Office Wellness and Innovation

As the principal of a one person firm, I provide three-martini lunches as part of our wellness program. Seriously though, my favorite way of being “taken care of physically, mentally, and socially”, when I worked for someone else was to be given time off (usually paid but unpaid was welcome too) to use as I pleased. Gym memberships, massages, etc. are nice but not all employees highly value these. Almost everyone values time-off, especially if it comes as a surprise announcement from your boss. As to improving office social wellness, most team-building events make me want to hurl. I much prefer the casual impromptu method where the boss comes around and says “it’s beer-30”, and tosses you a cold one or sets up a few shots of Whistle Pig. Even those that didn’t drink enjoyed the conviviality and spontaneity of the moment. Where I work now, our wellness program is largely driven by our health insurance provider, the logic being if you’re healthy you cost the insurance company and your employer less. Insurance driven wellness programs include things like seminars on diabetes, smoking cessation, and getting or staying active. Many have point accumulation systems where you get points for having various types of medical screening performed (e.g., colonoscopy), or participation in exercise programs. I suspect though that these are found only at very large companies. And, now that we know sitting ‘is the new smoking’, some firms provide desks that can be raised (and lowered when necessary) to allow standing. One of my daughter’s professor’s uses a treadmill desk (is this what they mean by academic treadmill?).

One firm I worked for actually flew the whole office (and spousal units) to a resort for the annual Christmas party—forked out some serious benjis in doing so but generated much goodwill which in turn enhanced collaboration and creativity. I also like the idea of ‘innovation sabbaticals’ like Google’s but I couldn’t convince my former LA bosses to implement—seems like this is more of a dot-com thing.

With fees being as tight as it is, it’s not very common to see so much time-off or perks.  A lot of the ‘platinum package’ benefits are ways for financial and dot-com companies to provide a larger compensation package but keep within specific tax brackets, etc.

That being said, some larger design firms do provide gym memberships (usually offset by lower health insurance premiums).  Smaller firms often allow for flexible hours for nice long walks to lunch, days off after intense deadlines, firm sponsored lunches/happy hours/dinners.  I have known firms that flew their employees out for vacations, but that tells you about the profit margin they were operating on (long hours, low pay).  Some firms (SWA is one) do have ‘research sabbaticals’ that they offer employees.

In terms of mental stimulation I mostly found that that was a studio culture thing – some studios have a lot of people that go to museums, lectures, etc, others not so much.  Regular presentations of people’s vacations, experiences at a conference, etc related to design can help and seem to be more or less the norm.

for whatever reason dotcom companies seem to be flush with cash and can afford a lot of perks and lost time – it’s hard to compete with that.  on the other hand as LAs we do get to do work outside a fair amount.

Well the best way to do it, like you sort of mentioned, is to give them work that makes them feel like they’re doing something meaningful, and making sure they don’t do overtime and burn out. And then all that wellness perks will be unnecessary.

These construction details, estimates, being in front of the cpu, can be a bore, but I think people can understand and will be ok to do it if they’re made to feel like the project is their “baby”.

If people are working long weeks and are in a stressful environment, then I don’t think the occasional “let’s forget you work for us hour” can do much to remedy that in the long run. It’s a short term solution, but people will leave if they see the time they give has no return value regardless of the amount of perks you give them.

Though I’m not saying don’t fly us out the Bahamas and give us good bonuses. That’s always welcome 😉