Google’s Nina Bjornstad talks to Damian Wild about how the search giant is designing workplaces to optimise productivity and harness creative energy
Disruptive models, technology and entrepreneurs may be popping up everywhere, but there remains one business in whose footsteps others seek to tread: Google.
There are scores of business books about the tech giant; one of the most influential was What Would Google Do? If you could answer that question, emulate it and apply it to your own business, you would have a headstart on your rivals. That was the premise and it is one that many in property have bought into over the years.
Developers, landlords and agents have not just sought instructions from Google, they have consistently used it as a source of inspiration in creating inspiring workplaces.
Responsibility for delivering much of that inspiration now falls to Nina Bjornstad. As UK & Ireland country manager for the Google for Work Business, her role – and this doesn’t sound a bad one, does it? – is to transform and liberate how work gets done.
Prior to joining Google she worked for 10 years at Microsoft and before that she was with Dell and Amazon. Bjornstad has not just had a ring-side seat as technology has changed the way we work and the space we seek, for much of the time she has been right there in the ring.
From the Treetop meeting room in one of Google’s smaller London offices (Treetop is between Stadium and Airport – you get the picture), Bjornstad explains the next wave of transformation she expects to hit the workplace.
“So many industries are changing underneath their feet,” she says. “Retailers no longer have the luxury of selecting next season’s clothing lines. They need to be listening and responding to their customers on a daily basis. Media houses don’t have the luxury of just publishing news once a day, they need to publish on an ongoing basis. It means they need to be constantly taking input from those they serve. They need to collapse down the silos of how they are working.
“If you think about the quantity of sequential things that we do within business, it’s phenomenal. But if you think about how immediate the market is demanding us to be, there is a break point there. Companies are realising they need to fundamentally change how they work so they can be responsive to the pace of the market today.”
And, to adapt the title of chief executive Eric Schmidt’s 2014 book, how does Google work? It breaks down silos by offering open spaces with different themes, some for quiet reflective moments, others with a “buzz and a heat that feel more like a café”. Yes, there are meeting rooms, smaller ones for video calls, bigger ones for gatherings. But each is fit for purpose, right down to their name. Treetop, for example, is “an acknowledgement that there are some hard benefits, but there are also some soft benefits to bringing in atmosphere, and I think people act accordingly”, says Bjornstad.
Enabling delivery
It is the marriage of the “backbone” of tech and an inspiring, appropriate space that enables a workforce to perform.
Tech will become more personal – and mobile – while workplaces that allow creative energy to be harnessed will be the offices of the future.
“There is an increasingly deep respect for how individuals bring their very best to work, and physical space is a really big part of that equation,” says Bjornstad. “One of the big things that we believe at Google is that by having a space that people want to come to, there is a creative energy of being together. So we create our office spaces to attract people to come in, to have that collaboration experience with one another. There is a fundamental belief that we are better if we are working together and bouncing off one another’s ideas. We feel strongly that a physical space to be in is an important part of that equation.”
But there should be no one-size-fits-all solution, even within a single business. “The different offices that we have throughout London are a reflection of the communities that are in those offices. One of our offices is more focused on engineering, and our spaces there are more akin to where and how engineers flourish. In our Central St Giles building there are a lot more open areas and café-type areas, because there we have a more marketing and sales-focused audience who benefit from that type of interaction. You can walk into different buildings and very much feel them to be a reflection of the communities that they serve.
“The thing that they have in common is common spaces. Sitting behind a desk all day doesn’t make me my most creative and doesn’t enable me to interact and collapse down barriers between groups. And they all have a focus around food.”
Clearly it is not just food that needs to be on the menu; collaborative spaces and personalised tech matter as well. But never underestimate the power of a good cup of coffee, as one of Google’s in-house baristas might say.
damian.wild@estatesgazette.com
