Rating Qualities

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Inspiring
Concrete Examples

Bring Your Human to Work

10 Surefire Ways to Design a Workplace That's Good for
People, Great for Business, and Just Might Change the World
Erica Keswin | McGraw-Hill © 2018

A values-based corporate culture that attends to the human needs of its employees gives your
firm an advantage in today’s world where good people are hard to keep. Consultant and Spaghetti
Project founder Erica Keswin’s 10 “surefire” ideas for designing a workplace that works are pure
common sense. Your employees want a comfortable environment, flexible schedules, work-
life balance and inspiring leaders. Millennials and Gen Z employees, in particular, Keswin says,
expect corporate responsibility, sustainable practices and professional development. Even big
firms can incorporate these strategies, as many have done for decades. Keswin demonstrates how
companies that invest in strong values can validate their employees and gain great retention and
a stronger bottom line.

Take-Aways
• Successful businesses honor human relationships.
• Give employees education, support, mentoring and rewards, and let them own your brand.
• Promoting a values-based culture engages and inspires employees.
• Offer employees work-anywhere options, but require them to spend a certain amount of time in
the office to maintain a shared culture.
• Find the technology “sweet spot” that frees up time for human interaction while providing a
seamless online experience.
• To maintain a focus on your values, use meetings as opportunities to reinforce the
company vision, educate, provide support and give everyone a voice.
• Smart spaces allow for the free exchange of ideas across the workplace culture.
• If your employees spend a lot of time at their desks, start a program to encourage them
to walk 10,000 steps.

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 • Overwork is responsible for “burnout, lack of engagement and attrition.”
• Thanking people who make your job easier builds a profitable culture of gratitude.

Summary

Achieving a Human-Centered Work Culture

To meet employees’ increasing quest for a purposeful workplace, a company must base its culture
on well-defined, vigorous, durable values that infuse and honor every relationship. To create this
kind of workplace, choose from 10 strategies that support a meaningful, values-based culture:

1. “Be Real: Speak in a Human Voice”

Your employees and consumers seek authenticity, which derives from values. Choose
touchstones that best reflect your company’s goals, and align those values with every aspect of
your business. Pick four to six memorable values that resonate with your employees. For example,
JetBlue airline has five values – “safety, integrity, caring, passion” and “fun” – that form a web of
meaningful relationships among its staff and customers. Your company’s values are the voice that
tells its story. Make your voice consistent and easy to understand. Real stories resonate with your
clients and workers, who are your brand ambassadors. Don’t give staff members scripts. Instead,
give them education, support, mentoring and rewards, and let them own your brand. JetBlue
empowers employees by teaching them “JetGrey” – permission to navigate situations in real time
by trusting themselves and their decisions.

2. “Play the Long Game…Sustainability”

Sustainability goes beyond environmental concerns. It is a continual practice that focuses on

the future you foresee for your people and your business. Technology enables sustainability; use
it wisely. With the correct tech, employees can work anywhere, but be careful that
technology doesn’t isolate. Be strategic about fostering connections. Offer work-at-home options,
but require people to spend a certain amount of time in the office to maintain a shared
culture. Express your values through your actions.

“A meaningful culture – a place where people can feel like they are plugged into
something bigger than themselves – that’s a human culture.”

If you say that you support family life, make that real in your policies. For
example, Airbnb provides reduced work hours and 10 paid weeks of what it calls “child
bonding leave.” The Muse, a career support company, lets new parents bring their babies to
work for six months. Facebook doubled its bereavement leave. These “intentional workplace
practices” make your values authentic. The professional service firm EY honors diversity and
inclusion by putting those values “front and center” in hiring. Discuss what diversity means to

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 your company and reflect the conclusions of your talks in your policies. The research organization
Forbes Insights finds that radical innovation requires diverse gender practices. Homogeneous
workplaces can’t be as competitive.

“It is true that the space itself matters (a lot), but you won’t get the results you seek if you
don’t consider the implementation, rollout and communications. In other words, don’t
forget the human part.”

When you claim transparency as a value, be transparent. Today’s consumers want to see your
supply line, to know the sources of the ingredients in your food. The Betterwith brand of “100%
honest ice-cream” tells its consumers that its milk comes from Lavender Farms in Abbotsford,
British Columbia.

3. “The Sweet Spot Between…Tech and Connect”

Technology makes connecting with other people easier than ever, but misused technology
alienates people from one another. It can distract your employees, divide their attention, reduce
their commitment, and make them less productive and more stressed. To honor your relationships
with your staff and customers, select the best way to communicate with each of them. Your sweet
spot is that point at which you integrate tech seamlessly into the consumer experience to free up
time and resources for personalized customer service. Automate mundane consumer interactions,
such as filling out forms.

“Committing to one’s valuable talent, bringing people together in productive social

groups and mining for creative self-expression are all ways of bringing out the best in
people.”

Employees should handle the human elements of customer service – answering questions, making
recommendations and settling complaints. The slow fast-food restaurant chain Sweetgreen
tracks customers’ preferences and uses the data to create “intimacy to scale.” No matter which
outlet you visit, the staff can suggest items based on your past orders. You also can tailor your
workplace technology to your users. Would picking up the phone – rather than sending an email
– be a better way to deal with an urgent matter? Or is meeting face-to-face best? Pick the option
that honors the relationship.

4. “Purpose, Presence and Protocols”

Meetings are great for making human connections – but are often ineffectual time wasters. To
link your values to meetings, use the sessions to reinforce the company’s vision, educate, provide
support or give everyone a voice. Tiffany Pham, CEO of the digital company Mogul, hosts meetings
designed to engage everyone from all departments and holds impromptu one-on-one sessions
during her office walkabouts. Vary your meetings’ size and frequency to reinforce your firm’s
stated values.

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 “In any given situation, ask yourself, ‘What is the best medium of communication to
honor this relationship?’”

If people at your meetings steal peeks at their phones, they aren’t really present or paying
attention; that’s all the more reason to be clear about the purpose of any meeting. If necessary to
discourage distraction, put protocols in place, such as a no-tech policy, crystal-clear meeting
agendas and a timekeeper. To be sure that Netflix employees engage at meetings, product strategy
vice president Todd Yellin expects them to show up ready for that meeting’s agenda and without
their devices. To make meetings meaningful, institute the three Ps: purpose, presence and
protocols. Honor relationships and reinforce connections. Encourage everyone to speak, share a
story or voice an opinion.

5. “Well-Being at Work”

Wellness is holistic and includes the mind, body and spirit. As the line between leisure and work
time blurs, forward-thinking companies are incorporating wellness into their vision and offering
supportive choices. Vynamic, a health care consultancy, hired a certified health coach and offers
programs that include healthy snacks, ergonomic chairs, treadmill desks, and the like. It provides
mentors and coaches and holds open forums during which participants talk about how they work
together. Vynamic developed its own “zzzMail” policy: no work emails between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.
or on weekends and holidays. Vynamic’s profits grow every year.

“Giving back is part of being human. Think of finding your own company’s approach as
just another opportunity to discover who you are and what you stand for.”

Align your wellness strategy with the needs of your company and your employees. Fight
employee isolation. Former US surgeon general Vivek H. Murthy says loneliness is the most
common disease in America. Remember that a little civility goes a long way toward connecting
your people with your stakeholders and one another. If your employees spend a lot of time at their
desks, start a program to encourage them to walk 10,000 steps. Communicate about your well-
being program to everyone to optimize its effectiveness. Assess your results by implementing
metrics to measure your “return on wellness” (ROW).

6. “Give Back”

Inspired employees are more productive. Nothing is more inspirational than giving
back. Corporate Responsibility Magazine reports that most stakeholders expect companies “to
engage socially in their communities.” Build social action – like supporting local charities or
donating expertise – into your corporate values. Use technology to amplify their impact. Get
everyone involved. Solicit employees’ ideas and feedback. Recognize workers when they go above
and beyond.

“Just be nice. And make sure your employees are, too.”

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 Be alert to opportunities to add value to your company’s story. For example, the online men’s
underwear store Mack Weldon enables customers to send back old clothes – including underwear
– postage-paid for recycling by a textile recycling company. General Assembly, which hosts co-
working locations, started an Opportunity Fund that lets corporations such as Target, Adobe
and AT&T offer free training programs to their employees. Faherty Brand, a surfing-inspired
clothing company, photographed its catalog in Haiti and donated about 5% of the proceeds, some
$50,000, to Artists for Peace and Justice.

7. “Disconnect to Reconnect”

Having too much technology in your daily life can be bad for your mental health and can
affect your memory and capacity to learn. Technology can be a working necessity and a huge
help, but also a big time drain and energy burden. Fewer Americans take vacations because they
can work anywhere. Overwork leads to “burnout, lack of engagement and attrition.” To foster
sustainable work habits, “start as you mean to go on.” Your company values should embrace
sound work habits and work-life balance from day one. Instead of serving dinners to your
staff, tell them to go home. Close the office periodically. Have employees share photos of their
vacations. Automaker Daimler even uses a tool to delete emails received during vacation. Rowland
+Broughton, an architecture firm, supports its employees’ work-life balance by notifying them
when they have worked more than 40 hours in a week. For a long time, its CEOs didn’t disconnect.
When they finally took vacations, they reflected on what really mattered to them. They
returned rejuvenated and inspired other employees to take time off.

8. “Space Matters: Curating Connection”

A good working environment helps people connect and form the office friendships that benefit
your staff members and your business. Align your values with your space. The website design
firm Squarespace focuses on hiring millennials and launching their careers. When Squarespace
CEO Anthony Casalena decided to redesign the firm’s space, he wanted it to reflect his employees’
work habits: “equal parts wild collaboration and intense solitude.” The redesign eliminated private
offices and installed quiet workspaces along exterior walls, with collaborative space in the middle.

“It seems so simple. We should all do it, every day, however we can. Just say thank you.”

Moving employees around or locating people near those who perform different tasks teaches
them what other people do. Removing old-fashioned barriers is good, but consider your staff
members’ preferences and plan strategically. Offer choices such as different types of seating
or standing desks. The online investment service Betterment provides off-site office space for
employees who want a change. In the future, firms may use AI to seat people in the right spaces,
on the right day, near those with whom they interact productively. Balance being organized with
being flexible.

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 9. “Empower Employees”

The days of company-based training and industry conferences are waning. Millennials believe that
everyone wants “to grow on the job.” They seek personal and professional growth and don’t value
their paychecks above all other job criteria. When the nonprofit DoSomething.org promoted Aria
Finger to develop an in-house agency for employee engagement and education, she asked her
co-workers what they wanted. An innovative, successful four-week sabbatical program sprang
from this project. It sounds “crazy,” but it works. To be eligible, employees need to have had
two consecutive years with the company. They must identify a suitable temporary replacement
and they must agree to remain for one year after their break.

“The best thank-yous are ones that highlight something specific that has been done on a
project – or a way that someone made you feel.”

Community cohesion, team-building and mentoring are good ways to support lasting
relationships and learning. Betterment created “bands” of eight employees from different
departments to learn about each other’s work, hang out, eat together and engage in healthy
competition. Each band connects to other bands. Betterment shuffles the membership from
time to time to keep the bands lively. Newbies, veterans, salespeople and designers share and
create ideas. Refinery, a global media company catering to young women, designed an emotional
intelligence and empathy training program for its leaders. With a new awareness of what
triggers their frustration or anger, these leaders develop greater coping skills.

10. “Say Thank You”

Gratitude has given birth to an entire industry based on the benefits of thanking
others. Recognition for great work doesn’t merely make employees feel good, it also
boosts your bottom line. The indoor-cycling giant SoulCycle enjoys cult-like status among its
users. Its “pin program” spreads that spirit to employees. Employees give each other pins that
say “Culture of Yes” or “Embrace Change” to show their appreciation for those who embody the
company’s core values. Make gratitude part of your culture. At Indagare, a boutique online travel
community, staff members share what they are grateful for each morning; it makes them feel
good and they get to know each other better. Personally thank everyone often. Most people don’t
feel appreciated at work. Thanking those who make your job easier builds a profitable culture of
gratitude.

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 About the Author
Consultant, recruiter and strategist Erica Keswin contributes to Forbes, the Harvard Business
Review, Entrepreneur and the Quartz at Work website. She founded the Spaghetti Project, “a
platform devoted to sharing the science and stories of human connections with global brands,
communities, teams, and individuals,” based on the idea that people who have a meal together
form closer bonds.

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