The London Office

While I'm here in London, I figured I'd stop by the work office in London to 1) make myself be known internationally; 2) meet the HR coordinator for the "programme" that I've spoke with over the phone for the last 2 months; and 3) see how elegant our offices are overseas. Prepare for yet another picture reel...

These are our elevators.

These are 4 of the 5 floors we occupy in the building.

As you can see, we have an "open" floor plan that "encourages communication," while effectively discouraging web surfing. Supposedly, there are only 3 offices that have doors. While in some areas of the office people have designated work stations, in some areas, people can basically sit where they want. "But what about their coat, or bag, or personal belongings? Where do they put them?" I'm glad you asked...

They not only have lockers, but you see those mini cabinets under the lockers? Those are rollable storage compartments that each employee who works in one of those, non-assigned seat work stations can use.


This is their coffee machine...and I'm pretty sure it makes more that just coffee...and this isn't even the major one. The one in the main lobby has the two spouts like they use at Starbucks. Oh yeah, they have wireless in the main lobby, which also doubles as this area with nice cafeteria-like benches where employees can eat lunch or, as I was told, meet for informal meetings.

This is their kitchen. I would stop there but it gets even more serious. Up until recently, they had an in-house chef. Now they just use him/her on an as-needed basis.


Isn't that a cool mini-conference/meeting pod? They have all types of architecturally beautiful stuff like this all throughout the office.

Other observations...

• The retail leasing group has it all mapped out...Oxford Street that is. They literally have a map showing lease rates (on a PSF basis, surprisingly) depending upon where you are along the strip.
• We have an "Investments Group", and they basically manage large sums of money for several or our clients.
• London valuation has 25 to 30 people.
• Of the 3 business cards I got from people in valuation, each had an MRICS designation...and they couldn't have been older than early to mid 30's, if not late 20's.
• Each of the conference rooms is named after a country we have an office in, and the photos in the conference room are of buildings we've dealt with in some shape or form.
• We Americans use, on average, twice as much water to flush the toilet than they do in London. Not sure if the building is green, but they are definitely taking steps to become efficient.

In all, the London office is definitely an aesthetically pleasing place to work, but I don't know if I'd trade my door for it ;-).

Cheers.