Evolve Bank & Trust executives on building culture, plus tech, into new HQ

By Stephen MacLeod – Reporter, Memphis Business Journal

Evolve Bank & Trust is expanding its Triad Centre footprint with a new headquarters — while embracing remote work — in a bid to maintain its workplace culture.

“The headquarters is not only a way for us to support all of our employees nationwide, but also to provide a home base for folks so that we can stay in touch and grow our culture,” said Thomas Holmes, Evolve's chief marketing and communications officer.

Evolve is growing rapidly. In June 2020, the company had 365 full-time employees and one year later that figure had reached 453, according to FDIC data. Now, Evolve has close to 500 total employees and about 200 in Memphis.

And the company is looking to hire between 30 and 40 people to meet its “immediate needs,” according to Evolve chairman Scot Lenoir. He told MBJ that the company is also looking to increase its workforce by 20% to 25% over the next five years. Those employee additions led to an expansion at Triad Centre on Poplar Avenue.

“We just needed more space and this space was accommodating to our growth plans,” Lenoir said. “We mapped out our growth plans for the next five years and tried to anticipate what we would need over that time frame.”

The company will lease 42,000 square feet in Triad Centre I and renovate the space with a planned move in of summer 2022. The company will use its current Triad Centre III as a banking center location.

Shared base

Evolve will embrace the hybrid model of work, according to company executives.

Lenoir said that Evolve plans to hire from all over the country and use the new HQ as a base. As such, the renovations will have a heavy emphasis on shared workspace and technology.

"We're not only upgrading computers, but also our video equipment,” Lenoir said. “We're thinking about green rooms [and] about our space in terms of our common areas and what that might look like. The latest video and audio equipment, with our employees being distributed, that's going to be an important part for us.”

Memphis-based architecture firm LRK will be working to help get the headquarters up and running. The firm has significant experience designing corporate headquarters, including AutoZone's Downtown HQ, Orion Federal Credit Union's HQ, and FedEx World Headquarters Building I. Grinder, Taber & Grinder will handle the construction with LRK.

Lenoir said plans for Evolve's new HQ took into account large amounts of employee feedback. The company conducted a survey and employee interviews in order to see what each department would need in a new office space.

“We have different groups of employees: IT, accounting, human resources [with] different needs and requirements,” Lenoir said. “Trying to accommodate all those different groups of employees is a challenge, but at the same time, we need to listen to them because it's their space.”

Holmes said Evolve takes pride in its workplace culture and finding ways to maintain that culture will be a point of emphasis for the company going forward. Even the design of the new office space was based on the employee feedback they received.

“It's important for folks [to have] an environment that flows together and is not siloed,” Holmes said. “There's going to be very minimal walls. Most of the offices will be glass. A more open collaborative space is what the employees asked for.”

Lenoir noted Evolve plans to not follow current trends in terms of square footage. While some companies who have embraced remote or hybrid work models have downsized space, Evolve is increasing its square footage.

Lenoir wants to give the opportunity to remote workers to be able to come to the office and meet the team. He said that employees would be able to use workstations at their convenience and used the term “hoteling” to describe how he sees employees using the space.

“We have so many of those employees that are off-campus that want to come in,” Lenoir said. “It's trying to be all about the employees coming back to Memphis [to] interface with folks. It's part of the culture that we build.”