Check out Roche Diagnostics ‘ergonomically-designed’ new HQ in Singapore

Each workstation is complete with an ergonomic chair and height adjustable desk.

Covering around 61,000sq ft across levels 10 & 11, and a half of level 9 in the new Aperia Building at Kallang, Roche Diagnostics opens its new Asia Pacific headquarters designed with openness, collaboration and efficiency as the main concepts.

The new Roche Diagnostics also houses the company’s Asia Pacific Centre of Excellence (CoE) – a new state-of-the-art training and technical support facility.

According to Lance Little, managing director of Roche Diagnostics Asia Pacific, when they designed the new office, they made sure that employees were at the heart of every decisions they made. As one good example, they made sure that each workstation is ergonomically designed, complete with an ergonomic chair as well as a height adjustable desk which allows employees to either sit or stand while working at their desk.

Coming from an office with multiple individual offices, the company laid out the new space with an open plan design to encourage more interactive communication between employees. Lance believes that an open plan environment not only helps foster a good working relationship between teams, but it also allows people to collaborate more across departments.

“Each workstation is designed to encourage collaboration as well as to provide privacy. For example, a typical workstation has a multi-functional bench that not only serves as a cabinet to store items, but also as a seat to aid desk discussions. It is sided by dividers with evergreen plants. Not only do the plants add to the aesthetics of the office, they also serve as natural sound barriers enhancing the employee’s privacy,” explained Lance.

The new Roche Diagnostics office features different chill-out and collaboration areas for brainstorming or team bonding sessions. As team areas are important to the company, they also built larger pantry areas on each floor with multiple seating options (e.g. bench tables and booths). They also included digital signage across the three pantries so that they could promote internal events.

Additionally, the office installed collapsible office walls to turn them into bigger spaces for events such as Lunch and Learn sessions which focus on health and other work-related topics.

Lance shared that prior to moving into the new office, the company engaged volunteer food bloggers amongst the employees to try out and provide reviews on the different food options in the area. As a healthcare company, they believe in healthy lifestyles and that played a part in the selection of location.

Making the Center of Excellence possible

When SBR asked Lance what are the challenges they faced to make the new office possible, he said that it was marrying the technical needs of the CoE within the office space.

He explained that they wanted to create an environment that would allow their employees to conduct meetings and discussions in an open and collaborative space, yet they needed their CoE to have a clinical environment mimicking a laboratory.

“Because of the presence of our actual machines in the office, we had to make sure the noise wouldn’t disturb our employee. We positioned the CoE in an area where it would have the least impact on the daily office activities – i.e. away from the open plan areas and from team collaboration spaces. We also needed to ensure that the rooms were sound-proofed so as not to disturb our employees,” Lance added.

Another challenge was to factor in the growth of our company in Singapore. Roche Diagnostics currently has around 230 employees from different departments, and they are constantly increasing in size as their company grows each year. Roche Diagnostics factored in the plan to increase the number of employees in the next 5 years, as part of the company’s expansion strategy to meet demands of future growth.

Lance notes that while they are proud to be the recipient of Aon Hewitt’s Regional Best Employer Asia for 2015, they continue to strive not to be complacent, and to make sure they take care of the well-being of the employees at Roche Diagnostics on an ongoing basis. 

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