Changing offices has provided us with the opportunity to reinvent ourselves and revamp the agency from A to Z. It’s a unique chance to make a great leap forward. And very quickly!
The experience of refurbishing the former Lévitan store in the tenth arrondissement of Paris, undertaken with the same care and eagerness to transform the company, had consequently resulted in the agency stepping up several gears.
“In the world of work, less and less thought is given to the impact of the working environment on people. So, why did we decide to take the time to think about it? Because we are convinced that the care and time dedicated to the choices concerning the location, design and construction of our workplace represent an investment. And this, based on our experience, produces good results.” Mercedes Erra and Rémi Babinet.
Les Magasins généraux will provide us with a wide range of unique working and experimenting possibilities. In order to bring about this transformation, BETC has compared traditional attitudes to work areas with other more innovative approaches, in particular Dutch, taking a holistic view of the location, people and work tools. That’s how the agency eventually created an innovative work area, enabling new types of collaboration and production tailored to uses, methods and wishes of each person, as well as to the corporate strategy.
BETC employees will consequently be able to choose between different types of work areas based on what they have to do, the time of the day, how they feel and the way each team is organised: large tables in open spaces, quieter areas away from hustle and bustle, small cubes for two or three people with exterior views, working areas for 4, 6, 12, 25 people… Collaboration is crucially important in all companies and this is all the more the case for a creative company dedicated to communication. What was the toughest challenge? Enabling people to work together more easily than before in the environment they wanted, encouraging spontaneous encounters, increasing employee flow both inside and outside, and creating points de convergence in the building. No more traditional open space working and personal offices. Consequently, the BETC personnel will be, without any exceptions, roamers, working in a “free office” context, without any office “belonging” to somebody, in a space providing numerous opportunities to meet up with different colleagues and also undertake experiments.
“When we moved to this different area of Paris, we had several ideas in mind: providing a larger more welcoming and better designed location for our 900 employees working there every day; inventing new working methods, new tools, setting a new pace and a new level of quality; making this location an area ideal for creativity, thinking and experimenting, open to our clients, partners and every player involved in the business of the agency: producers, photographers, writers, directors, musicians, journalists, designers, engineers, architects, restaurateurs…
The brands, associations, institutions and artists who entrust us with a part of their reputation and their ambitions must be able to take full advantage of this openness and these intersections. Nothing can beat gathering together as many different talented individuals as possible in the same building: it fosters a better understanding of problems, more sophisticated solutions, speed, new avenues for exploration, invention.”
RÉMI BABINET
