RE: Airbnb: Employee Work-Space and Motivation
I stumbled upon a very interesting post from Jay describing a company with a fluid workplace dynamic. Airbnb is a company with a corporate structure that is similar to that of Google. Inside this company “you find wide open space, carts of homemade gluten free healthy desserts being pushed around, a few dogs sitting by their owners, and rows of employees sitting side by side working together”.
I am completely fascinated by this unorthodox method of employment. Although I do agree it has the potential to stimulate productivity and overall workplace satisfaction, I feel it is definitely not for everyone. I personally would preform better in a setting that was more catered to the traditional workplace environment.
As discussed in class 20 about workplace structure and trade-offs between the different styles, this post can directly relate to the things we learned in class, such as the costs of maintaining a more fluid workplace compared to a more strict one. Also, the way in which a company decides to manage its workplace shows how they think about the question “How would you stimulate productivity?”. It is apparent that Airbnb takes a more employee-reward approach while others take a employee-reprimand approach.