What is Workplace Experience?
- By Leni Rivera
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- 31 Oct, 2018
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If you've never heard of this industry before, you're not alone. It's only been around in the last decade, with its roots and pulse in the San Francisco bay area, and it's revolutionizing the way companies operate today.
A Workplace
Experience is exactly what the name implies – your experience as an employee in
your workplace. This covers all aspects in your work environment: how your desk
and the workstations are arranged; whether you are provided with great food and
drink choices, a gym, fitness classes, game rooms, laundry service; having effortless
access to an environment that supports your working habits – from private
conference rooms to collaboration lounges to all-day cafes to seating areas
under your favorite tree.
The decision that a company makes on whether to
provide any or none of these services is deeply rooted in its specific culture. This is why not all workplace experiences are the same, and why they shouldn’t
be.
All companies have the common desire to attract and retain the best talent in the industry. But the best companies are also fully aware of who they are, where they want to go, and how they plan on getting there. They are fully cognizant of their mission. This is what determines their company’s culture.
It is vital to every company that their workplace experience reflects their unique culture. This is so that the connection is very clear between what the company says externally and what it does internally. This integrity is what employees are not only attracted to, but becomes the roots to which they align their own personal missions.
My favorite examples through which to explain this are with the tech giants, Google and Apple.
When I went to visit Googleplex, I fell among the millions who were astounded
by their workplace environment. Entering the complex felt more like entering a college
campus. Employees were walking around in T-shirts and sneakers, and many were
outside with fitness trainers in the middle of exercise routines. Their
signature playful primary colors were splashed everywhere, from building facades
to outdoor furniture to common-use bicycles. Inside were cafeterias and cafes and
micro-kitchens filled with a wide a wide variety of food and beverage choices –
all free of charge to employees and their guests. They had a fully equipped gym
with showers and locker rooms, a laundry area with washers and dryers, game
rooms, classes and activities for anything from guitar-playing to meditation,
and subsidized massages and haircuts. As for the work atmosphere, when I interviewed
employees they told me that unless you’re working on a specific project, most of
them are encouraged to explore and experiment and research and discover, with
very little emphasis on serious deadlines. This is not to say that they don’t
deliver extraordinary work within set timelines. They just seem to be under
less pressure, with the focus placed equally on the process as on the end goal.
Google’s workplace experience, stimulated with playful colors, multiple perks designed to inspire creativity, and a university-like environment which elicits casual collaborations, harmoniously supports its work culture which places its focus on research, development of new ideas and collaborative experimentations with new innovations.
Apple, on the other hand, is a company that prides itself in unparalleled excellence in design, user experience and innovative solutions that drive an almost cult-like following for all of their products. Their equally-famous headquarters, Apple Park, is an architectural landmark, but by contrast, the public will “probably never” be allowed inside for a tour, according to Apple CEO Tim Cook in an interview with the Business Insider in February this year. The reason, he cites, is because they have “so much confidential stuff around.” Photos and videos of the headquarters however, reveal a physical environment that reflects their signature excellence in design, with sleek lines, contemporary finishes, immaculate white or glass walls, and entirely devoid of color outside of the splash of living greenery. There are beautifully designed cafes, but there is no free food offered on a daily basis here. Food and beverage are subsidized however, and payment is easy through Apple Pay. In fact, in addition to receiving Apple products as part of their work tools, one of the most coveted perks for employees is the great corporate discount on all Apple products, with discount options for their family and friends too. There may be no gym and fitness training in many of the office buildings, but they provide credit for gym membership and they've opened separate Fitness Centers. The software engineers that I spoke with have told me that in Apple, the focus is on the design and the user experience, with engineers who then support these elements through intelligent creation and careful attention to detail. There is always a sharp focus on deadlines and confidentiality with most teams in Apple, and this focus is a shared devotion (competition in this field is fierce after all, so the protection of company secrets and the timely release of their newest products and iOS updates is an imperative commitment).
Once again, this company’s workplace experience harmoniously supports its work ethic and culture. Any potential employee with an appreciation and drive for excellence in their industry and who unfalteringly stands behind Apple’s mission and their products, would thrive in this work-focused environment.
These are two giants in the tech industry, each with its own specific company mission and culture which are reflected inherently in the workplace experience they offer their employees. It would be both ingenuine and ineffective if they shared exactly the same workplace experience. Employees would not be able to espouse the company’s culture nor stand behind its mission, if they do not experience it for themselves in the environment in which they are expected to perform.
This is why Workplace Experience is so important for companies to get right. It’s not about simply providing free food or subsidizing gym membership, it’s about reflecting their corporate culture in their work environment, so that by experiencing it first hand, employees become the company’s biggest and most important allies in achieving its mission.
This time last year, virtually every company around the world shut the doors of their offices, and those that could, asked their employees to work from home. The definition of a workplace began its unforeseeable transformation from a physical office space to a virtual room from anywhere… or did it?
The reality is that this transformation had already started occurring over a decade ago. The pandemic that struck the world simply caused our perception of the workplace to finally catch up with this reality.
In 2019 (12 months before the pandemic struck), The International Workplace Group (IWG) released their annual Global Workplace Survey report, in which they examined responses from over 15,000 professionals from 80 countries. This report revealed that 70% of professionals globally work remotely at least one day a week, and more than half work remotely at least half of the week.
Working remotely is not a new concept, it was just perceived differently. Companies considered those who worked from home and those who worked in the office, as separate entities. They invested their resources on the workplace experience of the physical workplace, while disregarding the home workplace environment. But the pandemic has altered that perception. Everyone from the top executives down were forced to work from home, and thus experienced together the importance of a consistent conveyance of the company’s culture for all employees, regardless of where they work.
Taking this new perception into consideration, the corporate world is now facing an evolution in how they will redefine their “workplace” moving forward, post-pandemic. Some companies have evolved to a fully remote workforce, shifting the workplace to the home environment. Some have a hybrid approach. And others are adhering to a fully office-based work environment. Regardless of how this is defined, what is undoubtedly clear is that resources need to be invested in both environments in order to ensure that the corporate culture is consistently felt by all employees, anywhere.
To demonstrate how this is possible, here is a model of a potential hybrid scenario with employees working in both locations.
I have been a Workplace Experience specialist for 8 years now, and moved to the Bay Area because this is where the industry is prevalent. When I began developing and running a workplace experience for a company all those years ago, I didn’t even realize it had a name, much less understood the impact it would have on the productivity and happiness of people at work.
What most people seem to get wrong is that Workplace Experience is not – should not be – a mere collection of facility perks and benefits. I learned from that mistake early on, and still witness that mistake being made frequently, even here in the Bay Area. Just because you have a corporate gym on premises, or offer food in a company cafeteria, or designate a space in the office for a pool table, doesn’t mean that (1) your employees will even use it, (2) it will be appreciated, or (3) it will have any significant impact on employee engagement. I have seen free shuttle services for employees being underutilized, food in corporate cafes wasted, free gym classes underpopulated, and facility events fall flat. This is because the biggest misconception about a Workplace Experience is that it will generate a fun, unique, engaging environment all on its own. The mistake is a dependence on a Workplace Experience to create a corporate culture, and not the other way around.
The establishment of a corporate culture that is true to its values, principles and overall mission, is where it all begins, always. This forms the foundation of the relationship between the company and its employees. A solid corporate culture attracts the right employees because people want to invest in relationships that are based on mutual respect, trust, personal growth and a shared vision. But people are also wise to recognize when the company is sincere about its culture, or whether it’s just lip service.
Workplace Experience is the measure by which employees are able to quickly and easily gauge the culture’s authenticity. This is because it is the only element of a culture that can be experienced physically through all the human senses – touch, taste, sound, smell and sight, and so it bears witness to the sincerity of its purpose. That’s why placing a pool table in the office or sleep pods in the corner without having a reason behind their existence will cause more doubt than anything else.
Only if a company’s culture anchors itself on being truly invested in its employees’ health and wellbeing, for example, will facility features such as fitness classes, various healthy food offerings, placement of living plants in offices, allocating special parking spaces designed to optimize step counts, and facility programs aimed at helping people achieve their health goals, succeed. In the same respect, if the office areas of the company executives have vastly higher-end finishes, lighting, comfort and appearance than the work areas of the rest of the company, do you think that employees will believe the company culture supports equality and inclusivity?
And let’s not forget, the purpose of a Workplace Experience is far more than just offering attractive features in a workplace. Its primary function as a tool of the corporate culture is to enable and empower employees to be fully engaged and happy with their work. The scope of Workplace Experience includes the entire journey of an employee throughout their workday – from their transportation to work, their entrance into the facility, the ease with which they are able to access their needs (a meeting room, an appropriate work space, work tools and equipment, locating people and departments, etc.) and collaborate with each other (in engaging spaces, over coffee, with meals, through facility events and programs, etc.), and even providing relief by accomplishing chores before ending the day such as dry cleaning, car wash, or bringing home ready-cooked meals. That’s why Workplace Experience is such a powerful tool. It has within its very purpose, the capacity to directly impact employees’ productivity as well as directly influence their happiness at work.
If a company just throws in facility “perks and benefits” without anchoring them in their corporate culture, this investment will not only be a waste of money, it will be the large elephant in the room that constantly reminds employees of how inauthentic the company is. And conversely, as the only physical manifestation of a corporate culture, Workplace Experience can be the company’s most important tool in expressing to employees their sincerity.
Watch out for my first book on Workplace Experience, coming out this year!
