How Interior Design Choices are Bringing Employees Back to the Office
Accounting firm’s renovation increases occupant satisfaction, productivity and office traffic
About 22.5 million Americans worked primarily from home in 2023, representing 13.8 percent of the workforce, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. That is triple the number of remote workers compared to a decade ago, yet many employers still hope to attract workers back to the office with rows of cubicles in windowless buildings.
The CPA firm Smith + Howard, however, is not one of them. Recognizing a shift across its own employees and clients, the accounting firm recently renovated its Atlanta headquarters with the goal of aligning the company’s culture and values with employee feedback and modern workforce demands.
“If companies want to draw their employees in, you’re going to have to do a little bit more than just give them a chair, a desk and a laptop, and say, ‘Here's where the water fountain is,’” says Sean Taylor, CEO of Smith + Howard.
The challenge for Howard + Smith was achieving that mentality while maintaining the spatial footprint of their previous office within the same building but six floors higher. This meant rethinking workplace strategy and how the firm used its space.
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