Turn Your Office into an Employee Experience Center

With these updates, your employees will be eager to come to work.

As we reported in last month’s article, the workplace is part of the employee experience, it isn’t just commercial space. When you are ready to embrace Employee Experience Design, where do you begin to implement it?

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1. Start with your Employees

Involving your employees in the process of designing their optimal work experience is key to making them feel like it is about them. Getting started can be as informal as setting up a suggestion box, or as all-encompassing as assigning a team to collect information about how employees feel about the culture and the environment, and what would make it better for them.

2. Provide Workspace Options

A study by Gensler found that employees want to have multiple means of getting work done as opposed to dictating one style of physical space. In other words, employees want to have the flexibility to change their environment while they are working rather than sit in one assigned spot in the office. Jacob Morgan shares insight from the offices that he has toured that provides some ideas of what this entails, “Consider SAP, which has an open environment, cubicles, a collaborative innovation hub, a co-working cafe, conference rooms, smaller meetings rooms, and areas for presentations.”

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Here are other types of workspace options that we implement for our clients every day:

• Coffee shop environments which provide options for group collaboration or private work.
• Rotating floor plans to break down workplace silos and build better interdepartmental relationships.
• Touchdown spaces help mobile employees make the most of their time at the office.
• Creative office spaces to gather, brainstorm, work together, and even take a quick breather.

   

Social Areas

Bear in mind that employees—especially Millennials–increasingly look to the workplace as a means for social activity and be sure to incorporate ways to engage your employees socially. You may be surprised at how much work and strategizing can get done while people are socializing and fostering better personal relationships among your employees translates to better working relationships and collaboration.

• Create space for your employees to relax, like engaging break rooms or social areas with ping pong or pool tables.
• Design an area in your office for happy hours and celebrating milestones like birthdays, weddings, and new babies.
• Set up an outdoor area for catered or pot-luck lunches, and athletic activities.

Offer Extra Perks

Depending on the size of your company and budget for creating your employee’s experience, you can add in creature comforts like on-site dry cleaning and laundry, car detailing, a visiting masseuse, or mobile dog grooming. If your physical space allows, encouraging people to bring their dogs to the office can be a great mood booster. Having the ability to execute some personal chores while still at the office can free up your employees to focus on work for longer.

On Your Mark, Get Set, Go!

Employers who make a concerted effort to design their employees’ experience have seen a direct and positive impact on their engagement, productivity, and loyalty. We know change can be hard, but bringing in an expert workplace change partner can give you fresh ideas for your space and help you facilitate your moves, adds and changes for your commercial space.