“Let’s bet that 120 people can fit in the most beautiful 70 working desk office in the world?” The project Hive has started from this challenge in the offices of Intesa Sanpaolo in Milan city center. “A working platform for a new agreement between the company and the people” designed by the same workers that live the workplace day by day that, as Roberto Battaglia explained, has produced a “win-win” smart working model for all the company.

Winner of this year Copernico Smartplaces Award, Hive is a space that actively educates to new working values the people who work in it, to see restrictions as a creative opportunity and to value the intellectual capital as a real asset for the company.
Space, redesigned in a smarter and more energetic way, is one of the four dimensions of Hive that, along with technology, processes and behaviour, has activated a virtuous circle.

“Hive is born from what I call “a promising problem”, insoluble with the traditional ways of working: a new business unit of 120 people, 150 today, coming from different branches and experiences in a binding architectonical context”. This is the challenge that Roberto Battaglia, Intesa Sanpaolo HR Manager of the Corporate division & Investment Banking, has faced in the prestigious building of Piazza Della Scala.

“We have proposed to managers a radical change of the way of thinking. They have understood and they have trusted us, accepting the idea of “field invasion”: bankers as designers and architects. The creative intelligence is a fundamental asset for a company: how can we turn a banker into a creative talent? This was the provocation that guided the realization of Hive, with the enthusiasm to play with architectural restraints, a fundamental topic also in the international finance”.

Hive has been developed in a co-design process, that involved only the internal human resources of the company, using the “creativity that was already there”, using Estel furniture.
The project uses three dimensions to educate the people to a change towards the smart working: the physical dimension, with an open space with not-assigned desks with agile meeting room aside, easily bookable by a technological device, and a kitchenette with an external roof garden with a spectacular view over the city center and skyline; the organizational and technological dimension, that foster mobility and activity-based and agile ways of working; the motivation, giving to workers the responsibility of the space, making them proud of having built a model for all the company, and creating a brand and corporate identity through the use of colour and motivational messages on the walls.

“In the beginning, our colleagues have analyzed themselves, their habits and what they would need to better perform in their job. That why we haven’t had any rejection later, on the contrary the team has grown up to 150 people”, Battaglia concludes. “One year later, we can say that people are highly motivated and are proud to tell about their experience also to others: a successful example of a “win-win” kind of agreement between the company and workers”.

“We wanted to experiment smart working while making the environment more comfortable and transmitting shared values throughout the space: team working, flexibility, informal and empowerment” Luca Tedesi, Real Estate and Logistics Manager, adds. “Today we can say that in Hive we have a higher wellbeing, in a space lived collaboratively and with flexibility”.

Text by Gabriele Masi.