Just like sports can level the playing field across class, education and wealth, lack of employee investment can level the field between small and large businesses. While training and benefits, as well as industry competitive pay, are typical discussion points when interviewing for a new job, often a prospective employee overlooks the work environment they might be coming into.
Our consulting work takes us to many types of business and government workspaces, both in the US and Europe, and we are exposed to what seems to be a rather uniform design decision, where aiming at the minimum workspace layout (that is, cubes, open floor plans, high noise environments, and lack of employee freedom to foster creativity) seems to be standard.
We aren't workspace experts, but we appreciate those who are. In fact, one of our favorite books, by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister called Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams, includes chapters on team jelling, group chemistry, brain time versus body time, flow time, "teamicide," and workspace theory. The major point we always come away with is that the current corporate environment being pushed on employees at most companies probably costs the companies more money in lost productivity than they save by not providing things like more private workspaces or natural light for employees to work by.
Most of our experience shows us that companies try to treat complex, bio-chemical systems (that is, people) like they won't notice the environment in which they work. And in fact, most knowledge workers seem to accept that this is what having a job means. Unfortunately, in the business of software and systems, interruption, be it in noise or having an environment so non-stimulating as to cause an almost comatose state, is the technical equivalent of product death.
Since software and system design is a creative and logical process that has to occur just right inside someone's head to be successful, having an employee out of that mental sweet-spot means we ultimately, as a group, would likely receive a less than stellar performance. Since we are the type of company where we expect everyone to count, we just can't afford to do what everyone else is doing.
As such, every knowledge worker in our workspace has access to a light-filled, enclosed office where they can hopefully reach the perfect creative-logical mindset. We hope that those incredibly talented knowledge workers who want to produce their best work will consider coming to work with us as we grow and continue to value not only our employees, but the spaces in which they work.
Note: This posting was updated on 11-09-2009
