Remember that one time you dropped your rocky road on the sidewalk? There’s a reason you recall that moment better than any other ice cream outing from your youth.
A quirk of the human psyche, we’re hardwired to remember bad memories more vividly than the good. With positive and negative experiences being processed in different hemispheres of the brain, we’re built to dwell on the frustrations and resent the moments we feel we’ve been wronged.
Extrapolate that to the workplace and it’s no surprise there are news articles on blog posts on Facebook rants about how terrible offices can be – open or not.
Shoddy video calls, a desk in a natural foot-traffic lane, no private space to collect your thoughts, stolen conference rooms, and so on. Bad experiences like these aggregate over time and employees are left with a pervasive bad taste in their mouth for their own place of work. Of course, this leads to a decrease in morale and productivity, which no employer wants to see.
So what can companies do?
It’s all about investing in resources that remove friction from employees’ day. In other words, the best workplace amenities are the ones your employees hardly even notice – and ideally won’t remember.
Employees won’t remember when they were able to easily screencast but they will lay awake at night ruminating about that one time they spent half their presentation fiddling with devices just to speed through their content before leaving the room feeling disheartened.
Too often, companies fall prey to jumping on flashy, fun, and fabulous amenities when in reality, it’s all the cumbersome friction points throughout an employee’s day that have the biggest impact on Glassdoor reviews.
Common pitfalls organizations fall into when investing in workplace amenities:
The one and done:
Definition: Resources that have an immediate draw but lose their luster over time.
Ex: New snacks, a gaming area, in-office exercise area
Caveat: These spaces could be the right kind of amenities for a specific office but it’s all about knowing what that workforce would actually want and use without making assumptions.
Caveat: Some amenities become one and done amenities without the right change management. People often need encouragement and guidelines before naturally gravitating to a new resource.
Flash without function:
Definition: An amenity purchased mostly because it’s cool for the sake of being cool and not because it serves a dual purpose or is an important reflection of company culture, branding, or vision.
Ex: Screen-lined walls in a lobby with flashy images instead of a custom commissioned piece of art relating back to company values.
Ex: Slick new lounge furniture even though all the sales team wants are sit-stand desks to hit a power stance during calls and relax when they’re off the phone.