The New Office Experience
Shared Workspaces in the Gables are for Entrepreneurs and Maverick Companies, Right? So Why is Millicom Filling Three Floors at WeWork?
By Mike Clary
Spring 2020
Millicom International Services is a growing multinational corporation, a leading provider of cable and mobile services in Latin America and Africa with 22,000 employees, 30,000 contractors and reported revenues last year of more than $4 billion.
But the look of its global operational headquarters, located in downtown Coral Gables, is far from a buttoned-downed corporate culture marked by business suits and cubicle farms. Instead, their workplace looks more like a glass maze combined with a multi-storied coffee shop, where colleagues with a laptop in one hand and a cappuccino in the other might gather at a wooden conference table or settle into a cozy communal living room to discuss the day’s agenda.
Millicom’s 220 Gables employees do not, in fact, work in a company-owned headquarters, or even in a conventional leased space. Instead they occupy three and a half floors of shared, modular office space in WeWork’s new site at 255 Giralda Avenue.
“The WeWork style matches the office culture we want to foster,” says Susy Bobenrieth, Millicom’s executive VP and chief human resources officer, explaining the company’s decision to abandon the traditional office space on Alhambra Circle the firm had outgrown. Flexible, shared areas in the workplace promote interactions and combat isolation, she says. “We are about team,” she says.
The other advantage is flexibility for change. While the square footage in shared office space costs substantially more per square foot, leases for traditional office spaces are typically much longer, not allowing tenants to grow or shrink as needed. And shared office spaces also offer the kind of hip, communal areas that Google is so famous for.
Founded in 1990 by a Swedish entrepreneur, Millicom operates in nine countries in Latin America and one in Tanzania, Africa. The company maintains a corporate headquarters in Luxembourg, but relocated its operational headquarters to Coral Gables from Fort Lauderdale in 2012. “Coral Gables is central,” Bobenrieth says. “We are close to the airport, we can walk to restaurants.” Now, with the move to WeWork, “We created showers here so people could take advantage of gyms in the area, or ride bicycles to work,” she says. Some employees even show up hours before the workday for 6:30 a.m. runs around the Granada Golf Course.
The relaxed ambiance of the new Millicom workplace is easy to see. On sunny days, employees gather for lunch at rooftop tables. There is a pool table nearby. Pets are welcome. The coffee and tea are free. Yoga classes and a quiet room for meditation or for nursing mothers are available. Perhaps unsurprisingly in an interactive workplace studded with Millennials, several employees have come together to form a band, with a dedicated rehearsal space on the ninth floor.
“I love the office experience we have here,” says sustainability reporting specialist Marina Williams, also a singer with the band. “To top it off, in the new facilities we can rehearse with the company band… Every time we squeeze in a jam session, we feel energized and it boosts our sense of community.”
