James
Kearns

My title is Senior Workplace Specialist, North America, but the reality is the job ranges top to bottom. I negotiate leases globally, support office moves and renewals, track utilization data, oversee access control systems, and work directly with local teams on their needs. We’re a team of eight globally supporting nearly 50 offices, so the role can mean negotiating a million-dollar lease one day and buying a fridge the next. It’s operational, strategic, and constantly evolving.

Honestly, it was largely accidental. I graduated from university in 2008 during the recession with an English degree. My choices seemed to be bars, restaurants, or manual labor. I worked on a loading dock for a while, which is humbling after finishing a degree. I joined Meltwater in 2018. Meltwater started as a small company in 2003 and has grown to about 46 or 47 offices worldwide. When I came in seven years ago, there were no existing systems for workplace operations.

For a long time, we didn’t have anybody overseeing our offices at all. The workplace team only came into existence three years ago. Now my role is to remotely manage the North American offices and support those offices as needed.

The pandemic changed things dramatically. When I started in 2018, everybody was in the office five days a week. You would have 80 people on a sales floor in an open-concept office, taking calls with Sonos music blaring. The culture was so loud, like a Wall Street floor or a call center. When we came back from COVID, it was all about privacy. That was the biggest shift. Suddenly, nobody could take a call with another person on a call beside them. The demand for phone rooms and phone booths, either built-in or portable ones like Pillar Booth, became the biggest request. We've noticed a demand for office spaces that can adapt to something even more complex: fluctuating attendance. Our sales team, for example, has an in-office and highly collaborative team culture; they may be in three days a week, other teams less.

In one office, we need a space that works for 80 people, yet maybe only 35 show up on a given day. We don't want to pay for a half-empty office, and we also don't want the aesthetic or energy of a half-empty office. Yet, we do want some overflow. Designing for that variability is one of the hardest problems in workplace strategy today.

Basing decisions on perception instead of data. We used to rely heavily on projected headcounts or what team leaders believed usage was. Oftentimes, through no fault of their own, team leaders were inflating their usage numbers and believed they needed larger spaces. When we started tracking real numbers, the usage data rarely matched.

In Toronto, for example, we opened with 88 desks based on projections. We've since reduced to 66, and even now, daily usage is often half that. One of the reasons we implemented a tracking system is that we were trying to find any way to get really clear, accurate usage numbers. Getting accurate utilization data, not wishful numbers, has been the single most important lesson. Office strategy should be grounded in reality, not optimism.

It's a tough balance because you've seen enough patterns of teams asking for one thing when you know, at the end of the day, something else is probably a higher priority. I don't want to go into the Miami or Chicago office spaces that I don't work out of and tell them how to work and what matters to them. It's this balance of giving them autonomy while also conveying my experience to get a middle ground where they feel like this is our space, we got the things we want, and we’re being listened to. The balance is listening carefully, gathering real usage data, and then helping teams prioritize. If you ask for ten things, maybe you get five. But you need clarity around what matters most.

I'm in the process of refreshing the Toronto office, which includes getting a pool table, opening a big lounge area with couches and new chairs, getting branding and artwork on the walls, and new signage. Just a cultural revamp. We have a really good internal branding team, and I've been working closely with them to find a way to balance showcasing the personality of each office while maintaining consistency in what each office offers. Every office should have cool games, cool lounge areas, cool branding, and a similar collective feeling, while also maintaining its own personality.

Talk to and get feedback from as many people in the office you're trying to help. Do your own independent research to make sure you understand the difference between perception and reality.