Designing our work experience

I am incredibly fortunate to work in an amazingly well planned and thought out open office and hot desk environment. But even with full focus zones it can be difficult at times to concentrate because of distracting background conversations. If this happens to you and you are like me and unable to work along to music (I find lyrics way too distracting), you might be interested in trying https://coffitivity.com/. It plays ambient sounds ... think library, or cafe (thankfully not whale sounds) to help you block out other noise and focus. I use this app all the time, its a lifesaver.

Is your workplace kitchette perpetually untidy? Are there serial offenders who just won't comply with the signs stuck up on the wall, on the bench, on the dishwasher? It seems to happen everywhere, and a colleague and I were laughing yesterday as we saw a bunch of dishes on a bench just beneath the instructions telling people: 

"DO NOT leave your dirty dishes in the kitchette, don't be lazy. Take them to the main kitchen."

I kid you not, the first two words are bold + all caps + underlined. It reminded me of a research study that found that pictures of eyes changed people's littering behaviour, making them tidier.

A group of scientists at Newcastle University, headed by Melissa Bateson and Daniel Nettle of the Center for Behavior and Evolution, conducted a field experiment demonstrating that merely hanging up posters of staring human eyes is enough to significantly change people’s behavior. Over the course of 32 days, the scientists spent many hours recording customer’s “littering behavior” in their university’s main cafeteria, counting the number of people that cleaned up after themselves after they had finished their meals. In their study, the researchers determined the effect of the eyes on individual behavior by controlling for several conditions (e.g. posters with a corresponding verbal text, without any text, male versus female faces, posters of something unrelated like flowers, etc). The posters were hung at eye-level and every day the location of each poster was randomly determined. The researchers found that during periods when the posters of eyes, instead of flowers, overlooked the diners, twice as many people cleaned up after themselves.

So perphaps try adding pictures of eyes to your kitchette signs. To read more about the mechanics of "Neural architecture" and "Gaze detection" and to read about how the studies were designed and conducted go to http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-the-illusion-of-being-observed-can-make-you-better-person

This study is also quoted in Quick and Dirty Tips which has a few more suggestions for office tidiness. Not sure if I agree with all of them (do grown ups need candy rewards?) but sometimes you just gotta try something.

Earlier this year Fortune magazine published it's annual list of the 100 best companies to work for in the U.S. Results are based on surveying employees. Sure, not all companies have jets or yachts to share with employees but there is still plenty to learn from reading the company snapshots.

The reasons these companies have been nominated as great places to work by those that work there are:

1. Good rewards
   • incentives, profit sharing, bonuses, above average pay for industry
2. Strong and clear company mission
3. Benefits
   • health insurance, health programs, childcare facilities, generous leave, workplace flexibility, other perks
4. Physical work environment
   • food, access to services like dry cleaning, even walking tracks
5. People
   • considered recruitment efforts, long tenure of employees
6. Culture
   • recognition of excellence, adherance to, and evaluation based on values, fun incentives, games and events, happiness commitees, herograms, "no jerk" culture
7. Feedback
   • Staff suggestions implemented, feedback mechanisms and forums in place
8. Visible leadership
   • Leaders touching base with employees regularly or based on high performance of teams
9. No layoffs
   • The US has faced tough economic times recently. Many companies on this list avoided lay-offs 
10. Career paths
    • Progression plans, internal promotion, investment in training and education
11.  Acknowledging role of families
    • Inclusion of families in company events, acknowlegement of their contribution supporting employees

To see all the company snapshots go to: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/best-companies/2012/snapshots/1.html

Some highlights from the article to encourage your further reading:

On privacy and productivity

Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption. ... introverts are comfortable working alone — and solitude is a catalyst to innovation. ... introversion fosters creativity by “concentrating the mind on the tasks in hand ... ... Privacy also makes us productive. In a fascinating study known as the Coding War Games, consultants Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister compared the work of more than 600 computer programmers at 92 companies. They found that people from the same companies performed at roughly the same level — but that there was an enormous performance gap between organizations. What distinguished programmers at the top-performing companies wasn’t greater experience or better pay. It was how much privacy, personal workspace and freedom from interruption they enjoyed. Sixty-two percent of the best performers said their workspace was sufficiently private compared with only 19 percent of the worst performers. Seventy-six percent of the worst programmers but only 38 percent of the best said that they were often interrupted needlessly.

On the open plan office

Studies show that open-plan offices make workers hostile, insecure and distracted. They’re also more likely to suffer from high blood pressure, stress, the flu and exhaustion. And people whose work is interrupted make 50 percent more mistakes and take twice as long to finish it.

On brainstorming and groupwork

... brainstorming sessions are one of the worst possible ways to stimulate creativity. The brainchild of a charismatic advertising executive named Alex Osborn who believed that groups produced better ideas than individuals, workplace brainstorming sessions came into vogue in the 1950s. “The quantitative results of group brainstorming are beyond question,” Mr. Osborn wrote. “One group produced 45 suggestions for a home-appliance promotion, 56 ideas for a money-raising campaign, 124 ideas on how to sell more blankets.” But decades of research show that individuals almost always perform better than groups in both quality and quantity, and group performance gets worse as group size increases.

... The reasons brainstorming fails are instructive for other forms of group work, too. People in groups tend to sit back and let others do the work; they instinctively mimic others’ opinions and lose sight of their own; and, often succumb to peer pressure. The Emory University neuroscientist Gregory Berns found that when we take a stance different from the group’s, we activate the amygdala, a small organ in the brain associated with the fear of rejection. Professor Berns calls this “the pain of independence.”

Some advice is offered at the conclusion of the article so it's not all doom and glom. Read it at the NYTimes.com The Rise of the New Groupthink