The Hindu Business Line : Thank God it's Monday

As you walk in, past the signage — a gigantic string of green chillies and lime — a liftman greets you. You sink into the low, yellow couch and look around you. Walls and pillars are painted in eclectic colours and Bollywood actors jostle with rock stars to smile at you. No, this is not the latest lounge club to open in the city; this is the office of MTV.

Unusual office spaces, colours and décor are, however, not just relegated to entities like MTV. With rigid organisation structures coming down and the average age of the workforce decreasing, most corporates are eager to bring down dreary cubicles and splash some colour over the corporate whites.

Cadbury's headquarters in Mumbai, a landmark at Mahalakshmi, looks from outside exactly how it always did. Inside, the dark corridors have given way to a completely open office plan. An atrium in the centre of the office not just makes the place look roomy and open, but its skylight bathes the space in warm sunshine, and when reflected off the yellow and peach walls, the effect is one of being on a picnic in an Enid Blyton story.

"Cadbury's vision is `a life full of Cadbury and a Cadbury full of life'. It is essential that people who make a Cadbury full of life should have a lot of fun doing it. Our office layout and décor reiterate this mantra," says Radhakrishnan B. Menon, Director — Human Resources, Cadbury India.

Most new-age offices have done away with imposing walls and corridors and ushered in the era of open offices. Human resources managers observe that open offices facilitate better interaction among employees, intrinsically build teams and are more inclusive than exclusive.

At MTV's 15,000 sq ft office, there are only six cabins. Other than the recording studios all space is open, with dark wood and silver borders. Employees are scattered about, some on the telephone, some chatting over coffee — with an eye on the dozen or so television sets placed all around the office — while some others wait their turn at table tennis. It is hard to imagine that it is the middle of a workday. But MTV officials confirm that this office has stepped up productivity, more so in the creative department.

"Time, cost and creativity have improved with the new office plan," says an MTV official. "The open offices have not only increased interaction and involvement, they have also made employees more transparent. Even meetings are held in the open. People who were earlier deemed `serious' have loosened up and are far more approachable," says Menon of Cadbury.

New-age offices are also cocking a snook at the principle that offices have to be stately, with high walls, heavy oak furniture, silent corridors and gold engraving. Today, irreverence has replaced intimidation. Huge, abstract art canvasses mounted on engraved frames have been left behind. Instead, cartoons, advertisement posters and colouring-book style images adorn the walls.

The Cadbury office has a designated `Masti Room'. Painted in rich, lively colours with murals of everybody's favourite cartoons, the room exudes youth and energy. Inflated plastic chairs and stuffed toys are strewn around. "We bring in groups of people, mostly children, and allow them to use the room as they please. This room is also used as an observation point to watch how potential consumers interact with our brands," explains Menon. The décor certainly serves the purpose... non-intimidating and engaging.

The new MTV office is as serious as its star veejay Cyrus Broacha can ever be. Instead of trite `No Smoking' stickers, MTV studios instruct, No Beedi, No Khaana, No Peena, Only Gaana. Towards the centre of the office is a sculpture that looks like a pillar pink arms. The office doubles up as a party venue after office hours, sometimes even as a venue for live concerts.

Unusual offices were the staple of the dotcom boom. "Even though most offices edited out the bizarre interior highlights of the dotcom companies after their meltdown, what has remained is the firm sense that fun needs to be communicated to employees through the interiors. It need not be over-the-top, but it needs to be there," says B. Mukherjee, a Mumbai-based architect. Some BPO companies have tried to retain a bit of the dotcom zing in their interiors, he says. However, this is often restricted to small sections of the office, owing to acoustic and other requirements of the BPO work environment. "This is especially acute in companies that do voice-based work. We try to create relax in these companies. It could be a beach-like corner with sand, palm trees and hammocks, gaming zones with arcade game consoles, etc," Mukherjee explains.

One of the staples of most new offices is a gymnasium. The Cadbury office has a fully equipped gym, complete with an instructor. The gyms remain open round the clock and employees can step in for a workout at a convenient time. Once the calories have been shed, they can stop by at the spacious cafeteria and grab a bite before heading back to the workplace.

Unusual looking offices usually go easy on office rules. Dress codes are inclusive and timings are flexible. "Other than the business team that works according to the schedules of media agencies etc, the rest of the team works according to their own schedules. We do not have specific time-in and time-out rules," says the MTV official.

BPO companies buck the flexible timing trend as they are forced to stick to timings dictated by clients. Quantitative and measurable productivity improvements, if any, from working in an informal office environment can, at best, be guesstimated. But, the HR managers of these companies insist that though it is not quantifiable, there is a visible change in the employees' outlook towards work and the workplace. Cadbury insists that its employees' refrain is `Thank God it's Monday.'

Picture by Shashi Ashiwal/Location courtesy: MTV, Mumbai.

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