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a positive workplace culture

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I remember my dad and I went to visit a good childhood friend of mine at the public relations firm she works at, and we’d been walking through her office for several minutes before my dad even realized we were in there. “Where is this office anyways?” my dad asked. “We are in it!” I said. To my dad, that was no office. That was more like a lobby where adults were moving around on scooters and enjoying lattes out of high-tech machines on puffy floor cushions that looked like they belonged in a kindergarten…for grownups?

 

My dad is old school. You have to understand that he comes from a time when going to an office meant getting out of an elevator that let out right in front of a busy-looking secretary at a massive desk—meant to create distance between the clients and the professionals—surrounded by two solid, opaque doors that concealed, behind them, long hallways of people quietly, seriously working alone in cubicles. It all felt very important. Maybe there was smooth jazz playing, a traditional water cooler, and a standard coffee pot brewing pretty bad coffee that was served in little paper (not environmentally-friendly) cups.

 

Now, here, at my friend’s workplace, a white woman in a kimono holding a poodle mix introduced herself as the office manager—but said she preferred to call herself the creativity facilitator. Okay…Workplace culture has changed so much in the last decade or so, wouldn’t you say? We are a generation that is concerned with the idea that our work should meld with our personalities and our passions. Work is not supposed to be something we “get over with” or “survive” from 9 to 5, as our parents and their parents did. It’s so much more. Here are ways workplace culture has transformed over the last decade.

a positive workplace culture

Source: EmirMemedovski / Getty

A concern with workplace culture

First and foremost, the very fact that the concept of “workplace culture” exists is relatively new. “Work isn’t a culture,” my dad would say. “Work is work. Sweden is a culture.” But today, there is this concern around making sure the workplace has a distinct vibe—an essence, if you will—and that the employees are happy.

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