Best Places to Work: The New Philly Workplace

In fact, the entire office has a college-dorm vibe. The entrance hall near 13th and Sansom blares some good ­singer-songwriter folk music as you wait for the elevator. Hardwood floors and huge windows give a light, airy feel to the room, where dozens of employees clack away at keyboards. It’s a cube farm without walls, where everyone can see into, and out of, each others’ work space, and the atmosphere is so casual that, in a pressed shirt, I’m the best-dressed guy in the room.

This anti-corporate atmosphere fuels Gyro’s unique approach to marketing. Nothing in the environment, from Grasse’s simple and mildly disorganized office to the cheerful youngsters in jeans and t-shirts, has the ring of corporate culture. Gyro has the office ambience of a nonprofit organization — ­committed youth, scattered paperwork — rather than a company that this year is expected to gross $20 million from its offshoot clothing line alone.

“I hire people,” Grasse says, when I ask him how he mines for creativity, the hardest of qualities to identify from a résumé. “I get good people, and they stay. We find the people, and then we try to keep them.

“We used to have a turnover problem,” Grasse admits, which he attributes both to his hyperactive personality and to the cluttered and cramped work space Gyro occupied before it moved to the Sansom Street location. But creating a work environment with happy employees is a skill that businessmen have to develop, he explains.

From Gyro’s Center City office, it seems that Grasse has learned well. The fresh-faced young people in their tank tops and jeans, lounging on couches and sitting on the floor, make the high-pressure, competitive world of marketing seem almost … relaxing.

Workplace Nirvana

From the hip and ultra-modern inner-city office of Gyro, I drive to King of Prussia, to the offices of Beyond.com. Started almost 10 years ago in CEO Rich Milgram’s house, Beyond.com is a help-wanted website that rather than merely finding people jobs, stays with them to help develop their careers. The company offers advice on everything from repaying student loans to health benefits to … happiness in the workplace.

On this last subject, they are clearly experts. No one can be as happy at work as everyone seems to be at Beyond.com. I am instantly suspicious. Behind the sunlight and the trees in the big picture windows, and the friendly smiles of the employees, surely there’s a dark secret. Some kind of Stepford Wives We’re-all-robots secret, or a Logan’s Run We’ll-kill-you-when-you-turn-30 kind of a thing.

But Tara Gerard, the PR rep who gives me a tour of the office, is non-robotically genuine, and I notice employees who are in their 40s and 50s. Gerard takes me back to the break room, where there’s a fully stocked fridge (in case anyone forgets to bring lunch, she tells me), pastries and fresh-brewed coffee. I am told to help myself. I sample a pastry. It is soft and fresh. Mmmmm. I have found Workplace Nirvana.