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Keith Roher, who has run Tampa-based documents management firm Zeno Office Solutions for more than a decade, has long maintained he wants his company to be a career destination, not a stepping stone.
That's why Zeno, a unit of Xerox's Global Imaging division, put so much time, and money, into its new office. The company recently moved into a 42,000-square-foot office off Waters Avenue in Tampa, in a former FedEx facility. The build-out, says Roher was at least a $1 million project, to turn the facility into what the executive calls a millennial center.
“We built this to our specifications,” Roher tells Coffee Talk. “We designed everything the way we wanted the building to work.”
The new digs are about 50% bigger than Zeno's previous location, in the Westshore district. The company also has an office on the top floor of the 500 Westshore building.
But the nerve center of Zeno is now the Waters Avenue complex. About 150 employees work out of the Tampa location, and the company actively seeks more people, from sales to software positions.
One key to the new office, says Roher, is collaboration. Cubicle walls are gone. Executives have offices visible to employees, with nearby whiteboards for quick meetings. Roher toured the Tampa offices of Tech Data and PricewaterhouseCoopers to get ideas for Zeno.
Beyond the physical office, Roher focuses on the intangibles that help make for happy employees. On a recent Friday afternoon, for example, the company brought in a mobile smoothie business for free treats.
Roher says it's too early to have a substantial return on investment analysis for the move. But at a cost of roughly $75,000 to bring on and train a new employee, the stakes for getting the new office right are high. On that front, Zeno, so far, has some good news. Says Roher: "My turnover rate has declined dramatically.”
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