The fourth episode of Dawn and Kate from the Hart: What’s the relationship between employee engagement and culture?
Join us as our own Dawn Monde and Katherine Beal explore the dynamic connection between employee engagement and workplace culture.
Watch the fourth episode on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:ugcPost:7149073668675891200/
Read the full transcript below:
Intro
Hi, I’m Kate Beal. And I’m Dawn Monde. And we’re from Red Thread. Today we’re talking about the relationship between employee engagement and culture. And just thinking about coming back to the office and why that’s so important.
Dawn Monde 0:19
So one of the reasons why I think it’s so important for us is that by nature, we’re creators and innovators and thinkers, and being together really helps to fuel that passion.
Kate Beal 0:30
Definitely, you know, engaged workers, it’s so important to engage your employees, because engaged workers are more productive, they work harder. They build friendships at work. And that impacts because they, that impacts their work production because they trust each other, and they’re able to be more curious to solve problems.
Dawn Monde 0:51
The kinds of interactions that we see in spaces like this are really interesting anecdotes of that, and how that actually manifests itself in our own space.
Kate Beal 1:00
And it’s beyond a mandate, you know, the most engaged workers, they’re looking to come back to the office to have these kinds of meaningful experiences, things that might happen around the watercooler, right, those spontaneous things. And so how do you take a space like that, and create something that is more dynamic than just getting your coffee in the morning?
Dawn Monde 1:21
Well, and then speaking of dynamic, one of the ways that we do that is through our whole unassigned seating. So having people be able to sit just where they want to sit and interact with folks maybe they wouldn’t normally see on a daily basis, I think really is supporting a lot of innovation.
Kate Beal 1:35
Definitely, you know, we used to have so many silos for our different departments. And now, you know, everybody’s working together a lot more, you’re overhearing things, and we’re able to help each other kind of cross functionally.
Dawn Monde 1:47
So it’s, it’s not really that our space created our culture or culture existed, right? And then our employee engagement helps to enhance and further define that culture.
Kate Beal 1:59
Remember, in our old space, we would like kind of cluster into this one area where the desks were unassigned, even though we all had assigned seats. And now we’re here and we realize, oh, gosh, we can do this every day, we don’t have to, like go to that special area, everywhere is that area for us.
Dawn Monde 2:14
It’s really interesting to to see where people migrate to based on whether it’s the day that they’re having, or the or the kind of connection that they want to have, and how interactive they want to be in the space throughout the day. So I think giving people that level of choice really further enhances their engagement, if you if you have the opportunity to choose where you want to be. When you’re not coming into a sea of workstations and sitting there all by yourself, you can find a spot where you’re where you want to be and how you want to be interacting that day.
Kate Beal 2:41
Yeah, because I know a lot of people don’t want to come into the office not to connect, right, like part of being here is being together. And so being able to sit wherever they want helps them.
Dawn Monde 2:50
So sitting here in the heart of our space, the cafe, the space has already showed us how often people come together here to just connect, to nourish, to communicate, to work together quite often. So this is a great example of how space can help support that drive to get employees back into the office and to get them engaged and to let them know that you’re thinking about them, and how they are going to interact with the space and how the space could potentially support them, as they’re working throughout their days to help build that positive culture that we have here at Red Thread.
Kate Beal 3:26
Absolutely! When you walk through here, you’ll see people you know, sitting at the table, in groups, maybe they’re having lunch, but maybe it’s not even lunchtime, and they’re just having coffee, or they’ve got a set of plans out and they’re connecting over that. And then you know, we’ll see people at the back counter pulling up a bar stool, and you know, engaging even after hours or a glass of wine. At the end of the day having those spaces. It’s not just about having food or having coffee, you have to have those places to drive the type of interactions that you’re hoping people will have there. And you have to let people know through the space that it’s okay to, to have those behaviors to sit and linger. It doesn’t have to be just filling up a cup.
Dawn Monde 4:10
We were very mindful in the way that we created our space that the second you step off the elevator, you’re immersed into our culture. It’s really a visual manifestation of who we are. And you can feel the buzz of our organization from the moment you step off the elevator. Join us for our next episode where we discuss how we engage our employees in the creation of our space.