CREJ - Building Dialogue - December 2016
Boston-based Sovos Compliance, with eight offices on three continents, made its first foray into the Colorado market in 2015 with its acquisition of ShipCompliant in Boulder. Part of integrating operations meant integrating staff and company cultures. With an international footprint, a defined brand and stringent standards for information security, Sovos has learned the importance of creating offices that incorporate nuances of the local market. By recognizing the character of a place – and the people who work there – these spaces support employee productivity and retention and enhance the Sovos brand. The Experts: Laura Handler, Chief of Staff – Sovos Compliance Kelly Hobson, Project Manager – Catalyst Planning Group Megan Walsh, LEED AP BD+C, Principal – Catalyst Planning Group Question: Sovos has a geographically diverse real estate portfolio. What are some of the ways that managing real estate globally is different from managing a portfolio here in Colorado? Laura Handler: At its core, I don’t know that the challenges of managing facilities around the globe are that different from managing a local or Colorado-based operation. We’re still focused on what our employees need, how we keep them engaged and productive. How is the environment supporting them and inspiring them? And how do we can manage that environment efficiently and effectively, while being compliant with local codes and our corporate requirements? Geographic nuances come into play across time zones and on different continents. We have eight offices on three continents and, often, we take a slightly different approach because of the way the local market is structured. But really it’s about supporting all our employees across those eight offices. Q: Sovos is working now to develop global office standards. How are you planning to create efficiency and consistency in your portfolio with these standards? LH: For each location, we get to know the local market and try to incorporate some customization for each site. The global standards we are developing maintain consistency and efficiency, but along with global scale, there needs to be local customization. Plus, what you do with a permitting agency in Boston is different from in Boulder. So we partner locally to learn the market, and we extrapolate what we would do globally. It’s a balancing act, like anything else. Megan Walsh: You’re developing a baseline or a kit of parts, but incorporating market nuances that speak to the local geography and the employees. Q: You want people traveling the globe to know it’s a Sovos office. How do you create that consistency without making the offices feel cookie-cutter? Kelly Hobson: Each office has a different feel, but you know when you walk in that it’s a Sovos office. Our projects build on existing design elements, but we maintain levels of consistency with things like signage and IT infrastructure. You can’t get absolute consistency, but the way each office and each employee is treated – that’s always the same. LH: Good point. We also have to maintain absolute information security in all our offices. We have the same high standards, but the way we implement them may vary, based on the local market. But it is paramount that we keep our data secure, so the overall intent and compliance level has to be the same across all locations. MW: By developing standards, you leverage efficiencies and economies of scale across your procurement strategy. Then, as you acquire and optimize, you also start to have standard inventories and protocols on site. Some of these overall consistencies are tangible, like branding, furnishings or wayfinding, and some are intangible, like security and IT. By applying “market alignment,” you find culturally appropriate ways to apply these standards without being rote or repetitive. Q: Sovos has such a geographically rich portfolio. As you grow, are you seeing trends in the market that support where you are or where you need to be? LH: Well, one trend goes back to data security. We don’t compromise in any of our markets; we apply the same standards and bring new offices into the fold. We’ve found that new acquisitions are excited to bring their clients the Sovos brand and level of security. Nearly all companies are focused on this need now and the markets are responding with more dynamic data security. This isn’t a local trend, but something we’re seeing internationally. Another trend is the need to collaborate and coordinate globally. Big in-person meetings really help, but like most businesses, with eight offices, we’ve had to learn to how to coordinate, collaborate, even resource a project remotely. It’s the way of the world, and it’s been a good challenge to solve. Q: The remote coordination was a big piece of the Boulder project. How did you approach that?” LH: Our Boulder office was our first capital project in Colorado, as well as our first time moving into a market in that way – without as much legacy information. Our headquarters is in New England, with some offices across the country and around the world. Plus, Boulder is a newer office we had acquired only about six months prior. So we knew we wanted to partner with a project management firm. Q: The Boulder office is a very trend-forward project. From an end-user perspective, how has it impacted Sovos overall and your other properties? KH: A lot of the project was really about change management. It went smoothly because the team was very hands-on. The project has been very successful, and we continue to draw on aspects of it for other projects in the Sovos portfolio. LH: From a design aspect, the Boulder office is very different from our other offices in the U.S. And while you don’t have the ability to say, “Let’s go in and give our sites an entirely new look,” we are using ideas from the Boulder project that we think are really effective. We don’t replicate them because that doesn’t work geographically, but we’ve applied some of them as appropriate to other locations. We ask, “How can we create that same inspiration in our other offices?” So there has been influence in the way we’re thinking about build-outs and expansions in our other offices. Having multiple projects going on at once means they feed off each other. MW: The life cycle of a project can be very long by the time the need is identified, the site is located, the space is designed/permitted/built and you move in. During that time, it’s not atypical for there to be a merger or acquisition – so you have brand changes and staffing migration to contend with, as well. That’s a lot of change to manage but change impacts projects in different ways, depending on the region. For example, we’re pretty rooted here in Colorado. There’s a lot of migration in, but not a lot of migration out. Q: What were some of your inspiration or grounding points for this project – things you found that make Colorado or Boulder unique, and why did they come into play? LH: The centerpiece of the Boulder office is its community spaces, the places where employees can come together, whether it’s for a site-wide meeting, having lunch together, brainstorming or the weekly wine hour that was a tradition here. The wine bar in particular is very welcoming, very modern – it’s been very successful. KH: It’s the heart of the space. LH: Yes! That’s a great metaphor. All of our offices are growing. In Boulder, to support growing client needs, we’ve doubled our staff and the square footage of the space. The team had to adjust and having these centralized spaces really helped. This concept of a central “heart” has been so successful in Boulder that it’s influenced how we think about some of our other spaces. We’re talking about it a lot, thinking about it a lot, and trying to find ways to realize this in the design of other offices right now. In our Boston headquarters, for example, we’re incorporating more community spaces and modern elements. We’re asking, “How will people come together? How will they collaborate?” Q: What are some of the more unique adaptations you’ve seen in this office, and would they translate to other locations? LH: Well, our Boulder employees use scooters to get around the office, which you wouldn’t necessarily see at our headquarters. They’ve also made some small changes and added some personalized touches to adapt the space to their needs, and you wouldn’t see as much of that in a headquarters space. It’s great to see how they’ve taken it and made it their own. People are flexible and adaptable, but they like to look around and say, “Is this space mine to mold?” Workspaces can be very influential in people’s personal journeys and impact change management as well. And in a highly designed space, like this office, it’s gorgeous but there can be a gap in how employees can take ownership of it. Boulder has done a good job creating that balance. We have standards and branding, but it’s not the living room you’re not allowed to sit in. KH: We also have a chalkboard wall that our team has really made their own, and of course the wine bar. And, like we said earlier, we’re looking for ways to translate some of these popular ideas to other Sovos offices. LH: As the company grows both organically and by bringing other companies into the fold, we learn a lot from each other. We collaborate. And when people travel among offices, it fun to see what’s different. It’s great hearing that people are enthused about their work spaces. Each office has its own differentiation points and appeal, but we see great energy and collaboration in each office. KH: Because we needed additional space, the office had to move from Pearl Street in the heart of downtown Boulder to Flatiron Park. This migration into an entirely new environment brought everyone together and made this space their own, which is so important culturally. LH: That’s right. Because Boulder is a very tight real estate market, it was challenging to find adequate space downtown, so we moved to the office park. But it was important to not be too far away; we’re still in Boulder and still just a bike ride away from downtown. Also, since it took a while to find the new space, our schedule was really tight. We had about a week buffer before our old lease expired. So we had to really hustle to get into the new space before then. MW: That’s a great point. Not only do you need alignment on the design and a nimble, flexible staff that supports the change, but the economics also have to pencil. The numbers always have to work.