Office conditions leave room for improvement
Decor affects workers, a survey finds. Dirty bathrooms and climate control draw most ire.
By Molly Selvin
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
Forget salaries, expense accounts or keys to the executive washroom. Employee loyalty is won or lost over the cleanliness of the bathrooms and the amount of sticky goo on the carpet.
One in three workers surveyed recently said they had accepted a job — or quit one — because of the most basic working conditions. The respondents’ chief complaints by far: the state of the indoor atmosphere, the gripes being about either hot-as-the-tropics heating or Antarctic air conditioning.
Corporate managers searching for new office space think mostly about rent and whether the layout and location will work for their companies, said Johnny Winton, president of Blumberg Capital Partners, which commissioned the survey. “They’re not really thinking . . . ‘Will my employees be OK working in this environment?’ ”
For the entire article go to LATimes.com
Corra believes it makes perfect sense that a decent working environment makes a big difference to your employees. You would think this would be a no brainer, but judging by employers we have known in the past, this is far from common practice. We have been all too aware of mold infested offices, or walls painted in that ever-so-lovely battleship gray.
Recruit the right employees, through a careful preemployment screening process, and then take decent care of them. As the old saying used to go, let them feel like human beings. No one really needs to work in an updated version of the sweatshop drudgery that permeated the muckraking novels at the turn of the twentieth century.
This is not the only article Corra has read citing the need for a decent working environment. Perhaps for some employers who situate their workers in depressing environments, part of the background checking process should be a questionnaire, asking job candidates if they would be okay working in a sty.
In these days of going green, make sure your employees don’t turn green, working in a lousy environment. Clean it up, treat them well. Run background checks. That way neither you the employer, nor your employee will end up disappointed.
Check them out before you hire.
