“What’s the vision?” That is the question my CEO asked when our move team shared the initial floor plans for our new corporate office space. Sure, we’d visited tech giants around the globe and had seen trendy offices with hot desks, graphics, beanbag chairs, and nooks for employees to work. And our architects had wowed us with photos of amazing spaces. We even scoured Pinterest for the latest trends. They all gave us that wow factor but what it came down to for me was one question: What was going to make this space unique to Globoforce, enveloping you in the essence of our brand the minute you crossed the threshold? The answer was at the core of who we are.

Let's take a step back for a minute. Globoforce is a social recognition company focused on the working human. It’s our mantra, our call-to-action—it’s even our tagline. Our internal recognition program is aptly called Globostars, which is about living our corporate values and changing the way humans work. It’s fundamental to our culture and who we strive to be every day.

The opportunity we had before us was to bring our unified global brand to life in our Dublin and Boston offices. Two new state-of-the-art headquarters that would leverage design, innovation, and well-being as a competitive advantage—enabling us to work cross-functionally by embedding creativity and humanity into the environment. The solution? To design a human-centric space that inspires people every day with our Globostar as the core, using rays from our logo as visual cues on the floor, up the walls, and even on the ceiling.

With large multi-purpose areas, digital walls, an open floor plan and quiet areas, we created flow from space to space. We maximized our sight lines, bringing the outside in. Using floor-to-ceiling glass and minimal walls so we could all see our teams, we kept our Globostar as visible as possible.

We have wellness rooms in each location with amenities for new mothers, yoga, and meditation. Scrum rooms abound with idea paint on walls throughout. There’s a huge training room and a soundproof studio to produce our digital content. Comfy modular seats in our relaxation and collaboration areas, and phone booths for human time to make calls.

In the center is our GloboCafé, a large open area for informal gatherings, company meetings, and break time. The space even features breakfast and healthy snacks, coffee bars, and a 'grassy' area with Adirondack chairs for a picnic lunch. And, of course, our new office wouldn’t be complete without game space: a custom pool table, foosball, shuffleboard, and bubble hockey. Play human!

Encouraging movement from floor to floor, our stairwells are filled with inspirational messaging, reminding us we are all living humans. We developed a company timeline that highlights our goal of 20 million recognition moments globally. And as a global company, our 19 conference rooms (called Innovation Alley) are named after worldwide epicenters—with floor-to-ceiling graphics of each region, teleconferencing, and a variety of stand-up and sit-down options. Our Boston headquarters has a Dublin room and our Dublin headquarters has a Boston room.

It took a large team to make our two new corporate facilities come to life, with a central vision as our guiding light. Both headquarters complement each other because the design was driven and created by our in-house team. We care so deeply about our culture and our brand, which has been the key to our success.