The Best Place to Work

How much thought do you give to your surroundings at work? And how much do you think that influences how you feel about your employer?

Apparently the above, who you're seated next to and in what type of arrangement; how you're praised, allowed to do your work, and communicated to; and much more all influence how you feel about the place you work, as Ron Friedman shares is his book The Best Place to Work: The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace.

Ron shares many fascinating studies and anecdotes and I recommend all leaders and aspiring leaders read this book. 

And as we learn at the end of the book, all these lessons can be broken down into three overarching themes:

1. psychological needs are at the heart of employee engagement—namely, employees need to experience autonomy, competence, and relatedness on a daily basis.
2. organizations are more successful when they address the limits of the mind and body—due to our limited mental bandwidth, we need breaks and opportunities to recharge to keep performing.
3. integrating work and family life improves the quality of both—work-life balance does not exist so allow life to infringe work since work infringes on life.

If employers can't be convinced to do this for the right reasons—wanting staff that are happy to come to work—they should do this since happy staff lead to more profitable companies, as Ron states at the end of his book:

When we fulfill employees' needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, when we allow them to leverage the full breadth of their mental  capacity, when we provide them with the flexibility to succeed in both their personal and professional lives, we achieve more than any extraordinary workplace.

We create an organization that performs its very best. 

Is your workplace fulfilling the three overarching needs?