iA Financial Group

WorkplaceFacilitationQuantitative research
Designing a head office people would choose to come back to, from home, during a pandemic.
  • 3months of workshops
  • 100%remote research, about a physical place
  • ~250employees who helped identify the needs
  • 160+meeting rooms across the complex, ready for remote colleagues
The pandemic changed how people feel about the office. iA's question became: how do you design one people actually want to come back to?

One of Canada's largest insurance companies was reworking its Québec City head office when work went remote. In 2021, iA chose a hybrid, flexible model with no minimum number of days on site. That made the stakes clear: the office would have to earn every visit. Designing an office over video calls, from home, has a certain irony. We embraced it.

My role: I led the workshops and the quantitative research. The workshops surfaced what people needed and what would bring them back; the quantitative research measured it across the organization and ranked what to offer first.

“What would make you choose the office over your kitchen table?”

The question behind every workshop

Ask the people who'd have to come back. Workshops with groups from across the organization: different teams, roles and relationships to in-person work.
Beyond needs: motivation. Not just what people needed from an office, but what would make them actually choose it over their kitchen table.
Research a place without the place. The whole process ran remotely, mid-pandemic, about an experience that is entirely physical.
Rank by what brings people back. Quantitative research ranked the services by their potential to drive a return to the office, not by popularity alone.

One study, two kinds of answers

For the architects

How people would really use the space

A grounded picture of how teams would behave once back, so the plan could balance open collaboration zones with dedicated focus areas based on real patterns instead of assumptions.

For the organization

Which services to offer first

A prioritized list of on-site services, from daycare to personal services and even a Christmas market, ranked by how likely each one was to bring people back.

What opened

The renovated head office at 1080 Grande Allée Ouest, as described when it opened. iA treated it like a campus: people pick where they work during the day.

  • A hall with a piano, a fireplace and a bar
  • Six bistros and a games room
  • A large open work hall with soundproof booths
  • A library café and a relaxation room
  • A services counter for employees
  • 160+ meeting rooms across the complex, equipped for remote colleagues
  • The old main entrance, fresco and all, turned into a mini-bistro

See the photos in Le Soleil “Un effet « wow » chez iA Groupe financier”, 2023, in French

“I felt like I was back in CEGEP.”

Denis Ricard, President and CEO, iA Financial Group, on his first day in the renovated head office · Translated from French, quoted in Le Soleil (Jean-Nicolas Patoine, 2023)

Where iA is today

Denis Ricard, quoted on this page, still leads the group as President and CEO in 2026. In September 2025, iA adopted a new brand signature: Get Ahead. It describes itself as one of the largest insurance and wealth management groups in Canada, with operations in the United States. Sources: ia.ca and Business Wire.

When the head office reopened, employees called it too good to be true. The long-standing problems of the old office had been found and fixed, because the people who use it helped design it.

Credits

Led the workshops and the quantitative research
Jean-Sébastien Daigle · Independent
Client
iA Financial Group