Yep, that is a fact: the Generation Homes team left a lasting impact during their enforced stint at Basestation... Hilary, Generation Homes National Marketing Manager describes their time within the community:
"In January 2017 our team moved out of our long term home at 36 Cameron Road and ironically we became homeless.
We were waiting for the completion of our new space in the building at 306 Cameron Road and had looked at a variety of places to temporarily set up office but none were suitable – either too big, too small, too old or high speed broadband could not be installed in time.
While sampling a coffee at Folk Café, our National Operations Manager, Mark saw the office space tucked in behind and from there the decision was simple. The facilities on offer were everything we needed – bookable meeting spaces, high speed broadband, onsite IT support, kitchen and lunch spaces, a café and lots of in-house experts to engage with.
Generation NZ Ltd (GNZ) is the national office for Generation Homes who are the sixth biggest group home builder in New Zealand, specialising in House and Land packages throughout the main residential growth areas in New Zealand. As a national business we run a slick build program which allows us to build within a guaranteed time frame and at a fixed price. Using this model with have built over 4000 homes for kiwi families.
The team at GNZ is a small team of seven people who support our eight regional businesses and each of us are specialists in our own areas: Executive Management; Finance; Land Acquisition; Operations; and Marketing.
The building we came from had been the home of Generation Homes for over 14 years and was set up with individual offices for everyone. The new office space we were moving to at 306 Cameron Road was to be built as an open plan space so Basestation was a good test as to how this would work for us.
Coming into Basestation we were situated in a corner at the back and had a number of other businesses around us. The first couple of weeks was a bit of a shell shock for everyone but it was a good introduction to working in an open plan environment and probably help us bond more as a team.
Basestation was a fantastic place to share knowledge, problem solve and gain advice on whatever was our topic of conversation that day. There is such a great range of businesses based here, that the opportunity to network and connect with new people was invaluable.
On July 28th 2017 we moved out and were very sad :-( to go and leave behind the people we had meet. There was always someone to speak to, share a laugh and a friendly smile in the kitchen...
We have even considered just renting a desk so we have a place to escape to when we need some ‘quiet’ time. [Go on do it :-) - ed.]
Some of the great people we met were:
Greg for helping answer some of our technical questions and finding us a new SharePoint expert to work with – yay!
Simon and Darryl, for not only hosting our website www.generation.co.nz but sharing a joke, making us feel really welcome, and being happy recipients of our free magazines.
Scott for providing us with his graphics knowledge, selling us on the benefits of a BLUNT umbrella, and helping us settle in to the new open plan environment.
The guys in the basement who make the disco lights for stopping by our desk and sharing their good news.
Jessie for answering my rural broadband questions with a patient smile.
Michael and Alvin who also always stopped to share their good news, fix our printer, fix the projector and share Dutch Liquorice (oh and tidying up the kitchen).
Steven for helping us fit in to the new environment and providing us with help and advice on our systems project.
Pascale for sharing her incubator stories and inspiring us to think a bit differently about things.
Sherilyn for making us feel really welcome and tracking us down when visitors arrived and we didn’t check our mobile or email. …and essential to everyone’s day, Hans and Job from Folk (and donut Friday) who supplied us with endless coffee…they even delivered it to our desks."
... wow, we miss you guys!
Basestation has desks, one-person offices, small team, large team spaces available and Venture Centre, its operator, delivers entrepreneurial programmes, services and events for residents and the community at large.
Drop in at 148 Durham Street or tell us at time that suits for a chat here
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