Y Magazine :: Yeager Properties Edition

Sometime around 1985, I recall a student of mine showing me some research that proved to be light-years ahead of its time.

It was a study by BOSTI, the Buffalo Organization for Social and Technological Innovation, that showed how the physical design of workspace had a direct effect on job satisfaction, productivity, and profitability--in settings ranging from high-rises to laboratories. Companies with workplaces that encouraged more informal mingling of employees, for example, outperformed those that sequestered their staffs in amaze of cubicles.

Yet in the ensuing years, I've seen these findings preached a lot more than practiced. Scott Adams built his Dilbertian empire by mocking oppressive "cube culture," and I still work in a building that has the floor plan of a jail.

In defense of bosses from hell An April 2006 survey of more than 2,000 office workers commissioned by Gensler, a leading design firm, illustrates both the problems and the promise of workplace design. Nearly half of the respondents said they would work an extra hour a day if they had a better workplace

environment. More than 90 percent reported that their office space affected their attitudes about work and that a different setup could make their companies more competitive.

Yet employers seemed blind to the potential: Only 38 percent of workers said they would be proud to show important customers their workspace. About a third complained that it didn't promote health and well-being.

And almost half thought that creating a productive workplace was not a priority at their companies.

Yet it is possible--in fact, easy--to do better.

Consider this insight, which came from the General Services Administration decades ago: Of the total cost to a company for running an office building over a 30-year life span, the initial construction represents just 2 percent; operating expenses come to about 6 percent.

The remainder? It all goes to paying the workers inside. The point should be obvious: People are the biggest cost inside a work environment, so leveraging your human capital ought to be near the top of your priority list.

The high price of employer mistrust But, of course, it isn't. And the great irony is that you don't have to construct a gleaming new office tower-such as Bloomberg's glass-walled masterpiece in Manhattan--to achieve real results. One management consulting firm, for instance, recently recognized that with its staff spending lots of time out of the office, there was limited opportunity for mentoring and information sharing, and that the workplace inhibited that.

An analysis of traffic patterns in the office showed that a reconfiguration of the space to funnel traffic through common areas where people would naturally mingle would boost interaction 10-fold.

At Electronic Arts(Charts), based in Redwood City, Calif., managers invited employees to plaster their cube dividers with design ideas and notes, and gave them "walls" to make it easier. Worker collaboration there has since gotten a boost.

There are other ways to make improvements, such as doing post-occupancy evaluations--surveys to see how attitudes and practices have changed--so that learning from one project can be used in future workplace design efforts. Much of this research is being done in the WorkPlace 20.20 program of the General Services Administration, the nation's largest landlord.

Workplaces affect interaction, attitudes, and even how we think about what we do. All that's required for improvement is the same thing required for any initiative: high-level involvement and an understanding that the most valuable things inside any office building are the people who work there.

Business 2.0 columnist Jeffrey Pfeffer is the Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business.

All of these have one defining trait in common; they inform in a noninteractive sense.

You can turn away or read as you wish, but that's the extent of your control over the content of the advertisement. This has left the power of brand building largely in the hands of the originators. The company creates its advertising, and people respond to it.

Most people and businesses don't have the money to create massive media blitzes or overarching TV-radioprint campaigns, which left this approach almost entirely to the big names or those small companies willing to take a chance. This is all changing.

As we've discussed before, the landscape in branding has changed from the advertising model to the communicative one. Comments can be left, emails sent, blogs posted and disseminated in a matter of hours. We've established the increasing power the audience has over brands, and have learned how vital conversation is to the modern brand.

Brands can now be built quickly and on a shoestring budget. Webhosting is inexpensive, and in some cases completely free. A Facebook account and an eBay selling account can stand in for a webpage and a storefront, and are exponentially less expensive than a physical store and even a simple ad in the local newspaper.

Brand success is no longer the sole domain of those with the money to employ creative teams and retain advertising firms, but an open territory for any willing to seize the initiative and do the work.

Similarly, the direction of brand construction has changed. We've mentioned the conversation, the allimportant dialog between brand and customer, and the power customers have in shaping the image of a brand.

This has lead to the development of the inbound marketing technique. Rather than hurling information into the ether

and hoping to find a target demographic, people are building ways for the audience to come to them, where a friendly chat can be had.

Consider the most important purchases you've made in the last five years. When is the last time a car advertisement on television spurred you to make a purchase, as opposed to the time you went into a dealership needing a car and sought one out on your own time? How often have your computer purchases been driven by an ad campaign as opposed to a personal desire to upgrade or seek one out?

This is the realm of in-bound marketing techniques. Yes, they still resort to the need to create an attraction in the customer's mind, but the focus is different.

It's less a matter of 'look at what we have to show you,' and much more about 'come tell me what you have to say.'

Consider the success of the Something Awful forums. Similar to 4chan and other casual social sites, SA has indisputably developed a brand of its own on the Internet. Ask about SA on just about any site, and you don't need the full name, just the initials to get a response.

And yet at the heart SA is just a forum, a place for people to come and talk, and to read entertaining articles lampooning various facets of pop culture. The whole message, consciously or not, is simply, 'come on in, and let's have a chat.'

Not every site can use the exact approach of SA of course, but that isn't the point. The point is that if you feel confident in your product, be it a physical item to sell or ideas you wish to promote, then you should focus less on throwing it out to the world at large and more on trying to find ways to get people to come in and have a closer look.

Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Dig, Reddit, Slashdot: There are social media networks and sites everywhere. People conveniently arrange themselves into groups based on interests and locations, and advertise these facts on profiles and group pages. A great deal of the research is already done for you, all you have to do is look for it. Put simply, these people WANT to talk about their interests. Don't simply shout your message at them; instead, give them a place they can come and share what they have to say, and give them a product that relates.

Yes, digital branding requires even more hard work than big-time traditional advertising, especially on a budget. You may not be able to hire a bigwig designer to put out slick posters and compose outstanding music.

What you can do is tap into peoples' desire to talk, their wish to understand and be understood, and then give them both a place to visit and many roads to get to that place.

Build the road and the inn, and travelers will find their way.

Enzo F. Cesario is an online brand specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, articles, videos and social media in the "voice" of our client's brand. It makes sites more findable and brands more recognizable.

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