Company culture

Our debate focused on how the culture of a workplace can have an impact on the bottom line and more importantly, being from the office interiors industry, to what extent the company culture can be reflected in the office décor.

Unquestionably, it is important that the workplace environment reflects a company's culture. However, like all great insights, it is very simple to talk about but harder to achieve.

Firstly, it might be an idea to look at how a company culture evolves. Culture begins with a good leader who has set goals and more importantly creates the unwritten rules by simply just being. A good leader's behaviour is based on his/her values and personality traits. For example, a naturally creative and erratic person will not naturally have a structured and clean office environment.

Companies will also have written policies for what is accepted and what is not. Together, these written and unwritten rules are the factors that create the boundaries within where we work - and therefore create the culture.

A classic example on how important the right company culture is comes from my hero Jack Welch. When he took over General Electric in the beginning of the 80's he had a clear strategy and vision. In order to implement his strategy he spend over $25m on building a new guesthouse and conference centre at the company's headquarter at Crotonville in the state of New York. At the same time he was downsizing the company, removing one employee in four! In his autobiography 'Jack' (Warner Books, 2001) one can read what he was trying to do: 'The traditionalists were shocked. I persevered because I wanted to create a first rate informal family atmosphere and needed this ambience to get it'. He wanted a place where he could instil values that would be spread around the whole organization - to create the right culture! This was the central platform in order to carry through his strategy.

My colleague Barry speaks about the 'Primary and Secondary Mechanisms' that embed and transmit culture in a company. In the Primary Mechanisms category comes what I touched on earlier - what leaders pay attention to, measure and control, how leaders deal with critical incidents, what leaders actions are - not their words, what is rewarded or punished and the criteria for recruitment and retirement. These are the things Jack knew and worked with through his behaviour.

But Mr Welch also needed the Secondary Mechanisms' as support, i.e. the environment in this case. I am sure he made further adjustments to the Secondary Mechanisms' such as the organizational structure, its procedures and systems.

Another example illustrating the importance of the right company culture is the UK based sandwich company, Prêt a Manger. From the very beginning, the company was a multicultural and multinational organization, with fewer than a third of employees being British, with the remaining staff being a mix of Spanish, Italian, Swedish and French to name a few. The resulting concoction is what the CEO terms as a 'uniquely European culture'. Mix in a weekly staff party at the local pub and a layout of $400,000 per year on summer and Christmas bashes, and Prêt A Manger has created a culture of a young, dynamic, success hungry company. The result? A chain of more than 100 sandwich shops in London and plans to take its recipe to Hong Kong this year, having sold a third of its company to McDonalds with a view to taking the company global. A classic case of culture creation, leads to ultimate success.

Speaking from a purely office interiors perspective, I believe that by simply walking into an office one can identify the culture of a company and often, the type of industry, one is entering. The advertising industry, for example is a one that thrives on image. Image building for clients is their core business, so their offices tend (but far from always) to reflect their creativity and their dynamism. Bright colours, modern, clean décor, teaming spaces and state of the art furnishings feature heavily in these sorts of offices.

At the other end of the scale, offices housing Engineering companies have less creative and more structured, functional and no frills- interiors, mirroring the formality and process-driven jobs that engineers perform.

Financial investment companies need to look professional and reassuring for clients looking to invest their money. However, increasingly, these types of firms are moving away from the stuffy image of dark wooden furniture and burgundy fabrics. Netherlands financial services company, ING Group has 2500 employees at its head office in Amsterdam. Steering away from the typical high-rise commercial building, their purpose built, S-shaped building is composed of ten towers, ranging in height from three to six stories; the walkways that connect them are lined with more than $1 million in original art. But what sets this complex apart is the lack of rectangular or square-shaped rooms. Everything is arranged so that no one sits more than 18 feet from a window. The exterior walls are slanted to conserve energy, and the solar collectors on top of the buildings ensure that the towers are energy self-sufficient. Opened 15 years ago, the bank's headquarters still attract more than 75,000 tourists a year. So how does this relate to company culture? Well, ING Group has been voted one of Fortune magazine's ten great companies to work for in Europe, purely because of its working environment and facilities.

Looking at company culture a bit closer to home, the working environment of an architectural practice might be a hard one to identify. My view is that they are similar to engineering companies but with a spice of being ego-driven. Style and sophistication, mixed with creativity and anarchy are words that can possibly describe architectural practice interiors. Before all of the architects out there start disagreeing with me, these words didn't come from my mouth; in fact an architect friend of mine used these descriptives when taking about his office. He said, 'We spend so much time thinking about our client's work that we consider our working environment to simply be functional, and nothing else. Because we are a creative workforce, the culture of the company needs to be without boundaries and with fewer rules than, say, a law firm. However, I do recognise that we need to improve our working environment and that it will help us to become more productive.'

This is the same friend who tells me that office morale is low and staff sick days are frequent. A team cannot be productive if the individuals within it are absent through ill health. Simply improving the office culture can eliminate both of these factors and focusing on needs closer to home instead of only thinking about the client work. This takes me nicely back to my original point - by concentrating on the culture of the company and all the elements that go with it, you can influence your bottom line and ultimately increase productivity within the workplace.

Over the coming issues, my column will focus on workplace efficiency and all of the elements that go with it, such as ergonomics and staff motivation.

See you next time.


Kristian Petersson is Managing Partner for Kinnarps of Sweden - Middle East. He can be contacted on kristian.petersson@kinnarps.co.ae