We’re in the midst of the ‘Great Resignation’. More people are leaving their jobs than ever before. This year alone it’s expected that 20% of workers will be handing in their notice and seeking new opportunities elsewhere. Practically every business across the country is struggling to hire and retain staff, with reports suggesting that only 15% of UK organisations have been unaffected by the situation.

It’s clear that businesses must be doing more to attract high quality candidates and provide positive employee experiences. How can organisations do that? By providing workers with what they want, and what they need. What do workers today want and need? A top company culture that supports them in achieving their best.

The Importance of Culture

Workplace culture is becoming increasingly important from an employee perspective. In fact, recent research shows that culture is now one of the first and most critical factors a candidate considers when searching for a new job. Glassdoor reports that 77% of workers want to know about a company’s culture before applying for a position, and just over half think culture is just as important as salary.

Studies have even found company culture to be playing a major role in the ‘Great Resignation’, as companies with a toxic culture are reportedly more than 10 times more likely to suffer with high staff turnover rates than those with a positive culture.

Building a Positive Workplace Culture

The way to build the right type of company culture is to determine what matters to you – to define your company’s own values and beliefs – and communicate them.

For example, if what matters to a company is collaboration, a business may choose to communicate this value by encouraging employees to work closely together. If what matters to a company is innovation, this may be communicated through the scheduling of ‘free time’ in which staff are encouraged to work on problem solving.

One communication method that’s often overlooked? The workspace itself.

Culture & The Office Environment

McKinsey sums this up nicely: ‘It’s not about the office, it’s about the belonging’. We often think about office design in terms of aesthetics. But really, that just skims the surface of what the workspace is really all about. How a workspace looks is just one part of the equation. How it makes employees feel, act, and behave is the other.

The design of your office space communicates to your employees the sort of behaviour that is expected within that space; it guides employees towards certain behaviours and towards certain activities that align with how you want to operate.

For example, imagine wanting to build a culture of transparency, yet hiding business leaders away in isolated offices, behind closed doors. Or wanting to build a culture of knowledge sharing yet failing to offer collaborative spaces that enable people to learn and grow. Or wanting to build a culture of diversity and inclusion yet creating an office space that only supports one type of worker. It just doesn’t make sense.

How you design your space matters.

And there’s plenty of research to back this up. One study concluded that ‘the nature of workplace designs has a considerable impact on the corporate culture of an organisation, and can be used to leverage and change its culture’.

At SPACE, this doesn’t come as any surprise to us. We know just how powerful a workspace can be. It’s why we’re here to help you design the right space for you.