Brett Hautop, a workplace consultant and former VP of Workplace at LinkedIn, is passionate about designing the best environments for employees. His strategy focuses on using the outdoors to create spaces that feel more human and relatable than traditional sterile offices.
The recuperative powers of nature are well documented, and Brett's own experiments have shown that this applies to working outdoors as well. Time spent working outside consistently leaves employees feeling energized and motivated rather than drained. This makes outdoor workspaces a powerful recruitment and retention tool that's far more effective than traditional amenities companies use to incentivize workers.
"We found very quickly that if [employees] spent two hours indoors [and] two hours outdoors...it was tremendous, the difference between being indoors and outdoors, always leaning towards how much more positive it was to be outdoors, how much more energy people felt like they had, how much better they retained knowledge and information," he says. "When people come to the office we want them to leave saying, ‘I can't imagine not having come in today. I got so much out of being here.’”