Zurich

The project represents a fully integrated AV solution that embraces every area of the stylish new office, meeting the needs of Zurich’s growing workforce by providing flexible meeting spaces, relaxation areas, training facilities, digital signage, and video streaming services.

The Challenge

Zurich Insurance Group is one of the world’s largest insurance companies and one of the few to operate on a truly global basis. Their mission is to educate and protect their customers from risk. With approximately 55,000 employees serving customers in more than 170 countries, they aspire to become the best global insurer, measured by their shareholders, customers and employees.

To meet the needs of a growing workforce, Zurich relocated its Glasgow office to a new premises located on the 7th floor of the St Vincent Plaza in Glasgow City Centre. Zurich wanted to create a working environment that had client experience at the heart, creating an environment that vastly improved well being for employees and allowed for seamless collaboration. As a trusted partner, Kinly was appointed to design and deliver an integrated audio-visual solution to complement the new office refurbishment and bring about a seamless user experience.

The Solution

Having previously worked with the team at Zurich, Kinly had a good understanding that the technology had to simplify and provide a better user experience, for both employees and clients, including those with special requirements. We worked with Zurich's project team to come up with a solution that linked the Glasgow office seamlessly with other office locations, implementing technologies that were easy to use, enabling employees to feel confident when using them. Having previous experience designing and implementing similar environments, Kinly was able to provide a solution that met the clients’ needs, budget and timeline requirements.

With diversity and inclusion being one of Zurich’s main workplace initiatives, it was important that when visitors arrived at the reception, they felt welcome, regardless of their needs. A compact induction loop system is implemented into the area so that visitors with hearing difficulties can hear the receptionist as well as the content being displayed on a 70” NEC.

At the heart of the building is a space that employees can use for recreational activities as well as fun and collaborative meetings. The space, now known as the Games Room, boasts a 70" NEC display that is used to share ideas when teams want to collaborate, stream IPTV, free to air HD terrestrial television, or connect to a games console for a bit of downtime. A Creston wall mounted 8 button keypad control is how employees can simply choose to stream Onelan IPTV, share content wirelessly or connect to the games console.

Throughout the office are various sized meeting spaces that employees and clients can use to collaborate or present. Keeping the users’ needs at the centre of the design, Kinly integrated Crestron's all-in-one conferencing system, Mercury. With its USB, HDMI or Airmedia connectivity, users can quickly call, present and collaborate via common UC applications (running on a host laptop) like Zoom Rooms, Blue Jeans and Skype for Business, ensuring the experience is as seamless and easy to use as possible.

So that all employees have the opportunity to realise their full potential, the new office included a large training room to help support Zurich’s training and development programmes. An 84" touch display with wireless connectivity was implemented into the environment, which means employees can easily connect to the screen from their laptops or desktops during seminars.

One of the key priorities for the new office was to create a large divisible boardroom that could be used for important executive meetings or large group meetings. The environment is made up of two separate rooms that are designed to operate as a 28 seater boardroom when the partition is open. Apart from the primary room having the ability to perform standards-based video conferencing and distribute audio via ceiling speakers into the secondary space, the rooms have the same functionality. Each room is controlled via Crestron touch panels which reside on the table in each room, but when the partition is open, a third wall mounted touch panel becomes the primary means for room control.

Additionally, several wall mounted displays showing digital signage and IPTV are implemented throughout the office. Employees are kept up to date with the latest internal communications and traffic updates.