I recently was asked by Dealer Support to write an article for their ‘Final Word’ section of their magazine. Below is the article I wrote about the merits of having a comfortable work place. What do you think?
Are you sitting comfortably?
Probably the most widely used strap lines in our industry associated to office furniture. However, I don’t want to talk about furniture. I want to talk about the potential of being comfortable at work.
Recently at the OFDA dealer conference I spoke to dealers about technology in business. One of the questions I was interested to ask was “where do you go if you have some really important work to do?” Most people’s response was somewhere quiet. I dug a little deeper and it turns out that often somewhere quiet is generally somewhere that is not the office.
So where do you go? The OFDA dealers mostly went home, some went to coffee shops and some got their work done on their commute to and from the office on public transport.
What struck me as interesting is that these places aren’t necessarily ‘quiet’. I pondered to myself what it was about these places that allowed people to get their best work done. My belief is that people get their best work done in these places not because they are quiet, (trust me, I work from home and with a 4 week old baby, a German Shepherd and Jeremy Kyle on tv it is not quiet) but because people are at their most comfortable in these places.
If being comfortable is the key ingredient in being extra productive then it is no wonder that cutting edge companies like Google & Facebook have created astonishingly relaxed work environments.
What Google and Facebook have in common is that their work places are very informal. The dress code within their offices are very relaxed which isn’t always appropriate in our industry, but, where possible I think there is real merit in making staff feel relaxed and comfortable as ultimately your staff will find the office a more pleasant place to be. Your staff will be off sick less, you’ll retain staff for longer and be able to attract the best quality of staff.
Another question I was keen to pose to the OFDA members was whether they block their staff from viewing certain web sites. Specifically Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. I was surprised to learn that some dealers do still block these web sites in their offices. Youtube will feature hundreds of beneficial product and sales technique videos, Facebook and Twitter offer a great opportunity for new business and with most people having access to these sites on their mobile phones by blocking them you are encouraging staff to be underhand with their access to them. Instead why not open up access on the condition that these sites can only be used in lunch and break times and that to use them each staff member has to invite all of their friends on these sites to like and follow your Facebook and Twitter pages. In this process see if you have a social media expert within your team. Dealers are always telling me they don’t have time for social media or they can’t afford to recruit someone to manage it. The key to being good with social media is being good at being social. Have you got anyone who is social? It could anyone from a van driver to someone in the sales admin team.
If you make sure your staff are comfortable in work then I guarantee you’ll have a happier more productive team and who knows in a few years’ time we could all be working in our pyjamas with sofa beds for office cubicles!
