Employees get peek at new tower
Northwestern Mutual aims for flexible spaces
As striking as Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co.’s new 32-story tower and commons project in downtown Milwaukee looks from the outside, plans for the interior are impressive as well. Consider these features:
Work stations where employees can walk on a treadmill while operating their laptop computer, allowing them to get in their exercise without ever leaving the office.
A comfy, cockpit-ish private work station where an employee is surrounded on three sides by light-allowing plastic panels while his or her laptop is on a movable shelf in front, with a footstool nearby for additional comfort.
Work space divider panels — think cubicle, only sleeker and less confining — that can be easily raised for more privacy or lowered for collaboration with an employee next door.
Desks, partitions (which actually function as omnipresent whiteboards as well) and storage cabinets that all are on casters so they can quickly be rearranged to cater to an employee’s preferences or accommodate group formations for meetings.
Floor vents at each work station that allow the employee to make personal space warmer or cooler.
Those are among the furnishings and amenities now being checked out by workers at mock-ups of the planned interior of the new Northwestern Mutual tower in downtown Milwaukee. The “Envision Center” mock-ups, created with the actual furnishings in leased space at 411 E. Wisconsin Ave. and the company’s Franklin campus, are intended to familiarize employees with the layouts, gear and décor of their future workplace.
Employees are scheduled to begin moving into the $450 million tower and commons on Aug. 21. About 2,300 workers will move in over several weeks.
Some employees are likely to notice the very things they hoped would be in the new building.
“We spent a lot of time interviewing our employee base,” said Lauren Lotter, assistant director of facility operations for Northwestern Mutual.
Through employee surveys, special committees and focus groups, Lotter and other planners — starting in 2013 — put together a list of must-haves for the tower work spaces.
The planners rejected the old-school philosophy that who sits where should be based on a hierarchy. Rather, the company adopted the approach that work space should enable good performance and give everyone the tools they need to do their job well.
One theme that runs through the interior plan is flexibility. Almost everything — including many walls — is on wheels and can easily be moved or reconfigured to the needs of each department. Many workspace walls are metal, so anything with magnets can be attached to them, including, where needed, acoustic felt padding.
Northwestern Mutual worked with the Green Baybased contract furniture company KI to develop custom furnishings for the tower, Lotter said.
The work stations have dual computer monitors, but the new office space also takes advantage of the ubiquity of laptop computers. Various spaces around the tower offices reflect that digital mobility.
For instance, small individual rooms are set up for employees to take whatever posture they prefer, including kicking back with feet up, while working on a laptop. While such positioning might have been — or still is — frowned upon in some workplaces, one of Northwestern Mutual’s tenets for the tower is that people should be managed by outcomes, not by observations.
In the tower, employees will be encouraged to interact socially or strike up a meeting the minute they get off elevator and enter what the company is call-
ing the “Hub,” a place where they can get coffee or something else to drink and brainstorm.
They’ll also be urged to spend time collaborating or contemplating while taking in splendid views of Lake Michigan and the city from the “bump-out” flexible spaces that run down the curved edge of the tower.
Many of the features may appear aimed at accommodating the preferences of digital-savvy millennials. Northwestern Mutual has stressed that it is undergoing a transformation into a more technology-oriented company, and it has laid off hundreds of workers while seeking others with tech skills.
“I don’t think it’s necessarily restricted to millennials,” Lotter said. “I think millennials maybe are driving some of the changes because of how they like to work. But I think ultimately we want to recognize that everybody has different work styles, everybody is productive in different environments and in different ways. And we want to create a work space that has variety in it, that really is engaging to everybody.”
Many of the company’s top executives aren’t moving into the tower and commons. Their offices will remain in the circa-1914 signature headquarters at 720 E. Wisconsin Ave., a building that still commands the “affection and respect” of company leaders, said Northwestern Mutual spokeswoman Betsy Hoylman.
The tower and commons, Hoylman said, “was designed to be a highly collaborative work space that serves as a magnet to retain and attract top talent for a workforce that wants an innovative environment.”