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Heard of an auto rickshaw in an office lounge? Or deliberately exposed ductwork and unfinished decor in an office building? You could, at Facebook's new office in Hyderabad, which depicts 'work is still in progress'.
The networking site's office is one of many with innovative designs and features. If you hate being closeted in conference rooms over meetings and presentations and cups of tea, you can tap the Bangalore office of e-commerce company Flipkart. Here, large parts of walls and corridors can be used for impromptu meetings and discussions, without stepping into a conference room.
Increasingly, companies are going for creative designs in offices and offering facilities like day care and shopping places to attract the young generation and get the best out of them.
Adobe, Bharti Airtel, eBay, Amazon, Flipkart, Facebook and CHD Developers are among those which aspire to provide a semblance of work-life balance at the workplace itself.
There are no private offices or cubicles in the Facebook office, primarily to encourage sharing of knowledge and ideas within the organisation. Also, the decor is designed to look deliberately unfinished and the furnishings are predominantly industrial-looking, a spokesperson said. "Exposed ductwork in the high-ceiling over the working area represents work in progress. At Facebook, we always say the work is only one per cent done and the journey has only just begun."
The walls at Flipkart, covered with 3M glossy material, are actually whiteboards, handy for meetings, maintaining data and brainstorming sessions. "This is more to encourage an open and fluid environment than have people cluster into meeting rooms," a Flipkart official said. In a company with a majority of 20-something employees, the open-area meeting and presentation in the corridor looks like an idea that might sell.
The whiteboard concept is popular in other modern workplaces, too, including at Amazon's offices in Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore. The Seattle-headquartered largest e-commerce player in the world recently entered India but had its back-office here for some time. A young executive at the Chennai office spoke about other informal ways of exchanging ideas. "We have breakout areas, like clusters with four or five informal chairs and a small table. Whether we want to hold quick meetings or just want to relax for a while, this is the zone to be in." Also, at work or in the breakout areas, beanbags are welcome anywhere.
However catchy the idea of open-ness, conference rooms are there aplenty, too, at the India offices of Amazon. The executive laughs while explaining how every conference room is named after Greek signs like Alpha, Beta, Delta. "There's one called Nakshatra, too." (The Amazon spokesperson did not reply to the questionnaire sent for this story).
At Facebook, employees are involved in naming the conference rooms (some being 'Chacha Chaudhry', 'Suppandi', 'Bhaiya Pls Bhaiya'), inspired by an East-West fusion of culture, comic characters and slang.
Kalhan Mattoo, director of Planet3Studios, an architecture firm in Mumbai, reasones there's realisation among companies that, to nurture knowledge and creativity, they have to be sensitive to employee needs. Also, offices are fast becoming vehicles for corporate culture, he said. Planet3Studios has been behind the design of Reliance Industries' Mumbai office, the RPG group corporate headquarters and Viacom TV18 corporate headquarters in Mumbai, among others.
Bharti Airtel, the country's largest telecom provider, has an inhouse grocery store, 'Easy Day', and a day care centre for children. Its concierge services can be used by employees for couriers, paying utility bills and bank work.
Then there's Delhi-based realty company CHD Developers, in the process of building its office in Gurgaon with an investment of Rs 150 crore. It will house a club, spa, gym and a day care, said Ravi Saund, chief operating officer. CHD has brought in leading architects Pei Cobb Freed and Partners Architects LLP, which had earlier designed the Bank of China headquarters, the IMF Building at Washington DC, the Four Seasons hotel in New York, and played a key role in modernisation and expansion of the Grand Louvre, Paris.
Environment-friendliness is another feature a modern company is proud of. American e-commerce company eBay is one, with energy-efficient conference rooms. Says Deepa Thomas, styled eCommerce Evangelist at eBay India: "All the conference rooms in the eBay India office are motion sensor equipped. The lights go off automatically, unless there is movement in the conference room."
In the Facebook office, several furnishings have been recreated from recycled and unfinished wood. Plants and green terraces bring foliage into the office space.
Adobe, the information technology software and products company, stands out for its multi-coloured walls in the Gurgaon office. That's meant to keep it bright for employees. It also has an in-house library, gym, sports room and basketball court.
