Huffington Magazine Issue 60 | Page 49

HUFFINGTON 08.04.13 COURTESY OF PROMEGA CORP. CORPORATE ZEN Linton lexicon. (Transformation is another.) He is partial to the hierarchy of needs as delineated by the humanist psychologist Abraham Maslow, whose pyramids famously laid out an architecture of human concern — base needs such as breathing, water, sex and sleep at the bottom, and the loftiest need at the top: “selfactualization,” in Maslow’s initial conception later swapped out for “transcendence.” This, says Linton, may as well be Promega’s organizational chart. This is why he has made meditation and yoga available to all of his employees, Linton says. This is why every building on campus has a fitness center available for free to every employee. This is why the campus guesthouse where he puts up visiting customers comes equipped with a sauna. (“We want to give them an unforgettable experience,” Linton says.) This is why every building on Promega’s campus — an architectural stew of Frank Lloyd Wright, Swiss ski chalet and Japanese pagoda that is the base for some 700-plus employees — is full of what interior designers call “third spaces,” meaning areas neither home nor office, such as bright, informal cafes and banks of soft-backed chairs where people can hang out or mingle, still creating but freed from their cubicles. This is why every building contains a mother’s room, a private place where a nursing mother can pump breast milk. Promega employees have the option to work out by themselves, or with a group of co-workers. Fitness equipment is available to employees on campus, 24/7.