The Edge - Volume One

What is the greatest challenge you face as your teams work together to ensure you’re fostering spaces that enable Google to thrive? Darrell: Considering how quickly our campus is growing, ambiguity and change seem to be constant challenges for us. Having clearly spelled out roles and responsibilities to help us manage Google’s ever-changing business needs, as well as remaining focused on the employee experience, have been key to our success thus far. Brandon: Google is a very collaborative environment and all the organizations work together in some way or another. As a team, we must be able to embrace the change and high volume of moves as Product Areas shift and realign. Our Cushman & Wakefield team is constantly challenged to provide workspaces that foster collaboration at a pace and rate we rarely see in our market.

Operational efficiency is a priority for Google. Tell us more about this.

Darrell: Prior to partnering with Cushman & Wakefield, we had 115 siloed vendor partner contracts. That’s because we had never been through an outsourcing effort – we just continued to add vendors, which was ultimately very inefficient. To become much more efficient, we knew we needed to evolve and move to a pure outsourcing model that could improve quality and user experience while providing more value than we’ve ever had before. With Cushman & Wakefield focused on the service delivery and operational side, my team can now focus more on the strategy side. With this partnership in place, we are optimized for success.

Fromdayone, we tookapartnershipapproach, asking “How can we work together to create a better workplace for Google?"

- Darrell Smith, Google

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