Photo courtesy of SimpliSafe
After committing to a big block of downtown Boston office space in 2021, home security systems specialist SimpliSafe needed to create a compelling destination for existing and future employees.
The Boston-based company, which makes home security systems, picked the 100 Summer St. tower for its new 150,000-square-foot headquarters which opened this month. With plans to hire another 100 employees within 12 months, SimpliSafe is counting on the 100 Summer St. address to play a central role in its corporate identity.
“Frankly, it’s an inspirational space,” SimpliSafe Chief People Officer Ai-Li Lim said. “We feel like people are excited to come in and be together, especially those who joined the company during the pandemic. Because we have gone through so much over the past couple of years, having this kind of space manifesting who we are as a company has been energizing.”
SimpliSafe has expanded its Boston-area workforce by 30 percent in the past year. The company designates Tuesdays and Wednesdays for collaborative in-office work, although there is no formal mandate.
Designed by Boston-based IA Interior Architects, the new offices includes generous collaborative areas and a mix of casual seating and individual workspaces. The fourth-floor space has a hands-on focus, including makerspaces for the engineering and product teams.
In the reception area, a tiny house model equipped with Simplisafe products emphasizes the company’s focus on residential security.
SimpliSafe occupies four stories within the 1 million-square-foot tower near South Station. The company had grown from a small startup in Cambridge to 294 Washington St. in Downtown Crossing, its home since 2016, but faced a decision in 2021 after outgrowing those offices.
SimpliSafe’s growth is an outlier in the local tech sector, where downsizing by local companies has placed more pressure on Boston’s office market.
Downtown Boston office tenants listed 331,000 square feet of sublease space in the first quarter, with the tech sector responsible for a large portion of the increase, CBRE reported last week, bringing the sublease market for 4.2 million square feet.
