Office Hack #10 — Grip Ltd’s Big Orange Slide
Envoy is all about making things easier and more fun in the office. In that spirit, we are proud to bring you our new Envoy Office Hacks podcast series. Every week, we deliver the coolest, most ingenious, and just plain fun fixes people have invented to improve efficiency and productivity in their workplace.
Today’s Office Hack is about putting the “play” in “workplay-ce”.
This is Grip Limited’s Big Orange Slide.
Listen to this story on our Office Hacks podcast.
Grip Limited is an advertising agency that works with some of the world’s biggest brands, like Honda, Acura, Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut, and Expedia. In the middle of their 3-story office in downtown Toronto, they’ve installed a big bright piece of playground equipment.
The idea came from architect Johnson Chou, who proposed the idea to Grip Limited partner Rich Pryce-Jones almost a decade ago. Though the slide was originally intended as a practical way to get from one floor to another, it’s since become a symbol for the company’s culture.
“The elevator door opens, and people know that they’re not in a traditional place,” Rich explains. “It creates intrigue. It shows a sense of fun. It shows that we’re not an accounting firm or a law firm or a traditional firm.”
It’s not just employees who love the slide.
“We’ve had random people from the street coming here asking if they can take the slide, because they’ve heard of it,” says office manager Irene Karabassis. “And, of course, I say yes.”
How to hack it
Grip Limited worked with architect Johnson Chou to make their playground slide, with an original cost around $9,000. A few years after it was installed, they clad the sides with metal, bringing the total cost closer to $15,000.
If your needs are less particular, there are plenty of plastic slides available on Amazon, ranging in cost from a few hundred to several thousand dollars.
Listen & Subscribe
You can listen to the full story in the Envoy Office Hacks podcast:
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More Office Hacks
If you enjoyed this hack be sure to check out other Envoy Office Hacks, including:
A mobile meeting space in a rolling room from white-hot software start-up, Slack:
And one office’s creative solution to boring office walls — the Wall of Lego:
And a social psychology experiment in healthy eating from Social Print Studio:
Or how about a robotic sales gong to crank up team spirit in the office:
And then there’s Hootsuite’s office hack: an open office turned ski village.
Never underestimate the power of taxidermy on company culture…
Pub Nub hacks its way from annoying coffee woes… to website.
Mozilla takes something old and makes it new again.
Or how about the best home-away-from-home, home-office hack ever…
Got an Office Hack you’d like to share? Do you know a stroke of genius that has made an office more productive or fun? You could be featured in a future Envoy Office Hack — let us know about it at officehacks@envoy.com.
