What We Get Most Wrong About Workplace Culture

We’ve all heard it before: Google is an incredible place to work. Truly, it is. Between the bikes, the beautiful campus, endless and most up-to-date tools at employee’s disposal, Google is a wonderful place to work.

That is, if you want to work in tech, deal with the pressures and commitments of one of the highest performing companies in the world, and perhaps even work longer hours. Google, while great for many, many people, isn’t great for everyone. And that’s a big problem with how we discuss workplace culture.

What we get most wrong about culture is that we think what works for others will work for us, too. We like to think that if Google has a ball pit for employees (shout out pre-COVID perk?), that our office would be better off with one, too. Not likely.

We like to think that if we mimic or copy the actions and layout of somewhere else, that the impact will be the same for us. That isn’t always the case.

Try this: instead of looking at the action another company is taking, look at the reaction of what was done, and copy that.

So if, for example, a company decides to bring a ping-pong table (and disinfectant) into the office and the result increased play, collaboration, communication, and productivity, don’t necessarily add a ping-pong table, ask the team what they might want in order to increase team morale. 

If you’ve read my material before, you’ll know that I love to talk about the best places to work in the US. According to Fortune Magazine in 2020, the best place to work is Hilton Hotels. Number 2 is Ultimate Software and number 3 is Wegmans.

Now, it doesn’t take an organizational psychologist to know that a ping-pong table probably won’t work in a Wegman’s, and won’t fit too well on the 6th-floor hallway of your local Hilton hotel. But that doesn’t stop these places from bringing incredible places to work though, does it?

What some of the greatest organizations in the world know is that to create a best culture for them means that the experience they provide for their people has to be as unique as the people themselves. What works at Hilton likely won’t work at Ultimate and what works at Wegman’s almost certainly won’t work at Google. All great places to work still? Even more so. 

So, as we look to build a better, perhaps even more remote place to work, we have to know that not only will the actions of some of the greatest companies in the world work, but perhaps something another team in the same company as us might not work either. To truly create the best experience for our people we have to understand what reaction we’re looking for and empower the team to co-create that unique experience for themselves.

Questions to ponder:

What are the three emotions we want to feel at work?

How does our team differ from the rest of the company?

What is the one reaction we admire most about another company/team?

What are we most proud of in terms of experience at work?