Swiss Re, the world’s second-largest reinsurer, is soon going to move thousands of employees back to the city of Zurich, where it is building a campus with state-of-the-art offices.
The workplaces of Swiss Re will be for the privileged: the campus, which will house as many as 3,400 members of Swiss Re’s global workforce of 14,000, borders the lake of Zurich. Staff will be moved to Zurich from their current offices in Adliswil in stages.
«The building is a confirmation of our belief in the future of the company,» Thomas Wellauer told «Neue Zuercher Zeitung». Swiss Re’s chief operating officer has plenty of experience in building a campus, having been head of corporate affairs at Novartis, which constructed a similar infrastructure for its staff in Basel.
Attractive Employer
Moving staff from the periphery back to Zurich with its expensive real estate may be counterintuitive. However, Wellauer believes it will give the company the edge when trying to attract specialists from across the globe to work for Swiss Re.
And the insurer will also save money by reducing the amount of space per employee. In the new campus building, staff won’t have a permanent workplace.
Staff will have to look for a desk each morning, taking their laptop along. Zurich Insurance Group and UBS have already introduced similar systems, whereby staff have to forego their desk, PC and fixed-line telephone.
Some companies insist that this will be the workplace of the future, the thin desk where the company retains fewer workplaces than it has employees.
Lowering Costs
Wellauer for instance expects to have 0.8 workplaces per member of staff, reducing the infrastructure costs significantly for the company. Swiss Re already introduced the system in some of its offices abroad and says that staff are happy enough with the new-found flexibility.
The company will also have territorial segmentation, whereby desks and meetings rooms are dedicated to groups of 30 to 40 members of staff each, making the search for a desk less challenging.
Communication Tools
The new workplace will be fitted with the state-of-the-art communication technology, allowing employees to communicate with each other wherever they might be. The company has developed a specific app that allows staff to book meetings rooms – and which will of course also increase the visibility of employees and their working habits.
After all, the app will allow the company to access each member of staff via their mobile phone, helping others to get in touch. Naturally, systems such as the Swiss Re application also makes workers more accountable.
