Pannon has moved into its new office building

Photo: Gyula Sopronyi

A new chapter has begun in the life of Pannon: As of 8 June 2009, the company’s employees took possession of the new office building located in Törökbálint. Pannon House is not only one of Hungary’s most modern and “greenest” interactive corporate headquarters, but it represents a new working style little known to Hungary.

Pannon House located in Törökbálint puts the emphasis on work based on mobility and cooperation which is about individual creativity rather than central instructions, and in which teleworking also plays an important role. Everything in the new office building serves the purpose of not confining the approximately 1,500 employees to specific locations. The vast majority of them work on laptops and use mobile Internet access supplemented by secure Intranet access. They also have the opportunity to use smart phones with automatic mail, calendar and contact synchronisation by a central server. Mobility and collaboration are also supported by the shared desk system, meaning that anyone working in the office can sit down at any of the desks. Pannon House has over 50 projector-ready conference rooms. These conference rooms can accommodate a total of 400 people which means that nearly one-third of all Pannon employees can participate in meetings or conferences at the same time.

Green office and new working style

Pannon House was built in the spirit of environmental consciousness. The cooling and heating system of the building, based on renewable geothermic energy, is highly innovative. The heat-pump air conditioning system is the largest in Hungary and is the seventh such project in Europe. Also, about 60-70% of all hot water from the taps in Pannon House is heated by the 168 m2 of solar panels. In the spirit of green philosophy, electronic documentation plays a central role in the office work: the employees digitalize every incoming paper; outgoing documents are only printed out immediately before sending. The new office building represents not just a new building, but a new working style too. Pannon, as the Hungarian subsidiary of the Norwegian company Telenor, believes that employees are only capable of doing their best if their work and private lives complement one another harmonically. For this reason, for a large number of positions at the company, working from home is permitted.

Service at the highest level

Pannon House is not only a workplace for many, but it is also where the lion’s share of Pannon’s IT equipment and systems operate. For a telecommunications company, the top priority is always smooth, uninterrupted service and customer satisfaction. To this end, high levels of operational safety for IT equipment and its supporting infrastructure is indispensable. This is why Pannon established a high-tech, truly 21st century server centre in its new office. Along with server rooms, it sprawls over an approximately 2,000 m2 IT block underground.