Google has been named couple of times the best tech company in the world. Even those outside the industry have heard of Google’s unparalleled employee perks and expansive Silicon Valley campus. But there’s much more of the tech titan’s successful culture than free meals and on-site amenities like massages and dry cleaning. There are other intangible     qualities that keep Googlers happy, productive and dedicated to the company.

Google has been one of the first companies to really understand the need for employees to have a flexible schedule and work on their term to unleash their creativity and a greater level of productivity. They’ve let their employees explore how they’d like to work and give them the freedom within the environment to approach work in a ways that suits them. “Even if they want you to work 12 hours or 16 hours, Google knows that a brain has its own limit and after this you are just super unproductive  and it is just better to go to sleep. Short shifts are better than working 12 hours straight. You have your goals, you finish them and you are free to go, play video games, take classes, people do not care about time spent in the office, they care more about if you finish your tasks for the day”, say Miguel Chapa, Software Engineer in Google, “ So it does not matter when you take a break, you can just compensate after, it is not a big deal. Unless you have a meeting, of course”.

Google is just a fun place and doesn’t feel like work. That is difficult to achieve in a company where employees often work long days and even weekends. However, with the perks, environment, and flexibility on where employees can work, Google has managed to create a very creative and enjoyable workplace. They are a little irreverent with recreation and generous with perks. Those things always increase  employee happiness, which has a direct relationship with productivity. For example, employees can take yoga or tango classes any time, go to lectures held by Google with speakers like Garry Kasparov, go for bowling computer games or any other activity without being punished for leaving working space “too early”. This is huge as it reduces burnout and ensure that employees are mentally stimulated. It might seem like a contradiction after hearing all of the perks, but the reason why Google offer gyms, free meals, free haircuts, free cars washes, free dry cleaning and even on-site health care is genius. Instead of having to go offsite or take time to take care of dairy routine tasks, Googlers can get them done there and stay on task. In other words:  we’ll take care of you while you take care of work.

While Googlers’s office perks are great, it’s not just the benefits that make a great culture. It’s something else: it’s the way management and teammates treat one another. That’s what truly matters at the end of the day. “Google has flat hierarchy. Your boss is not superior, we see a manager as a person we can reach out for help because they have more experience. So there is no superiority , we just help each other achieve our tasks”, says Miguel. And as not everyone works best at a desk, Google allows employees to work from pretty much anywhere-whether that means a beanbag chair, the cafe, a swing set or just a table with a nice view. Freedom of movement is the key here.

Founded by Chip Wilson in Vancouver, Cannada in 1998 , Lululemon is a yoga inspired, technical athletic apparel company for women and men. What started as a design study by day and yoga studio by night soon became a standalone store in November of 2000 on West 4^th avenue in Vancouver’s Kitsilano neighborhood. Since then, the top, this yoga and running  gear retailer continues to outperform it’s competitors. But within the company, there’s much more of a communal culture, thanks to free yoga classes and team-based commissions.

The core value of the company is healthy and happy life, providing work and life balance employees. “ everyone we work with is just happy, but do not want to take life too serious, we enjoy being present and living the moment,”says China brand  and community manager Floral zhang. “ our employees get weekly sweat classes, so you can go to any class like yoga or pole dancing , spinning or crossfit, whatever you want, and the company pays for it. So we do want people to have a balance and not just spend the whole day in front of computer.” After all, working in an athletic apparel company and wearing it all day does inspire you to work out more.

But Lululemon not only making sure that their employees are happy but also their community. The company organizes free events for people all around the globe, promoting healthy lifestyle and physical education and growing its number of fans and customers. “I feel that because we invest in people, even without expectations, we create a community that comes back and gives us feedback on our products,” adds Flora.

And what are the biggest perts of working in Lululemon? Except the fact that its own employees are so happy with the company, that it got 6^th place in the 2018 best places to work, employee’s choice list by Glassdoor, the reasons are the fun culture, authenticity, group work outs, entrepreneurship shirit, according to Flora, as she has been working there five and a half years herself’

As a sports clothing brand Lululemon understands that athleticism is not only about your body, it is also about mental strength and stamina. That is why they inspire their employees to persure their goals and live a better and healthies lives. Because the better quality lives your employees have, the happies they are to come back to work, share common goals and work towards the team success, just like insports.

There are many companies that have noticed the shift in the way people want to work and every day their number grows. As we talked carrier, now it is not enough to just put a vending machine in the corner of the office. Now companies look deeper into human’s psychology to adjust coffee break culture to the modern times. These companies understand that to be successful you first need to think about how satisfied and fulfilled your employees are and for this they create work and life balance, providing different perks and activities that will stimulate people mentally, inspire them to achieve new goals and just make them feel happy about their work and life, as at the end of the day we spend most of  our time at work and it is very important to be happy about it. So don’t be shy and take a break, because this break, share some coffee with colleagues, because this break will only bring new ideas and more great projects. As a former CEO of HP, Carly Fiarina, said: “the highest calling of leadership is to unlock the potential of others”, and as we all have multifaceted and complex nature, it need to be unlocked and developed.

Wework, the fast- growing New York start-up valued at a whopping $20 billion. In just eight years. Wework has built a network of 253 shared working spaces around the globe. But Wework’s chief executive and co- founder, Adam Neumann wants noth-ing less than to radically transform the way we work, live and play.

It may sound simplistic, but around the globe, companies are buying whaever it is that Adam Neumann and his co-founder, Miguel Mckelvey, are selling. Wework has rapidly expanded to 20 countries, assembled a formidable executive team and attracted over 248,000 members. Big companies like JPMorgan Chase and Siemens are signing on as tenants, and revenues are growing fast, expected to top $2.3 billion this year. Wework last year bought the iconic Lord & Taylor building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, which is being transformed into the company’s new headquarters. “How do you change the world?” Mr Neumann asked in a recent interview. “ Bring people together. Where is the easiest big place to bring people together? In the work environment.” The notion that white-collar workers might actually like their offices is a relatively new one. From the countinghouses of industrial England to the skyscrapers of 1980s Manhattan, offices were mostly uninspiring places designed  to maximize space, often with row upon row of unglamorous desks. This dreary state of affairs began to change in earnest, at least for some, during the dot-com bubble . tech companies built playful offices with beanbags and ping-pong tables, making work spaces less formal. Free food be-came commonplace. Raised expectations for amenities and interior design gradually seeped into the mainstream, and today, more and more employees- especially millennials- expect enlightened, unconventional offices. “ we’ve seen shift in the way of work towards collaboration  and more meaning among millennials who have made up about 40% of whole career force. By providing inspiring spaces, services and dynamic community. We connect all people to share, work with each other since we believe staying together is better,” says Wework representative.

Wework is the leader, by far,in a surging  co- working space movement. Some 5,900 shared office operations dot the globe today, compared with 300 five years ago, according to deskmag.com, a site dedicated to tracking co-working trends. Back then there were few-er than 10,000 people working in such loca- tions worldwide. Today that number is closer to 260,000. But the real perk is having other people around. Company’s representive adds: “ Everyone wants to be part of something  that makes them feel good, and when they are excited to be part of it- that is when our we mission has successed.” Weworkers network at weekly happy hour paties, where they might find a software developer to produce an app for them. Members pitch their ideas at informal demo days and get free advice during office hours from willing outside partners like ad agency wieden+kennedy. Handshake agreement and job referrals are made over the wagging tails of members  dogs. “that’s the reason why we say we are humanizing the way people live and work. We want to connect people, encourage them to talk, to share and to grow together. All is about connection.” Elevators. Stairways. Hardly world-changing innovations. But Wework takes extra steps to encourage fraternization. Like beer kegs that never run dry or coffee stations that are always ready to pour you a cup. It’s a formula that has caught on from New York to Tel Aviv to Shanghai. The company has very diverse member-ship ranging freedom freelancers, SME and enterprise members like IBM, Nissan, GM, GE, Microsoft, Lululemon, tencent, JD.com. with a mix of membership, it is helpful for SME and start-ups to learn from enterprise companies while enterprise companies can accelerate innovation like start-ups. Wework is building  an innovative ecosystem among its members around the global. Simply by encouraging strangers to share a beer at the office, Wework can lead our society to be more collaborative and create new great ideas. Many big companies already understood. Perts of sharing working space with each other: ideas flow does happen only in a very diverse community. And Wework is the best example of providing this very diverse and creative community as people might be from totally different backgrounds and that is why have unique and useful perspectives.

Nguồn: Tạp chí Coffee t&i