• Sector: Pharmaceutical industry. Multinational.
• Location: Germany, 1863.
• Number of employees: 477.
• Current operating area: 9.800 sqm.
• Location: Sant Joan Despí (Barcelona).
• Project year: 2017-2021.
• Motivation for project: Global guidelines which have implemented the WORKLIFE project and initiative in countries around the world (Chile, China, etc.) are now being applied in the Barcelona branch.
  WORKLIFE is a project that will take three years to implement and is based on workspace flexibility to make it a catalyst of culture change.
  Some of its goals are:
  • To promote a work atmosphere based on trust.
  • To foster communication among business areas.
  • To eliminate silos and increase flexibility.
  • To motivate co-creation, creativity, innovation, and efficient processes.

Actions carried out

• Seven group interviews with 22 people at all levels.
• 23 Twenty-three individual interviews with senior management.
• 4 workshops with 75 people.
• Online questionnaire sent to 477 people (51% response rate).

Main conclusions

• The current Bayer offices are confined, hierarchical, and formal.
• A highly individual work style predominates.
• Important values for Bayer, like trust, are not noticed in the workplace.
• There was a particular lack of spaces to gather informally at the office.
• Employees feel prepared to adopt flexibility policies, but the corporate culture doesn’t foster them enough.
• Workers wanted a space with a stronger presence of natural elements more aligned with a sustainable vision.
• Employees identified the need for concentration spaces at the office.
• There is a need for tech support to facilitate processes and the work style in an innovative, agile atmosphere.

Actions carried out

• Audit of the current space on seven floors
• Occupancy study (300 measurements on 10 workdays).
• Comparison with benchmarking, services

Main conclusions

• Occupancy rate 16.3 sqm /WS, four points above best practices, sending an alarming message that has little to do with efficiency and optimization.
• Office area: 36%, 4.5 times the standard. Such a high presence of offices distorts the occupancy rate. There are different office sizes and configurations, with a direct correlation to the company members’ career status and progress.
• Meeting room area: 14%, compared to 11% in the standard size. The majority are very large. They are occupied 94% of the time, but the meeting spaces within offices are not, so they are redundant as they are occupied only 34% of the time. Efficiency of the reservation system under 50%.
• No areas for collaboration or informal gatherings.
• Amount of added-value areas: 2.5% (exclusively in kitchen or coffee vending areas).

Key data

• From 106 to no offices (open-space model for everyone).
• From 40% to 83% of the area set aside for open spaces (individual work, collaboration, innovation, interaction).
• From two types of meeting rooms to eight types of different gathering spaces, which allow for different meeting formats and dynamics.
• The area used for the archive and paper storage was cut in half.
• From no concentration spaces to almost 500 m2 set aside for this use in the overall implementation.
• Inclusion of healthy spaces and areas for social interaction.
• What began as a project that encompassed all seven floors of the building that Bayer owned became an implementation on five floors for the sake of a flexible and more efficient model, and after COVID-19 it has become a three-floor corporate space with an additional floor for co-working, while the rest will bring in revenues and be rented to a third party.