Visiting the HubSpot team at their corporate office in Boston was a fascinating experience, as we learned not just what they do, but also how they go about doing it.
The HubSpot headquarters are located on 3rd Street Cambridge, a 15-minute cab ride from downtown Boston, and about 5km from the Harvard University campus. The main building is located in a repurposed four-storey factory.
Here’s a list of 10 features of the building, amenities, services and flexibility provided to staff that I observed on our quick visit:
- Heaps of natural light, including an atrium for sitting and reflecting
- Open-plan desks, each with standing or sitting options, no partitions and many break-out rooms
- Several bars for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks – all stocked with cereals, soft drinks, beer on-tap, etc.
- Full-service café
- Two different external caterers attend the building each day to provide a variety of lunchtime meals
- A fruit bar well stocked with fresh, seasonal fruit
- A candy bar with plenty of sugar-hit opportunities
- Games areas with darts, table tennis, Lego and numerous other game-challenge options
- Chalkboards to encourage creative communication
- Dogs (and other pets) allowed at work.
These are all material things to some degree, however they demonstrate what some companies are doing right now in order to attract and retain people.
From our observations these measures created an environment and work culture that provided more of a human flavour – if anything the feeling was one where there was a greater blurring between home life and work life.
Rachel, our guide for the visit, attested to this when she mentioned that HubSpot also has a flexible work-from-home approach.
In fact, we were on campus during ‘family day’ (an annual event) so most of the office space was filled with children, pets and spouses!
The take-home message
My biggest reflection on seeing the HubSpot workspace was that, as small and mid-cap firms, perhaps we don’t give enough attention to our work environments.
Sure there are some peculiarities in the HubSpot world – tech companies are renowned for being at the cutting edge of office design – but we are all people working to achieve the goals and objectives of a business, so why should we be any different?
Of course, each business office environment will be different, based on the personality and culture you establish and maintain as a business owner or senior manager. But, as our guest contributor Kevin Catlin wrote in our blog a few weeks back, ‘culture starts at the top’.
The way we as owners and senior managers design our staff’s work environments will have an impact on our business culture – positively or negatively.
Maybe it’s something you – and I – should think further about. (And, yes, Barbara thinks a candy bar at the JPAbusiness head office is a great idea.)
