250 square feet per person pre-COVID-19, which is far more than the new headquarter provides, Assurance took a different approach, having planned the space not only before the pandemic, but with an interest in capitalizing on close collaboration among its workforce.

Assurance needed its new headquarters to promote collaboration among professionals and individuals serving different industries. That's why the workspaces are oriented around an activity-based environment, with plenty of shared amenities, its stakeholders explain. “The Assurance workplace includes a variety of teaming spaces, each with its own unique character, but all functionally outfitted to support collaboration," says Max Garland, lead project designer at HED.

Cafés for Collaboration

The new headquarters features a front-of-house café, ample conference space, a meditation room, a mother's suite, and a training center for Assurance University, which provides seminars to Assurance's insurance customers as a free service.

Coffee lounges are a key feature of the space, serving as gathering places for teams as well as meetings with visiting clients. The lounges were designed to foster a sense of community and enhance the team culture, featuring unique lighting and thoughtful furniture choices.

“We chose exposed globes in various sizes, organized in a random pattern, to provide visual interest and an ethereal, playful vibe," says Leonora Georgeoglou, associate principal at HED.

The design team also selected a variety of seating options — including oversized lounge chairs, barstools, and café-style chairs — to create a welcoming atmosphere and offer various ways to spend time in the space.

Embracing a Refined Industrial Aesthetic

The new headquarters boasts a “refined industrial aesthetic," explains Georgeoglou, with exposed ductwork and pipework throughout the space. HED left the concrete ceiling deck raw to underscore the industrial vibe and to enhance the volume of the space.

In the cafés, the design team exposed the raised floor tiles, which are made of a concrete composite with a clear finish. Black steel accents are balanced with wood tones to warm up the rawness of the concrete and exposed services.

“The color palette was envisioned with warm grays and muted accents, highlighting the reclaimed wood and black metals throughout the space," says Georgeoglou. “The bright orange color became a punchy neutral to define the coffee lounge areas, which operate at the heart of the space."

It's thoughtful design that makes this particular office unique, according to Georgeoglou.

Maximizing Square Footage

Notably, the design and planning of the new headquarters allows employees to collaborate in person as well as from home.

Before the pandemic, Assurance decided to accommodate space for growth by planning for the ability to increase its desk-sharing ratio. This allowed the firm to increase staff headcount by 100 and add the aforementioned amenities — all within the same square footage they had in their former space.

“The space was designed to accommodate a ratio of 1.3 people per desk," explains Georgeoglou. “Teams typically in the office the least would be free-addressing, while day-to-day users would have assigned workstations." Free-address workspaces are desks or areas that, when vacant, can be used by an employee without an assigned station on a first-come first-serve or reserved basis, similar to hot desking.

When Assurance's free-address employees wish to work in the office, they can use Outlook to reserve a workstation for the day. Every workstation is outfitted with the same equipment, so staff can easily plug in their laptop and get to work.

Preparing for Post-Pandemic Flexibility

Although now, after the coronavirus pandemic has offices enforcing social distancing guidelines if they host employees at all, the firm hasn't yet capitalized on the full capacity of its desk-sharing solutions. But it turns out that Assurance's move to the alternate work scheduling system based on free-addressing has been valuable in the current era of shift work and social distancing, anyway.

“Assurance already had the infrastructure in place to have employees work remotely, so the move to work from home was greatly eased," says Garland.

As they are in the process of returning to their workplace, the Assurance team is working in the shift model, with part of the employees in the office on some days and the rest in on others.

Those who can work from home were given that option pre-COVID, and now will be able to work more remotely, should they choose to continue to do so, the firm said. “The space was designed with this flexibility in mind, so as Assurance grows or as more people decide to come back to the office, the free-address system can accommodate that," Georgeoglou says.

In addition, the company's clean-desk policy ensures that all free-address workstations are emptied and cleaned at the end of each day. And because of the design of the space, the six-foot distance guideline is easily accommodated for its teams.

“As employees return to the office there are design elements in place already, such as individual lockers for staff, that are allowing Assurance to move even more fully into the free-address work model," says Garland.