The pandemic offered an opportunity for KLA to rethink their work environment to enhance their own product development process. Rather than consider their entire Milpitas Campus at once, they elected to experiment with a new approach to work and pilot two novel spaces. Starting with KLA’s stated goal to “update and modernize” their workplace, NBBJ’s team hosted engagements with people from several KLA teams located around the globe to develop an understanding of their teams, their work, their space needs, and what modernization means to them. The resulting strategic brief captures the findings from our research and establishes a new workplace strategy – “Team First” – emphasizing spaces and experiences for face-to-face interactions.

Innovation

What is a work point? It’s an unassigned, shared seat ready for work. It may be found in a project room, a café, or at a more traditional workstation. It provides ultimate choice to support the work at hand. Providing more work points than people means there are fewer hassles and stressors.

Through surveys and workshops, we found that the primary reason that people wanted to be in the office is for face-to-face problem-solving. With that in mind, we created the Team Base — a team-oriented shared space built to accommodate a group of people working together. Team Base is the first place people come to at the beginning of their day to drop their things, meet their team, and plan their day.

Impact

By embracing post-pandemic flexibility, KLA can carve out spaces that entice teams to come together to collaborate and innovate, while optimizing their real estate.