How KPMG redesigned its L.A. workspace for collaboration, hybrid work
On the 46th floor of downtown Los Angeles’ U.S. Bank Tower, Michelle Wroan walks through open workspaces. Colleagues greet her, surrounded by views of the city and mountains. The office is so high up, birds fly below the windows.
Wroan, a managing partner at global accounting giant KPMG, points down at a boxy brown building on Hope Street. It’s the firm’s former office. KPMG moved into its new downtown office last month, trading 90,000 square feet at its last building for 105,000 square feet split between two offices. One is in downtown, the other in El Segundo.
The split accommodates the more than 1,300 KPMG employees who commute from around L.A.
“A lot of our growth in the business is in private equity and venture capital firms. We have a lot of clients in that space,” Wroan told L.A. Business First. “Pre-Covid, we would spend a lot of time at the client’s site. Now clients got used to us being more remote and don't want us there full time. We need to be able to stop in, do a little bit of work, do our meetings and get back.”
With one office downtown and another in the South Bay, KPMG can cover most of Los Angeles, Wroan said. The El Segundo office is also eight minutes from Los Angeles International Airport, easily accessible fortravelers.
About 60% of KPMG’s L.A. workforce is in the downtown office, while the rest commute to the El Segundo office.
Return-to-office initiatives at KPMG have workers coming into the office three days a week. Wroan said the office averages 400 to 500 employees on-site per day. Most desks were occupied during a recent Thursday afternoon visit.
At the U.S. Bank Tower, KPMG is leasing 65,000 square feet. The 46th floor is home to the audit department, the 47th is for the tax teams and the 48th is advisory consulting.
KPMG has done away with cubicles, like other firms redesigning their spaces following Covid. Instead, the firm has rows of desks, some with felt partitions, others facing each other. Wroan said there’s open seating, and desks can be reserved through an online portal up to two weeks at a time.
“People will mix and mingle, and we want to encourage everyone to mingle too,” she said. “We have a lot of collaboration space, because we're very team-oriented. The feeling of this office is different from our old one, because our old one was in the pre-Covid era where you have really dense cubicle space and dense offices. This is much more open and spread out with more team areas.”
Designed by Interior Architects, the gathering spaces were a main priority, Wroan said. She said the team also highlighted “timeless” design, from bright colors to natural light.
Beyond traditional desk space, KPMG added project work rooms, soundproof phone booths, dedicated dining spaces and a lactation room for mothers. Almost every area of the office is tech-activated, with screens forcollaboration even set up next to tables in the lunch room.
Bill Stoddard, chief of staff at KPMG in Los Angeles, said there’s a “first day at school feeling” in the new office. It's brought a renewed sense of energy to the space.
Stoddard said his favorite part of KPMG’s new offices is how the workforce has adapted to new ways to work and collaborate. Some employees who have been resistant to returning to the office are now drawn to the collaborative space, he said.
“Some people like to be in an office all the time, but there are so many different meeting spaces to be by yourself but also to collaborate,” Stoddard told L.A. Business First. “The collaboration spaces are really intentional and beautiful, and people are really excited about that.”
Wroan said she likes all the “nooks and crannies” in the new office. She said the spaces encourage spontaneous interactions that only happen in person.
“It's such a different elevated experience from what we had before,” she said. “We have access to more hybridtechnology too, since we’re here three days a week. All the offices have screens so you can add remote members of your team to calls. It feels like you're together, even when you're remote.”
Wroan said KPMG deliberately studied where its staff was based to figure out the most central location for itsoffices. They determined downtown L.A. was central fora majority of its workforce.
“We knew we still needed to have space here,” Wroan said. “We signed 12-year leases at both our new offices. We really were looking at the long game, not just some of the recent challenges downtown but looking long term.”
Wroan noted that the upcoming 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games are a bright spot for L.A., expected to “uplift” the city.
Beyond convenience for the workforce, Wroan said KPMG remains committed to downtown because of the quality of its offices. In 2024, U.S. Bank Tower owner Silverstein Properties completed a renovation of the skyscraper. Wroan said she’s noticed a revitalization of the neighborhood as office owners invest in their properties.
“All these different groups are investing in downtown and making it more communal,” she said. “You can have outdoor spaces as well, and you can feel safe walking around. We also have a lot of clients down here, so we were happy to be able to keep this as our corporate headquarters and reinvest in L.A.”
