How a great workplace environment will help you recruit the best talent
Author Bethany AndellCategories Brandonomics, Culture/Employee Engagement
If you want to attract and hire good talent, your workplace user experience will be a factor. Bethany Andell continues her discussion with Lauri Goodman Lampson, president of PDR, a workplace consulting and design firm.
Lauri: Thank you Bethany.
Bethany: So, in our previous conversations you’ve mentioned a term ‘workplace user experience,’ and that sounds really intriguing to me. Could you go into a little bit of what that is?
Lauri: Today, in order to attract the best workplace talent, an organization needs to really focus on the workplace experience that they are delivering to their employees. So, your work environment is sending a message, intentional or not, right? So, you want to not just send the brand message, you know, we’re talking beyond the esthetics and logos on the wall at the front door, but all the way through the space that the employees are able to feel what the culture of this organization is. And they demand a really compelling experience.
Bethany: That’s really interesting. Take me a little deeper into the components of workplace user experience.
Lauri: So, there are three primary components that make up a great workplace experience.
The first being an urban vibe, and when I say that I mean it’s not that it needs to be urban, it is the density of human energy that you get in an urban setting is what people are looking for. We actually surveyed a group of students and asked them where do they do their best work. And they said, hands down, in a place where there are other people working hard. So, a room full of hardworking people has the best vibe, is going to create the best energy.
The second component really is this idea of collegiality. So, whether I know everybody at the organization, I have some sense of connection to them, and you can get that through just the visual connections in a place, that I can see more than just the few people that I work with.
The third, really, is just this connection to nature; a sort of an explicit connection. A view is great, a view to the outside world is great. That reminds us that we’re working on something bigger than ourselves, but actually the ability to get outside and be in nature is also really critical to human performance.
Bethany: That’s great. I bet that’s very interesting to people, too, that are trying to recruit millennials or even Generation Z.
Lauri: Absolutely.
Bethany: Thank you so much for joining me again today, Lauri.
Lauri: Thank you.
Bethany: This concludes my conversation with Lauri Goodman Lampson with PDR, and this episode of Brandonomics, an inside look at top brands and their strategies.
