As a global manufacturer and retailer of mobility aids for rehabilitation, medical and aged care purposes, Cubro pride themselves on values of teamwork, integrity, compassion, family, innovation, and giving.
This underlined our approach to their new space – mobile workspaces for their mobility focus. Coming from an environment where executives had offices and staff were disconnected by high cubicles, we wanted to create an activity based workplace that would encourage interaction, collaboration and break down traditional and out-of-date hierarchical barriers.
Now no one has an assigned desk. Executives can sit anywhere they like and most choose to be with their teams. When they need to entertain clients they use the club space, a first class lounge experience with kitchen, bar and a meeting room.
Office, showroom and warehouse staff all come together in the shared kitchen, where an in-house chef prepares healthy lunch options.
They’ll also cross paths at the in-house gym on the first floor.
Rather than allow the exterior to determine the use of the interiors, we worked with the architects from an early stage to align both spaces. We found a way to add decks that extend from the staff café and the boardroom.
The generous 5 metre ceilings add greatly to the sense of space, however they also introduce acoustic challenges. To make the open plan space work, we included floating panels 3 metres above desks, with acoustic tiles and water cut acoustic panels between the staff café and work area.
As their new workplace was an extreme departure from the old, we also employed change management strategies to assist the employees with the change over. Post occupancy surveys validated our direction, with overwhelmingly positive feedback. Many said they would never go back to assigned desks.
