Saint-Gobain’s employees even got to road test office chairs: before the move, the company asked people to vote on which designs they liked best. Photograph: Jeffrey Totaro
It sounds more like a day spa than an office: a mile of walking trails, a cafeteria serving locally grown food, views of nature from almost every room in the building – including the stairwells – and a wood-paneled lobby designed to absorb excess sound.
Welcome to French manufacturing giant Saint-Gobain’s North American headquarters. Since moving into the Malvern, Pennsylvania building in October last year, Saint-Gobain has kept notes on the effect of these features on its employees, and compared it to its previous office seven miles down the road.