Slack and Company

A walk through Millennium Park, a long ride on a commuter train, a stunning view of the skyline: inspiration can come from anywhere, especially for the creative team at Slack and Company, a business-to-business marketing firm with a window-lined office perched high above the Chicago River.

Early in the morning, company founder Gary Slack often finds himself, coffee in hand, looking out over the boats cruising past the buildings and bridges along the river. It’s a moment to celebrate what a tremendous, creativity-inspiring gift the cityscape is to his team of graphic and digital designers, copywriters, strategists and art directors. It’s also an important reminder of just how much an environment can affect a person’s perspective on work and on the organisation that employs them.

Canvas Office Landscape workstations with low screens give people the privacy they need to focus and help them stay connected to others working nearby.

“Every window has a great view, and it’s a great way to be inspired,” says Slack. “It’s something our employees – my co-workers – really appreciate, because it helps enhance the sense that they’re in an elevated, high-quality work environment.”

Creating an optimal experience of work for his people is something Slack cares about greatly. In fact, he’s forgone the typical Chief Executive Officer moniker for the title of Chief Experience Officer – a label that is perhaps more apropos to the employee-centric method of running the business.

“The way I look at it, every morning, everyone makes a choice to go back to the place that employs them,” says Slack. “So my goal is when people wake up, they can’t wait to get into the office.”

In the not-so-distant past, the offices of Slack and Company weren’t working as hard as they could to get people excited about coming into the office every day – a major issue for a company whose creative output relies on colleagues working together to conceive ideas, refine strategy and launch campaigns. Confined to high-walled cubicles with little space to tack up notes and share ideas, Slack’s creative team members were struggling to connect.

“In our old space, we would wear headphones and instant message each other a lot,” says Elisa Ivany, a Creative Director at Slack. “When we needed to meet, we would have to book a closed-off conference room.”

This lack of connection spilled over into the employees’ relationship with leadership, too. “I had my own office before,” says Ron Klingensmith, Chief Creative Officer. “It afforded me some privacy, but it also created a bit of a barrier to my creative team.”

All of these physical and social impediments were taking a toll on engagement and creative output, and making it difficult for Slack and Company to establish itself as a firm that’s dedicated both to strategic thinking and superior design. It was also keeping them from reaching strategic business goals, including increasing efficiency and promoting knowledge-sharing among employees. That’s why Gary Slack made the decision to expand the company’s headquarters into a neighbouring 167 m2 space, and enlist Chicago-based A&D firm Gensler and Herman Miller to help.

“When we started this project, we wanted to increase the espirit de corps. The pride people have in coming here every day,” says Slack. “We also wanted to increase productivity and efficiency, and, maybe, most importantly, improve the quality of our thinking, our creative product, and elevate it in such a way that our clients would notice, and that prospective clients would be more likely to hire us.”

During the course of the project, Slack found himself drawn to Living Office, Herman Miller’s point-of-view on people, work and the workplace. Informed by Living Office insights, organisations can work with their design partners to create high-performing workplaces that elevate the experience of work for people, and help businesses achieve their goals.

“I think the story behind Living Office is not only about how an office can perform as a whole, but how you can break down an environment and make each individual within that space successful in what they do,” says Sheryl Schulze, a Senior Project Director at Gensler.