Hack #47 — Hubspot’s Seat Shuffle and FaceWall
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Hubspot’s Cambridge campus is the hub of the tech scene in Boston.
The light and airy design affords its 1100 employees ample room to maneuver.
And there’s lots of comfortable spaces to interact with colleagues.
Still, with that many people working spread across 300,000 square feet, the challenge is keeping things intimate. Making sure everyone gets to know each other. Hence, every three months: Hubspot’s Seat Shuffle.
Anthony Roldan: “…we all pick up our desks, pick up all the stuff on our desks, not the physical desks themselves, and move all of our stuff and our teams to a different part of the office so people end up switching where they were.”
Listen to this story on our Office Hacks podcast:
Anthony Roldan: “…teams will be sitting near totally different people so the idea is to increase the serendipitous interactions you have. When you get up for lunch you’re going out with a different set of people. When you have casual conversation at the office at your desk, different people overhear. You get into different conversations you meet new people.”
And, if in the shuffle, you lose touch of someone, just consult the company’s HubSpace app.
Another way Hubspot introduces employees to each other is with its FaceWall.
It is a constantly revolving video wall of employee photos.
How to hack it
Seat Shuffle: Every three months, HR reassigns employee seating. People stay within their immediate teams but their new seat assignments put them near teams they did not previously neighbor. The Engineering department, however, tends to stay closer to each other in order to better tackle technical issues en masse. As well, not everyone moves at the same time, so the Seat Shuffle process is staggered.
HubSpace: HubSpace is an employee locator app. Floor plans, and employee image and info, are entered into the app that employs a simple search bar function.
FaceWall: This was created by a Hubspot developer over the course of one weekend. Employees can submit their own images so there are some really fun photos. They are entered into a tiled background of thumbnail images. Every few seconds, one of the photos enlarges over the tiled background.
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More Office Hacks
If you enjoyed this hack be sure to check out other Envoy Office Hacks, including: Zendesk’s productivity serving vending machine.
