Cinven is a private equity firm that operates globally, currently with offices in 9 key international locations. It invests primarily in 6 sectors: business services, TMT, financial services, industrials, healthcare and consumer. Operating since the 1970s, Cinven has successfully invested billions throughout the world, having around €10bn in assets under management.

Cinven approached UnWork with a great opportunity for understanding and updating their workplace. Cinven was facing an imminent lease expiry and wanted to take the opportunity to examine how their workforce was working, what was not working as well as it could and what could be improved. UnWork set out a programme of works that would model the work done by Cinven, including which types of workspaces they used the most, what they spent their time on and how the workplace could be better designed for the future.

In order to truly understand how Cinven functioned, UnWork conducted an occupancy study, a workplace survey, 25 interviews with staff of all levels and a range of analysis on other data provided by Cinven. These all helped to build up a picture of how Cinven were working. Occupancy study data and survey data were used to build a detailed model of the working practices at Cinven including: which types of worksetting were used the most, which activities employees spent their time on during a typical day and which types of activities were most important to their roles.

Taking this information, UnWork then calculated agility ratios for each department at Cinven, showing how many of each type of setting they would need if they were to move to a more flexible working and agile working style. Supporting these changes, UnWork designed a series of concept plans showing Cinven both how they could fit into their existing space, and how UnWork’s ideas could be applied to a new space. This work gave Cinven a range of options to choose from that could either be applied to their building or to a new location.

Based on UnWork’s analysis and discussion of options, Cinven was able to select an option that they believed reflected their brand values and history while also providing a future-proof workplace model that would allow them to expand and make the best possible use of their space. Cinven chose to implement their new workplace strategy in a new building, another project that UnWork is currently assisting with.