A new friend of mine, Cole Christiansen, had recently blogged about our class discussion in the lecture of “People, Culture, and Teams” and how creating a positive work environment with many employee perks help increase productivity in activity and lowering turnover rates, but also wondered, what other large companies create a positive working environment. The company thought of, was Google. Google has a tremendous amount of employee perks, such as free food, many unique amenities, dry cleaning, concierge, the list keeps going on. From studying these two companies with positive work environments, it raised the question, does a positive work environment with many employee perks always keep employees happy and prevent turnovers? To answer the question, I looked at the company EA (Electron Arts).
EA offers many perks to their employees such as Google and Zappos do, including amenities such as arcades, soccer fields, gyms, and high tech lounges, but are their employees happy? One of my high school friend’s cousin used to be a programer at EA, and said his time was less than enjoyable, where he eventually left the company for another gaming studio. Working at EA, the employees are under constant stress and pressure, creating a negative work environment. So even though companies may have many employee amenities and perks, a positive work environment is not always created, it comes down to the management.
Cole Christiansen’s Blog: https://blogs.ubc.ca/colechristiansen/