How your employees feel at work isn’t contingent on floor to ceiling windows, free cereal, standing desks or beanbag chairs

Every company has distinctive needs when it comes to designing their office. More than a few design elements and philosophies tend to show up through many of the newest spaces being created today. But if your company has issues, installing a soda fountain with a thousand flavours or a beer tap isn’t going to cover up your problems and make everything all better. What it all comes down to is your people and how they feel. Amenities, snacks, couches and chairs – you know, all the cool things companies like Facebook and Google do – doesn’t do much for production.

Employee satisfaction dominates conversation between colleagues and it has a direct impact on a company’s overall performance. Employees who feel appreciated and recognized are more apt to go the extra mile in their jobs, seek advancement opportunities and offer better customer service. In turn, the opposite is true of dissatisfied employees who can be seen doing just enough to get by, unwilling to take on extra work or sounding annoyed when dealing with customers or clients. Both of these employees are a direct reflection of your company to the outside world so which one would you rather have working for you? The answer seems pretty obvious, so why are so many companies still missing the mark? One reason is because, these days, companies seem to be more focused on updating the aesthetics of the office instead of revisiting their employee engagement practices.

Personally, I have worked in a variety of different office settings; some were even state-of-the-art or had the latest cutting-edge products. But the best designed office I ever worked in had nothing to do with foosball tables, natural lighting or the walls being covered with the company logo and everything painted in the same brand colors.

The best designed space I have ever worked in was the one that made me feel the safest.

It was an office that let me know I had room to grow. I felt most like I was at home because my boss was much like a parent figure. Between the “room” I got to live in, the psychology deployed, the listening and the talking, I wasmade to feel the valued and appreciated. And, that's part of the job of every CEO or Boss: to set a tone and create an atmosphere that makes employees feel important.

It's not unacceptable for companies to be concerned with their bottom line or for individuals to earn what is appropriate for their job responsibilities, but it is vitally important for businesses to care more about their people. It feels right and it's a legacy any owner should aspire to leave. And because it will actually make owners even more money, it should be the key motivator. The free Cheerios on Monday or the inspirational sayings on the wall, it is all nonsense that companies do to try to make people less bothered by its problems. 

Spreading kindness, making connections and having people care about one another can be the “heartbeat” of a company. It’s something that can light up the entire system. If a company has a great culture, it can be the backbone of their success.

People at leading organizations are happy and killing it because they their leaders care enough to actually know what motivates their employees at every given moment in their careers. They listen to their people with no judgement. Their focus is on understanding what people want, helping them to uncover who they are and what their strengths are, and then helping them to lean into those strengths. Employing this in your business will likely involve making decisions that don’t always look good on paper at the time but make a lot of sense in the heart and pay out over time.

So, remember your employees are the foundation of your business. They're the steel beams and concrete at the bottom of your building that nobody sees. They need to like you and you need to like them. The holy grail of office design and office space is that anything you have can’t be an attempt to cover up any issues your company may have. You don’t want it to be a dapper suit but totally out of shape underneath. It needs to speak to the truth. If it's fancy, great. You’re allowed to like fancy things. But it can't be a front. It can't be charming at the bar but ajerk at home.

This article was originally written for and published in 
Business London Magazine