The visit to Steelcase was unlike any company visit that I had experienced so far. Steelcase is a office furniture company, but they try to avoid selling traditional cubicle farms to their customers. Instead, Steelcase seeks to create more engaged and productive workers within the client’s company. When a client visits the learning center in Munich, the salesman walks them through who Steelcase is and gives them some history. Next the salesman has the client identify the main business characteristics they want to improve using some magnetic flash cards. Finally, each person in the clients party is given the chance to rate certain aspects of their company. From these two exercises, Steelcase forces the client and each individual person in the client’s party to think about what they need. Steelcase can them use that data to make suggestions on furniture.
The Steelcase learning center was not hypocritical of what they preached. All of the workstations were either in the open, or in glass rooms. This was to promote communication between employees. Even the stairwell was supposedly designed to encourage interaction and a family atmosphere within the company. One of the most interesting points that I learned was that even the leadership does not have their own offices. While they are technically higher in rank, even they had to use the common areas, to make them on par with others.