Here’s what happens when new employees design the office

Check out Criteo’s new office which welcomed millennial ideas.

Criteo, a marketing firm which boast of more than 1,800 employees in 27 offices worldwide, has just moved its Singapore office to a new location at CapitaGreen.

The office has an open-space concept, which gives its employees room for further innovation, communication and collaboration. Contrary to other firms where newer employees have little say when it comes to decision making, newer employees of Criteo Singapore play a significant role in determining the look and feel of its new office.

According to Yuko Saito, Managing Director, Criteo Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, India and Taiwan, they have actively sought employee feedback last year on what they would like to see in the new office. A Criteo Culture Committee, which could only be joined by employees below managerial level, was also established. Younger employees, especially millennials, were encurage to join the committee and suggest new ideas to make the office a shared space for everyone to collectively enjoy.

The Criteo Culture Committe, composed by 13 members, was headed by a specialized designation called a Workplace Experience Manager. According to Saito, since its inception, Criteo has always been open to disruptive ideas that would positively transform their business model and enhance their advanced advertising solutions. A number of suggestions from the Culture Committee were incorporated. This included table tennis, football and pool tables, as well as a Zen Room, which allows its employees to enjoy a moment of rest or downtime during or after a particularly rigorous work day. As employees also frequently travel across the region for business, they wanted the office to be a comfortable place they could return to and momentarily unwind.

Saito also boasts about their Criteo Café, which hosts weekly Monday breakfasts with freshly baked croissants, chocolate pains and other snacks, helps to bring employees together so they can share how they spent their weekends or discuss plans for the upcoming work week. Nespresso, fruits and other healthy foodstuffs are also provided so their employees can eat clean.

Being the headquarters for Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, India and Taiwan, Criteo also welcomes diversity in its Singapore office. The meeting rooms are named after greetings in various languages to welcome their overseas colleagues when they visit, alongside quirky representations of regional cultural icons, such as the ‘Tuk Tuk,’ ‘Jeepney,’ ‘Singha’ and ‘Tiger’.

Criteo started operations in Singapore in October 2013, with three employees and a small service office. It then moved to One Finlayson Green and outgrew the office in less than two years. According to Saito, the new Singapore office is symbolic of how much and how quickly they have grown in Singapore and Southeast Asia in less than three years. It’s also symbolic of the start of a new chapter, as its local team of 50 employees start to establish the business in India, Indonesia, Taiwan, as well as the other countries in this region.

Saito shared that it was difficult to find an office space that was centrally located and one they could completely redesign and refurbish to meet their employees’ needs and evolving work styles. By the time they identified and secured the office space in CapitaGreen, they ended up with only a three-month period to develop and finalise the office design.

“I was really impressed by the team, who went one step further to deliver a comfortable work environment. They purchased new desk monitors, ergonomic chairs and adjustable desks for both standing and sitting. The team even ensured that our data scientists had two desk monitors, as they often simultaneously view multiple dashboards as a part of their daily work, she said