Creating a brand environment

While all brands are not created equal, what’s on the inside can truly inspire and excite. Di Macdonald, formerly director of culture, learning and development at 3, provides some simple advice for companies looking to create a stimulating working environment.

So, you’re working for a great company that may or may not have a great brand, but how do you feel when you arrive at work every morning? Does your environment show what your company is all about and what it’s trying to achieve? Are the values apparent? Is it inspiring and exciting? Does it make you really want to be there? Does it really matter?

The answer to the last question is absolutely yes. This does not mean you have to have an outrageous, funky environment and all hang out on beanbags with cappuccinos, but workplace surroundings play a major role in how employees feel about the company’s brand and, more importantly, how they live that brand. This not only includes how they behave at work, but how they talk about your brand at the pub.

And what about the people who come to your office for a job interview? First impressions are important and play a major role in the decision-making process. Advertising guru David Ogilvy once said: “A brand is all the ways a company is perceived.” Keep this in mind when it comes to your surroundings. I believe great brands start from within and your environment sets the scene for this. How much can you tell about a friend by what their home is like? Quite a lot, and the same goes for the workplace.

I was involved with running a workshop recently with a recruitment team for a large UK brand. We held it offsite and at the end of the day I thought, wow, what a great company, I’d consider working for them one day. A week later we ran the second workshop at their offices, and I can safely say would not want to work there unless my first job was to create an inspiring environment. With wall-to-wall beige, no wonder they are having problems recruiting. It has nothing to do with their processes or where they are advertising, but everything to do with where they work.

There are many ways to change your environment, but the easiest is to start with what your brand is all about. To do this, try thinking about your brand as if it were a person. What would it look like? What would it wear? What would your brand do on a weekend? Where would it holiday? Where would it live? Where would it shop? Is it more Waitrose than Co-op? Is it cheeky? Considerate? Outrageous? Have you seen the Mac versus PC adverts? That’s what you want to arrive at, a picture in your head about where this brand would hang out.

It really helps to draw this person, especially if you’re going to communicate your ideas to other people. Involve employees in the process, so they feel like they are helping to create something great and have some pride towards the brand. You can also build in elements that your brand aspires to, which will help you create its environment.

Now you have a picture of what your brand looks like, ask yourself: “Is the environment right for our brand?” I have been in so many offices where I could describe what the facilities director was like before I could understand anything about the brand. And usually, they are ex-engineers who are really good at controlling cost and will challenge you on everything. Learn to play nicely with them early on and involve them in the entire process or they could destroy your projects before they are up and running.

But, before you grab a paintbrush, have a think about this… You have all these people working for your brand, which means this is a perfect opportunity to engage them by asking for their input. People hate having things done to them, even if your intentions are right. The most valuable thing you can do when changing their environment is to ask them what they want to see.

The easiest and most cost effective way I have used in the past is to create a graffiti wall in a part of the building everyone goes to, such as the café or kitchen. Paint a wall with blackboard paint and leave out loads of multicoloured chalk and have people tell you what they’d like to see. I have used this method more than once and it has produced some amazing ideas. One example was when we were creating a new café space. The results were brilliant and we ended up creating Wagamama-style seating to encourage collaboration and cross-team working, which we needed to improve.

Another thing to consider is whether customers or clients visit your site. What do you want them to see and feel? It’s important for your clients to be as passionate about your brand and products as you are. An example of this is at 3. We turned our reception into a showcase celebrating who we are and what we did. It changed every month and showed not only what our people were achieving, but also entertained our clients.

I always try and consider the small things and the tone of voice used around the office. The impact of some signs I have seen at various companies are hilarious and make you wonder who they have working there. An interesting example was when I was recently invited to a meeting at a very large corporate in London. In the toilets there were A4 laminated notices telling women not to leave their sanitary napkins on the floor so as not to offend visitors. I was shocked that it was necessary to point this out to their employees. An even more disturbing example was a hand-made sign asking people not to spit on the floor. Nice.

Another area that is often neglected is meeting rooms. How many meeting rooms have you walked into and felt your energy being sapped by the grey carpet tiles and lack of natural light? Think about how you want people to feel. Try and obtain some variety – calm, quiet spaces for reflection; colourful, loud spaces for energising. Ask people want they want. We found our legal team wanted some quiet library space, yet our programme office wanted a quick decision-making room. So, we built a library for the legal team with comfy seats and a soundproof door, and a space with a high bench but no seats for the programme team. Decisions happen quickly when you are standing up.

Test your ideas on people in the building before committing to any plan. Some ideas sound great on paper but are not so great in reality, even if they have come from your staff. Once again, tell people why you’re doing things. I once worked somewhere where everyone’s rubbish bins were removed overnight. Apparently we were heading down the recycling route, they just hadn’t told anyone. The impact of this was outrage which lasted years… yes, years. It became the “remember when they took our rubbish bins away” story. It also encouraged people to pile up rubbish on their desks, including banana skins, and coffee cups, inviting a disgusting smell around the office. Needless to say, such a tiny thing had a massive impact and eventually the bins were returned at significant cost to the company (they had thrown all the old bins out and had to buy new ones). Good intentions, bad execution.

No matter how creative or skilled you are, don’t attempt to do it all yourself. Enlist the help of a design agency who understands your brand. When I first started changing the environment at 3, I spent many long Sundays putting up Christmas trees, painting walls, and planting palm trees for the cafe. I even enlisted the help of family members to help decorate the office for Easter. It really is worth doing some research and enlisting the help of experts, even if just to give your relatives a quiet weekend.

Keep it fresh. Don’t just put up a poster and leave it. Try and keep things moving and interesting. This doesn’t have to be expensive. People usually use the same lifts, stairs, meeting rooms and floors. Don’t cram words onto a poster; pictures speak a thousand words. The only exception to this rule is perhaps on the back of toilet doors, where employees will no doubt have time to read more than one bullet point.

Think about your products. This can be a real source of inspiration and show people what is happening in the business. Most product and marketing teams know exactly what products are launching and when, but tend not to tell the rest of the company. Get them involved and use the environment to showcase their work. Consider your values. Is brave a value? Great, go for it, be brave, show people what that looks like. Is teamwork a value? Excellent, but how conducive is your space to team working? Do you value innovation? If so, where can people go to innovate in your building? Consider your company’s values and build the environment around them.

Creative doesn’t need to be expensive. Small changes, such as a simple change in office layout, can have a huge impact. I am amazed at how many companies I have come across who tell me their sales and marketing functions just don’t speak to each other. When I ask where they sit, they are invariably on different floors or sometimes in different offices. Do not expect miracles. Put them next to each other if you want collaboration.

And let’s not forget the dreaded training rooms. Training departments are always complaining that people never turn up for training. In fact, I used to be one of these people. Go and have a look at your training rooms. Do they inspire learning? Are the seats comfortable? Quite often, these rooms are thrown together using excess furniture from within the business and have become really good storage areas. Is this really what your brand is all about? Do people really need to be at a desk to learn? I created a room full of armchairs for our soft-skills training as people needed to be comfortable and didn’t really need desk space. Once again, ask them. If it’s after a two-day course, they’ll tell you.

Finally, you just do it. Try and think of innovative ways to create the environment you want and be true to your brand and thoughtful about your values. Don’t copy what others have done if it’s not relevant to your business. Ultimately, all companies,  regardless of what they do or sell, want their staff coming to work feeling inspired and engaged. An environment that reflects your brand from the inside will make it easier to recruit and retain the right staff – and will help make your company a great place to work.