Accenture opens high-tech office
Centre emphasizes employee well-being; plans to hire 100 staff
Online business support firm Accenture unveiled its new downtown St. Catharines office Wednesday — a high-tech workplace for 600 people, with plans to hire another 100 employees over the next year.
“This is a really, really cool space,” said Toronto office managing director Piyush Bhatnagar, surveying surroundings that include exercise and games rooms for employees.
The 6,180 square metres of office space, spread over two floors inside the Corbloc building on King Street, also offer bright, wide-open staff areas, a wellness room for mothers returning from maternity leave and a dedicated prayer room.
From there, Accenture provides customer assistance, marketing and sales services, a help desk and technical support for GO Transit operator Metrolinx, San Diego Gas and Electric and a third, unnamed real estate company.
Another 100 people work at its Schmon Parkway office in Thorold, providing assistance for Enbridge. Worldwide, Accenture has about 750 clients and 140,000 employees. With about 700 current employees, Accenture ranks among the top 20 or so employers in Niagara, according to Niagara Region’s economic development website.
Managing director of intelligent sales and customer operations Danielle Moffat said the new office is designated as Accenture’s North America “centre of excellence.”
“For Niagara, it means lots of job opportunities … and also lots of continuing training and skills development, which is really exciting,” she said.
Among its high-tech features, she said, is the use of an artificial intelligence-powered “virtual assistant (computer system) that can interpret customer intents and process complex requests without human intervention and with high-level customer satisfaction.”
Managing director of intelligent operations Rachel Stuchberry said “because we’re doing this human and machine combination, (it allows the company) to take away the less mundane and let the humans do more value-added work.”
Emma Pobjoy, a client service delivery lead, said Accenture emphasizes employee well-being in the workplace. Noting the exercise room where yoga and Zumba classes are held, and which includes several treadmills, she said it’s a matter of “creating spaces where they can come away from our production floor, they can gain some life-work balance.”
“Everybody’s life is stressful, and (the company) recognizes that those breaks are needed in order to have the most productive, most engaged staff.”
In the games room, she said, “you’ll also see team managers come here to have their one-onone meetings over a game of pool.”
Accenture’s move downtown has created a ripple effect. The Hub Café, on the ground floor at Corbloc, started expansion last year when staff began moving in.
Mayor Walter Sendzik said planning started 10 years ago “to build the kind of infrastructure that would attract a global company like Accenture” downtown.
“Accenture’s investment has validated the work of staff, of community, of previous mayors and councillors who said if we invest in the public side of it — if we breathe new life into the downtown community — that businesses will follow.”
Region Chair Jim Bradley noted “by having a workplace that is welcoming and fulfilling for its employees, they are going to retain those who are here already and also bring new people to Accenture.”