Allscripts’ new Australian home, a workplace for innovation

Making innovation a top priority with Schiavello

At a little over 1000sqm, the new Allscripts HQ, which was designed by JPE Design Studio, sits at the ground floor with street exposure on a prime CBD corner. While the area closest to the exposed corner caters to some open plan desking, it also houses Allscripts’ ‘experience centre’. This space sits within an auditorium and includes a simulated health centre environment and doctors’ office. “We recently hosted key healthcare industry decision makers from across Australia and used this space to full effect,” explains Roberts. “With the experience centre, we were able to demonstrate our solutions as they would be experienced in a real hospital environment. It shows how Allscripts’ technology connects healthcare communities.”

This side of the floorplate is also where Allscripts’ ‘innovation hub’ sits. Comprised of an open plan kitchen showered with an abundance of natural light and partially bordered by Schiavello’s Vertical Garden walls, this space is designed for calm downtime and unpressured thinking away from the desk.

Exposure to greenery has been proven to enhance workspaces in a number of ways – supporting concentration, helping maintain a healthy mindset, as well as reducing workplace illness, sick-leave absences, stress and negativity. “Having the greenery in the office really does add another dimension and gives a more natural feel,” says Rohan Ward, Allscripts’ General Manager ASEAN. Custom square Toro Stools line the kitchen’s island bench, providing staff with a place to sit and have a coffee break or lunch together. The kitchen area is also open to guests, so this whole space also serves as a zone for staff to organically meet and work alongside clients or collaborators and to build relationships, or to invite them to see the experience centre.

Adjacent to the kitchen are a number of comfortable breakout spaces. Krossi and Goodwood Tables complement Maui Chairs made of solid Oak. Maui’s generous and curved seat embraces the user, encouraging them to sit back and take a break with a colleague or client. Providing relaxed breakout areas such as these – areas that are physically and emotionally removed from the desk – encourages staff to think and collaborate in new and different ways.

Further to the breakout spaces sit a handful of Schiavello’s Climate desks – a malleable system that enables teams and individuals to personalise and shape their work environment to suit specific needs, and re-mould it when those needs change. The desks, which are on lockable castors, can be moved together to form a team table for larger meetings or if a number of people are engaging in solo work, the desks can easily be shifted apart. This allowance for staff to maintain full control of an adaptable work environment caters not only to the flexibility of the modern workplace, but also to Allscripts’ changing staff needs, as the company experiences an ever-fluctuating number of people in the office.

Climate workstations also feature throughout the main workspace area. “We’re an organisation that requires a collaborative team environment, so we created a space where we can accommodate the full headcount of the company and provide private working space but also encourage collaboration,” explains Roberts. “Hot desking and the use of Climate give us the ability to have a mobile workforce, because we have people who don’t spend 100% of the time at the office, but they can still come in and have a desk. We can now easily accommodate staff who are in and out, and we have heaps of room for expansion.”

Focus booths: providing balance in open plan

With the office catered to ballooning staff, visiting clients and collaborators in an open plan and highly communicative environment, JPE Design Studio saw importance in ensuring there was balance – also providing quiet spaces for staff to concentrate on solo work. Schiavello’s Focus provides staff with semiprivate desks accompanied by barriers that buffer distracting sounds and visual elements that occur within the bustling open plan environment.

“The space needed to be flexible and engaging, but also a balance of open, closed, and semi-closed spaces, and with a diversity of workplace tools,” explains Simon Dodd, Principal at JPE.

“Giving staff an opportunity to undertake a multitude of tasks in a variety of settings was important. So the result is a real variety of agile and open plan, using the Climate system all the way through to one-on-one, closed phone rooms, to larger meeting spaces, and semi-enclosed Focus Booths.”

“Schiavello is fairly well known in Adelaide as being a quality company, and during the pitch process, we had engaged with one or two other companies but what struck us was that Schiavello met the design brief very early on. And then when we started looking at the breadth of services that Schiavello could offer, it was a pretty easy decision to make,” says Roberts. “In the end, now, what I’m looking at is exactly what the render looked like, including the furniture.”

Now that the staff have moved into the new space, the general feeling is overwhelmingly positive, not only from the staff, but also from partners and contractors. And the fitout has encouraged collaboration, as intended. “Staff no longer eat lunch at their desks, but instead choose to eat in the breakout area,” Ward explains. Meanwhile, people also gather around the lounge environment, and lock themselves away in the Focus Booths to concentrate, embracing the balance of space.

“Everyone is very complimentary and positive,” says Dodd. “Staff enjoy how spacious and bright the space is and how it encourages collaboration.”