Image: Dream Job Next Exit…PeapodLife
Image Credit: skedx.com: Are You Successfully Retaining Top Talent?
Image Credit: skedx.com: Are You Successfully Retaining Top Talent?
“A frustrated employee is a greater threat than a merely unhappy one.”
~ Bill Hewlett and David Packard, Founders of HP
Source: logomaker.com: 11 Inspirational Quotes from Bill Hewlett and David Packard
Conventional wisdom among researchers is “that the best way to hire and keep top talent is to create a company culture where the best employees want to work, a culture in which people are treated with respect and consideration at all times.” (Source: entrepreneur.com: Entrepreneur: How to Recruit Top Talent)
As far as PeapodLife is concerned, this is not a goal in and of itself. A company treating people with respect and consideration at all times should be the starting point of any endeavour, and not the “best practice employee recruitment and retention strategy.”
(For the record, we actually wince at the whole “recruitment and retention strategy” terminology, along with the idea of a fabricated “culture,” but we’ll go along with it for now.)
Of course, there are companies who no-doubt would agree with us. Enter Google, with its foosball tables, rock-climbing walls, video game consoles and countless other toys, gimmicks, and other distractions appealing to their young, hip, geeky employee demographics who want their time spent on Google’s “campuses” to be just that: an extension of university life.
We cannot, of course, testify to what it’s actually like working at Google: we don’t know if respect and consideration at all times there, we like to assume it is; but as for the “above and beyond the call of duty,” the bobbles, bells, whistles and do-dads of romper-room for IT professionals strikes us as trying too hard to be hip, and not exactly natural (they are, after all, supposed to be adults).
What we would suggest to any company—large or small—is to start by getting an ecosystem. Simple. So what will it do to your ability to attract and keep the best employees? It will create an environment in which they will want to spend their time and that will help them thrive.
It doesn’t have to be huge:
Image: PeapodLife Muro EcoSystem
It doesn’t need to make a huge statement, although it can do:
Image by PeapodLife: Living Wall Ecosystem at Tel-E-Connect Ontario
Top talent want to perform. We are products of our environment. Yes, of course, a positive, kind, caring, nurturing culture is important, but guess what: unless the environment is supportive of such a culture, it’s fighting an up-hill battle to survive, let alone thrive.
Just think of it: all the respect and consideration in the world can’t do anything to mitigate poor air quality, sick building syndrome, and the stresses that top-performers often subject themselves to. A high-order rainforest ecosystem from PeapodLife can do something about it, and so much more.
Just how much more? Legend has it that upon entering the former head offices of Club Monaco and walking through its indoor ecosystem (which included a lagoon and two 40-foot living walls), Ralph Lauren decided to buy the Company. That’s the kind of deep-felt impact your company can have on an individual, whether they are a prospective partner, client, and yes, manager or employee.
Don’t take our word for it. You know yourself how quickly you feel at home in a space (or not); we have an innate, natural ability to sense belonging.
On top of all that, the positive impact the fresh, clean air and vibrant rainforest colours will have on your entire organization will help revitalize energy, imagination and inspiration while reducing stress, anxiety and conflict. All that will go a long way towards the baseline goal of respect and consideration at all times.
We are products of our environment. So is your culture, and all your talent. Keep that in mind, and contact us to experience the power of PeapodLife for yourself.
Image by PeapodLife: Office-Space transformed into an environment for top-performance by top-talent
