Blue Light Card (BLC) does something good: it provides workers in the emergency, healthcare, and support services with discounts at a huge range of well-known retail and hospitality brands. The benefits of the Blue Light Card to this vast army of essential, but often undervalued workers became even more obvious during Covid, when they had no option but to carry on working. To cope with increased demand, BLC moved to a bigger site in Leicester and asked us to make that space unique to them. They wanted a working environment that fostered wellbeing and collaboration, and would make the most of post-Covid, hybrid working.
The new building was a tough site to humanise – a vast, double-height glass-and-metal box that could easily pass for a warehouse – and the kind of challenge that sends us back to first principles. Instead of trying to cut the space down to size, we thought about brand and values, and how that would help us fill the space with BLC personality.
For the main space we brought in plants, living walls, colour, and a few barely-there black metal dividers to define zones without reducing daylight or blocking sight lines. There are cosy pods for private meetings, and a series of rooms, each themed to a frontline support service, for group work and collaboration. The effect is joyful and supportive, a working environment steeped in the put-people-first culture of the workers it supports.
There’s also plenty of opportunity for quiet chilling in a corner for book lovers, and for letting off steam in an exuberant, neon-lit games room with pool, table tennis, arcade games, air hockey, and more. No need for a gym because they already have one onsite.
BLC now has a workplace that showcases its own caring culture. BLC teams say they find it easier to work together, and managers believe that the environment is better aligned to their business aims. The company is not just living its values, it’s built those values into the fabric of the building.
Blue Light Card Office, Leicester
