Who Will Win the Award for Best Place to Work in LA?

Look, I’m just going to say it. A lot of offices suck. Pardon my French. But I mean, really. Beige walls, blinding fluorescents, plastic plants, poor air quality, cheesy furniture — the average office environment is just… uninspiring.

Our Associates work too hard and too brilliantly for us to subject them to poor design. Honestly. We value them too much to give them ‘blah’ interiors.

What we do, is to emphasize a collaborative company culture through innovative office design.

Perhaps this is part of the reason that in the summer of 2010, Partners Trust was named as one of the 75 Best Places to Work by the LA Business Journal! The Best Places to Work in LA 2010 is an exciting initiative produced by the Los Angeles Business Journal and conducted by the Best Companies Group, dedicated to identifying and recognizing the best employers in Los Angeles County. How many local organizations truly have what it takes to be honored in this particular way?

The ranking of the best places to work in Los Angeles, for three categories — small, medium, and large companies — will be announced at a special event held in August.

The talent we have in our Associates at Partners Trust is mind-boggling; they arrive here attracted to our state-of-the-art training in: technology, negotiation, contracts, personal productivity, and platinum-level client care. But I secretly suspect that they also come to us because of our company culture — we have a lot of fun here.

For those of you reading this who don’t yet know who we are, we are a Los Angeles-based real estate boutique firm that specializes in quality residential properties on the Westside. We utilize sustainable design elements to reflect our solution-oriented company philosophy and enhance our productivity.

Combining our decades of experience working with architects, contractors, homebuyers and sellers, David Findley, one of Partners Trust’s founding partners, collaborated with interior design firm Hunter-Barnes to create a uniquely inviting office environment designed to help foster, well, brilliance.

“I drew on my design experience from my own homes and offices,” David Findley said recently. “But it was really a collaborative effort with all of the other partners and the immensely talented, LA-based design firm Hunter-Barnes.”

For the office decor, Findley and co-designers Adam Hunter and Spencer Barnes chose a color palette consisting of warm tones of contemporary autumnal shades that Hunter described as being “eco-chic.” At the urging of one of our founding partners, F. Ron Smith, we placed a water element at the end of a hallway to help “prevent stagnant air and keep the energy flowing,” Hunter explained. “Now, it actually draws you in.”

Warm color tones, water features, and green elements work in concert toward facilitating a collaborative, familial culture within the walls of Partners Trust.

“The goal was to make it feel like – and have the intimacy of – a living room,” Findley explained. “We wanted it to be open and inviting, yet still have some private retreats – like the conference room – when privacy is desired.”

Textiles and fabrics in the common work area were fashioned to create semi-private spaces that still maintain that warm, inviting feeling even when closed (and dramatically decrease echo and distracting background noises). Similarly designed sheers were added as window dressing to add softness and diffused light to the environment.

Utilizing sustainable, environmentally friendly elements where possible, many of the paints used have very low VOC’s and the conference room and lobby floors were finished with a sustainable cork flooring material. The majority of the office desks were purchased from Watson Furniture in Seattle, Washington – a company known for being one of the most environmentally conscious office furniture manufacturers in the country.

All of these design elements were in service of helping foster the general company culture, which places its emphasis on deepening relationships and elevating morale and productivity through an open and collaborative work environment.

Staying true to Partners Trust’s own philosophy, Findley said that it was “truly a collaborative effort that created our fresh and exciting new environment.”

(By the way, Partners Trust was founded by four of the leading residential brokers on the west side of Los Angeles: Nick Segal, F Ron Smith, Richard Stearns and David Findley. The four founding partners draw their decades of sales experience from Coldwell Banker, Sothebys Int’l Realty, Prudential, and DBL Realtors. Together this leadership team has handled hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate transactions and represents a tremendous core of Westside buyers and sellers of property.)

Partners Trust is a full service real estate brokerage firm founded on the principals of utmost integrity, professionalism and trust. The firm has embraced cutting edge technology and state of the art communications and is dedicated to staying at the forefront of those worlds, including the broad use of social media for the marketing and sales of residential properties. So it seemed natural that our interiors would be state of the art, too!

special thanks to Elizabeth Stearns and Ryan Mason for their help on this feature and video.

Dane Findley is Marketing Director at Partners Trust Real Estate Brokerage & Acquisitions. He enjoys adding chocolate chips to almost everything, his favorite low-tech productivity tool is a clipboard, and he’s managed to own the same pair of sunglasses for over 4 years. You can connect with Dane on Twitter, via @danenow.

If you have a quick real estate question, our Concierge is available on Live Chat during the day, and even late at night one of our licensed pros is usually on Live Chat and happy to help you — no strings attached.






If you are a real estate professional who would like to explore your own potential for increased prosperity and the opportunities at Partners Trust, you can click here for further inspiration and information.

Related Posts:

1. Are You a Yin or a Yang at Work? (productivity styles for success)

2. Aligning with the New Time Revolution (ultimate tip for increased success!)

3. Avoiding the 3 Assassins to your Personal Productivity (get more done!)

4. When the Offer for Your House seems Too Low (5 tips for a winning transaction)

5. Connecting Los Angeles to the Arts: Riding the Getty Tram (most fun thing to do in LA!)

6. How to Find a Great Assistant and Grow Your Revenue (video series)

7. Home Buyers and Sellers Move Online (new habits, busier lives)