“Customer service specialist”, “customer-centric thinking” and “customer experience journey mapping” are terms tossed around corporate offices with great gravitas. And for good reason. The business world has finally discovered that the little end-user is the person paying the bills.
Well, it’s not exactly a revolutionary realisation. After all, “the client is always right” has been a business mantra since long before “the client is always an @$$&0!3” was considered common knowledge. (Thanks, Kevin Smith.) Neither of these two views are anywhere close to correct, and both disregard the one central understanding that drives true customer experience: empathy.
To create an extraordinary experience for someone who is not you, it’s necessary to interpret their perceptions with true empathy. Your customers are unique people with unique needs. When companies truly understand this concept, amazing things happen. Just look at Amazon. The benefits are immense.
But what if we applied that same customer experience journey to the employees in your business? Would it be possible to get the same benefits—and perhaps boost creativity and productivity? You bet!
The staff in any business are also the very first customers. But they’re buying something far more important than a product—they’re buying into the brand.
Here lies the foundation of culture at work. Your people need to believe in you and find their individual pride in the company they represent. Or, if we’re getting philosophical: employees can either get out of bed or regret out of bed, which largely depends on whether they want to go to work. No one rushes out of the house to excitedly dig into a pile of paperwork, but they do make an effort if they love the people they work with.
Culture in the workplace is a far more intricate construct than grabbing a pint at the local after the boss shoves off. Writing for HR Tech Weekly, Andy Cabistan states that “purpose, ownership, community, effective communication, and good leadership” form the backbone of good organisational culture. In the modern workplace, “companies need to offer individuals a sense of belonging and a mission to accomplish something remarkable.” A great company knows this and designs its employee experience journey as carefully as that of its customers.
The physical work environment underpins all these cultural elements. The journey an employee is willing to take with their company is impacted by the space they’re required to work in every day.
This includes the personal desk space assigned to each employee and their ergonomic chairs. Even the choice of sofas in your collaborative breakout areas and the ambient noise in the office impacts how your employees feel. For moments when staff need privacy and reduced noise without leaving the open office, acoustic seating options such as the Cega High Back Chair can provide a comfortable retreat that supports focus and wellbeing.
As Zoe Humphries explains in OnOffice Magazine, “Understanding that space shapes behaviour, fostering creativity starts with providing areas for people to come together in groups as well as spaces to move apart to work individually. The right range of spaces and technology can remove barriers, ensuring employees have the right space and the right technology when they need it.”
If you give your people a conscientious work environment, they feel valued. They feel their needs are met by a positive and supportive physical space. I work in such a space, and it makes me proud.
Our open-plan office desks are separated by low desk dividers to give a sense of privacy, while still allowing teams who sit together to discuss projects on the fly. The dividers double as magnetic whiteboards, perfect for to-do lists and project deadlines.
Each workstation has desk drawers on castors topped with a plush upholstered seat cushion. When a colleague comes to my desk to discuss a project, I roll out the pedestal from under the desk to give them a convenient seat.
I like the open-plan space, but there are two realities you have to face. It gets noisy, and if someone is 50 metres away, they might as well be in a different city. To solve the first issue, our open-plan areas are lined with private HushHybrid Work Pod units where individuals can plug in and work in silence. There are also multiple acoustically rated Framery One Compact office phone booths—a comfortable, fully enclosed cabin with a support table for your notepad and cuppa during calls.
To bring far-flung colleagues together, the open-plan sections each have small eight-seater meeting pods with multipurpose chairs decked in bright custom fabrics matching the corporate colours. Each meeting room has a white table that doubles as a whiteboard for creative sessions. The tables have embedded power sockets and media ports to connect to the projector and share ideas directly from devices.
If booking a meeting room feels excessive, there are collaborative spaces with comfortable resimercial work sofas, armchairs, low coffee tables, and glass whiteboards where colleagues can meet for impromptu brainstorming sessions or relax over lunch.
Alongside a massive cafeteria that doubles as the corporate assembly space for town halls, there are smaller breakout areas throughout the building where we can eat together and catch up. Of course, there are also big boardrooms of all shapes and sizes for interviews, departmental meetings, and presentations.
It’s a great space to work. And it helps that we’re in an ecologically sustainable, green building with a solar farm on the roof and charging bays for electric vehicles in the basement. The toilets even flush with captured rainwater and greywater.
When your company invests in a space that supports your individual style of work, it’s a marvellous experience. Our workspace brings people together when they need to share ideas and makes room for you to isolate yourself when you need to focus.
Thanks to the caring corporate culture fostered by our expertly designed interior spaces and well-chosen furniture, the employees are not just a workforce—they’re brand ambassadors.
The business doesn’t have to drill in the “company line”, because the corporate values are embedded in our workplace. We work in a futuristic organic machine where independent members take extreme ownership because they’re proud. They go the extra mile and decide to build a career instead of jumping ship.
The business has interpreted our needs with empathy. And they created a complementary space for a healthy company culture to thrive. For us, the employees, it’s a place where creativity can flourish.