INTRODUCTION

A Tale of Two Menus

Near the heart of Silicon Valley, just a few miles south of the San Francisco Bay, sits an enchanting Indian restaurant called Baadal. It is run by Irfan Dama, an animated chef of forty-one, who designs three-course meals that alternate daily. Baadal is his first restaurant. Yet by all accounts, it is a colossal success. Within just days of opening, reservations were nearly impossible to secure.

Unlike more traditional Indian restaurants, Chef Dama’s menus aim to demystify meals that often intimidate novice diners, by listing every ingredient included in a dish. The restaurant’s decor also provides a range of dining experiences, from quiet booths surrounded by sheer curtains to open-space tables to a rousing Bollywood-themed room intended for group celebrations.

There’s one other thing that’s different about Irfan Dama’s restaurant: It doesn’t charge customers a penny. In fact, anyone who’s had the good fortune of sampling Baadal’s world-class cuisine has done so for free.

Baadal is owned by Google. It is one of the thirty gourmet restaurants that cater to employees at the company’s Mountain View headquarters, known as the Googleplex.

At Google, eating is serious business. Every meal brings with it the opportunity to try over two hundred artisan-crafted dishes. Among the more recent offerings: roast quail, steak tartare, lobster bisque, black cod with parsley pesto and bread crumbs, and porcini-encrusted grass-fed beef. For lighter eaters, there is a salad bar, a noodle bar, a cheese and charcuterie bar, crudité platters, and seasonal sous vide vegetables. Between meals, Googlers are invited to visit one of the many microkitchens sprinkled throughout the campus, each open 24/7 and stocking organic fruit, yogurts, candy, nuts, and drinks. The goal at Google is for employees to be within three minutes of a food source at all times.

The vast and complementary food selection is one reason Google was ranked by Fortune magazine as the world’s best place to work. But as far as Googleplex amenities go, it’s only the tip of the iceberg.

Employees at the company are treated to massages, haircuts, eyebrow-shaping services, foreign language courses, and doctor visits, all on site and free of charge. They have access to three wellness centers, a bowling alley, basketball courts, a roller-hockey rink, ping-pong tables, arcade games, foosball tables, a rock-climbing wall, a putting green, and volleyball courts complete with actual sand. There’s an indoor tree house, manicured gardens, apiaries for recreational beekeeping, a replica of Richard Branson’s private spaceship, and the life-size skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex. Not to be forgotten: the heated toilet seats.

Google is far from the only organization investing heavily in the comfort of its employees. SAS, a business-analytics software company that earned more than $3 billion in 2012, provides its employees with access to tennis courts, saunas, a billiards hall, heated swimming pools, and work-life counseling, which includes confidential professional advice on financial planning, elder care, and family issues. At Facebook, employees can ride company-provided bicycles to the campus barber, drop off their dry cleaning, grab a latte, raid the free candy shop, and, conveniently, visit the on-site dentist.

And it’s not just companies in high tech. Wegmans, a northeastern U.S. grocery chain, has consistently appeared near the top of Fortune magazine’s list of 100 Best Companies to Work For over the past fifteen years. During that same time period, annual sales have nearly tripled. While many retail operations have tried growing earnings by reducing labor costs, Wegmans has steered in the opposite direction, offering its supermarket employees (many of whom are still in high school and simply glad to have a job) wellness programs, pretax spending accounts, 401(k) plans, life insurance, and education scholarships.

What’s the rationale behind all this lavish spending? For many companies on Fortune’s list, the basic calculus is simple: Happy employees mean bigger profits.

The more invested and enthusiastic people are about their work, the more successful their organization is on a variety of metrics. Studies indicate that happy employees are more productive, more creative, and provide better client service. They’re less likely to quit or call in sick. What’s more, they act as brand ambassadors outside the office, spreading positive impressions of their company and attracting star performers to their team.

The bottom line for many of the world’s most profitable organizations is this: Investing in workplace happiness doesn’t cost their company money—it ensures they stay on top.

It’s a perspective backed by some compelling data. Research conducted by the Great Place to Work Institute—the organization that compiles an annual list of leading workplaces in conjunction with Fortune magazine—reveals an eye-opening statistic: The stocks of companies on the Best Companies to Work For list outperform the market as a whole by a stunning factor of 2 to 1.

Investors are catching on. Around the time the Googleplex opened its doors in 2004, San Francisco–based Parnassus Investments launched a mutual fund comprised exclusively of companies with outstanding workplaces, like the ones on Fortune’s list. Since the fund’s inception, it’s recorded a 9.63 percent annualized return. In comparison, the overall S&P index during that same time period was a considerably more modest 5.58 percent.

The evidence is clear: Creating an extraordinary workplace can pay significant dividends.

So how do you do it?

Google, SAS, Facebook, and Wegmans certainly set a high bar. But what if you don’t have the budget of a multinational corporation? What if you’re struggling to find room for a bigger copier, let alone the space for an on-site wellness center? What if the closest thing your office has to a gourmet restaurant is the vending machine at the end of the hall?

What then?

•   •   •

This book happened by accident.

It came about after I left academics, where I’d spent years studying human motivation in the lab and teaching psychology at colleges and universities. Shortly after earning a doctorate in social psychology and settling into a teaching position, I found myself restless.

I’d planned on spending my life as a college professor. But the moment I stepped into the role, I began itching for a new challenge. I wanted to do something practical. Something applied. And so I entered the business world, where I was hired to measure public opinion as a pollster.

Not long after I arrived, I noticed something unexpected. As a social psychologist specializing in human motivation, I’d read countless studies on the factors that promote productivity, creativity, and engagement. Yet to my surprise, very few of these findings were being put to use. Much of what I observed—from the way organizations hire to the way leaders motivate to the layout and design of most office spaces—appeared blind to a wealth of research on how we can build a better workplace.

Over the past decade, advances in brain imaging, data-gathering methods, and behavioral science experiments have produced powerful insights into the conditions that help us work more effectively. We now know how to build a room that boosts creativity, how to turn workplace colleagues into close friends, and how to make any job more meaningful. We know that decorating your office can make you more...