Experience, Inc.

CHAPTER 10The Results Are In: Productivity and Effectiveness

It's an open secret that certain types of businesses are designed to maximize the money you spend there. Casinos might be the most well-known and openly manipulative examples: no clocks or windows, so you lose track of time. Free drinks, if you're gambling. Ambiguity about where the casino actually begins and ends. Grocery stores also exploit human psychology. In fact, casino design was considered so successful in achieving its goals that many of its principles were adopted by grocery stores. The “essentials” – milk, bread, eggs – are placed at some distance from each other so you have to make your way down other aisles, increasing the chance you'll spot nonessentials to throw in your cart. Fresh produce is often near the entrance so you'll select some healthy food early and, feeling virtuous, be likelier to reward yourself with items you might not have considered. They've come up with a formula that works.

What does this have to do with employee experience?

Although today's world is more transparent than the past, there are still some unspoken rules about what makes people more productive and more effective – and it's not psychologically manipulative for companies to promote conditions that do this, when it's good for them and the employee. Perhaps it's the equivalent of organizations getting their people to eat broccoli.

So: What are the conditions that make people work best?

The biggest motivators for employees ...