Office Hack #5 — The Hootsuite Ski Village
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.
Where we’re from can have a lot of influence on who we are and how we operate. Companies are no different. Today’s Envoy office hack is all about anchoring company culture to a company’s roots.
In the case of Hootsuite, it turned an open-concept workspace into a familiar vacation retreat: a ski village.
Listen to this story on our Office Hacks podcast.
Despite global success, rapid internal growth and overtures to move its home base elsewhere, Hootsuite, the social media management company based in British Columbia, Canada, is staying true to its place of origin. So true, in fact, the company’s founder and CEO, Ryan Holmes, hacked its offices to model the Canadian West Coast where he grew up.
“(Each of the cabins) have ski hill names so Blackcomb, Silver Star, which is my hometown hill, Whistler… They are all named after various (local)ski hills and inside have nice wood tables we had built out.”
Ryan Holmes, Hootsuite
One stroll through and you will see a cluster of log cabins, antique alpine skis and snowshoes, rocks and wooden stumps for furniture — even a moose head mounted over a hearth.
The decor in this sunken lounge is reminiscent of a ski lodge from another era.
Forget the grey, corporate cubicles ubiquitous in many large businesses. Holmes wanted the Hootsuite space to be more than just an office.
“I wanted to build something that is a reflection of our values and our culture and our creativity that we approach our work with and the value of fun in the workplace.”
Ryan Holmes, Hootsuite
A sense of humor helps too.
How to hack it
If you’d like to hack a ski village into your workspace, because who wouldn’t, here are a few reasonably priced items to get you started.
Ingredients
- Fake Snow ($6)
- Artificial Pine Tree ($16)
- Bean bag chairs ($48)
- Moosehead ($90)
- Wood stumps ($140)
And if you’re really feeling ambitious…
Listen & Subscribe
You can listen to the full Hootsuite Ski Village Office Hack podcast here:
Please subscribe to the podcast in iTunes — just click here and hit ‘subscribe’:
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:
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.
