Sometimes you just need to start fresh.
So Health Alliance Plan, as the COVID-19 pandemic has caused companies across the country to rethink their workspaces, decided to do just that on one of its floors in the former United Wholesale Mortgage (then United Shore Financial Services LLC) headquarters on East Maple Road in Troy.nning to the other side of the office. There is a period of PTSD that people will have before they get comfortable again."
"We took one of the floors and we took all the cubicles out and, right now, trying to find a market for office furniture, good luck," said Mike Treash, COO for HAP, which is a subsidiary of Detroit-based Henry Ford Health System and was founded in 1956 by the United Auto Workers.
HAP joins countless other companies in embarking on new ways of reconfiguring their space as the global health crisis continues to steamroll through 2021. Some have been more dramatic than others.
"People want to have something protecting them," said Andy Gutman, president of Southfield-based brokerage firm and property manager Farbman Group. "We've done that with a lot of glass and moving partitions. ... If you walk into an office and cough, everyone is ru
Melissa Price, president of Southfield-based commercial interiors company AIREA Inc., said her firm's clients haven't undertaken vast remodeling during the pandemic but have done more thoughtful refreshing of space as many office employees continue to work from home.
"It hasn't been wholesale overhaul," she said.
As an example: "The seating arrangements are not a sofa anymore, it's multiple individual chairs with a tablet on it," Price said. "It gives the individual space and a little distance vs. sitting right next to each other."
HAP leases 105,000 square feet from its parent company in the 150,000-square-foot building still owned by the now-publicly traded mortgage giant (NYSE: UWMC) based in Pontiac.
Among the "low-tech stuff" that is being done on the floor is creating temporary movable walls using curtains so the spaces can be scaled up or down. Audio/visual technology was installed. Plexiglass barriers were installed. Desks were spaced out more.
HAP spent a couple hundred thousand dollars on the project, which was designed by Southfield-based Harley Ellis Devereaux Corp., with the full understanding that it may be a bust.
"The thing I asked was, man, we've got to make this flexible because, I don't know, it may not work," Treash said.
He noted that in the future, out of the 1,000 or so workspaces it had in the building before the pandemic started, it may only need 600-800 of those after it ends as it allows people to work from home permanently or on a part-time basis.
That, the company said, is going to be part of the human-resources equation for years to come.
"With many employees becoming increasingly comfortable working from home, and knowing that most companies have the technology in place to support a work-from-home option, it's become fairly standard for job seekers to ask whether we offer the opportunity to work remotely either full time or part time," said Derick Adams, HAP's vice president of human resources.
"We've found that this can be one of the differentiators when a job seeker is deciding on a company," he continued. "At HAP, it has also expanded our ability to hire people who may not be geographically close to our building but who are the best fit for the job. So far, it's been win-win for employer and employee."
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How HAP — and others — are rethinking workspaces amid COVID-19 pandemic - Crain's Detroit Business
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