Warsaw Trade Tower adds dining space to promote employee cohesion (PL)

Warsaw Trade Tower (WTT) has gained a new facility: common dining space. It is a joined initiative of Akron Investment Eastern Central Europe II's, which is the owner of the building, and Heitman's, its asset manager. The initiative is a direct result of a survey conducted among the employees in the building. According to the result, 54% of the 1300 people surveyed admitted bringing food from home and dining most often at their desk. The common dining space is used by several hundred people every week. Tenants of the skyscraper include AXA, the insurance company. 

The dining space is located on the ground floor in the direct vicinity of the newly-redecorated lobby and has been of help mainly to the employees who prefer their own cooking. The area covers 170m² and has been divided into working and dining space. Minimalistic in design but functional working stations have been equipped with comfortable table tops, cupboards, sinks and microwave ovens. Light and colour dominate in the dining section. The workers can have their meals either at bar tables placed along a glazed wall with a view to Chłodna Street or at dinner tables. The space have been additionally equipped with TV screens.

The common dining space in WTT is an idea of the team responsible for rebranding and modernisation of the whole building as well as a proof of how much care the owner of the building takes of the tenants. It has been created as a result of the survey conducted among employees in the building and the answers they provided. The survey asked about how often and where employees have their meals and where the food comes from. It appears that 54% of the people surveyed bring their own food to work and almost 35% of the respondents do it at least three times a week. The questions were answered by almost 1300 workers employed in the office building at Chłodna Street. The newly-created dining space has been very popular among the employees. It is used by several hundred people a week. As a result of the initiative, the workers are given an opportunity to rest in a place other than their own office as well as spend time with their co-workers. Dining together has a significant social function: it allows people to build and maintain relations and creates the feeling of belonging and acceptance.

"The aesthetically and functionally designed dining space is one of the most commonly visited places in our office building. I guess that a few hundred people use it every week. I'd risk saying that the space is our little agora: a place where you can not only have a meal but also make new friends or just relax," says Maria Bubak, a client service manager of the WTT building.

Dining together has always had an important social function: integration. Breakfasts with friends, Sunday lunches with a family and company dinners have a common social aim: support the creation of a sense of belonging by sharing the table and the dishes served. Mechanisms observed by anthropologists analysing so-called primitive cultures can be applied also to groups such as people working in the same place, where the natural need for integration materialises at the table. Striving, even subconsciously, to be a part of a bigger whole is one of the elements that form our human need to dine together with others.

In the years 2015-2016, Warsaw Trade Tower has been modernised by a team of architects, real estate commercialisation advisors and branding specialists taking into consideration the needs of its tenants. As a result of the changes, the building has gained a range of facilities that set the standards for modern office buildings concerning, among others, common areas and the surroundings. The owner of WTT's is Akron Investment Eastern Central Europe II and the Heitman company functions as its asset manager.