The Value of Places

Opening Remarks WORKTECH12 West Coast, Redwood City, October 15, 2012

Let us begin the day by agreeing that the value of places can be summed up in one simple statement:  everyone has to be somewhere all the time.  Dare I say it? We can get along without phones, laptops, televisions, and, yes, even Google and Facebook and LinkedIn, but we can’t escape being some place.  Let me say it again:  everyone has to be somewhere all the time.

Why not spend time in places that inspire us, that engage us, that delight us?

 

This is where technology comes in.  It has given us the freedom to connect to people and information from anywhere.  Technology has given us the power to work from the places where we do our best work – with others or by ourselves.  Technology allows us to shape the experiences we will have each day.

The employee experience is about culture and branding and technology and services and events and yes, places.  Most important, though, it is about the experience of connecting with other people – face-to-face or through technology. Research shows that the more diverse your network, the wider your network, the stronger your connections within your network, the more innovative you are likely to be. The number of friends a person has at work is a strong predictor of intent to stay; more friends, lower chance you will leave.  People want to be in places where there are other people, too few people and the space is dull, lifeless, and lacks buzz; too many and it is noisy and crowded.  There is a fine balance to creating the best employee experience for each unique person. 

And, yes, an empty workplace is definitely a sign of a problem. But I am afraid that we have given far too much attention to the empty seats in our workplaces and not enough attention to the people and the basic ways that work is changing.  To create valuable employee experiences, we need a comprehensive, systems-thinking approach to problem definition, recognizing that the nature of work is getting more and more complex.  Complex problems demand complex solutions.

Where to start?  Ask your Recruiting team which jobs are hard to fill and why. Ask which companies compete for the same hard-to-recruit people.  Ask why candidates choose other companies over yours.

Why?  Because unfilled jobs have a much bigger impact on the performance of your company than seats that are empty 50% of the time.  The jobs that are hard to fill are typically critical to the future success of the business.

When you listen closely, ask lots of follow-up questions, and continue the dialogue with Recruiting, you will get information that will change the way you shape the workplace experience.

My hope is that we will get to the point where we ask the questions:

·          are we investing enough in the employee experience?  

·          how does that investment impact performance at the individual, team, and organizational levels?

Then we can focus our attention on the complex relationship between investment spent on enhancing the employee experience vs. impact on performance (at the organizational, team, and individual levels).