If you look at job postings, a number of companies are using Google as a model for their workplace environment.

There advertisements mention camaraderie, on-site games, refreshments, and even slides! However, what these Wow! Ads do not indicate is how the company treats improvisation, idea sharing, creativity, and innovation. Are ideas actually encouraged and are processes open to modification, refinement, and optimization?

In some cases, these companies clearly are not. This is evident in reviews. Just like with any review service, the 5’s and 1’s needed to be taken with a grain of salt. The 5’s could be fluff pieces and the 1’s could be vindictive former employees that feel jilted or are lashing out for what they feel were wrongs committed against them (even if they were warranted, such as termination for cause). Some companies may talk a good game but based on feedback in the middle of the pack of the reviews some organizations suffer from the perception that it is all smoke and mirrors. Former employees discuss how management was set in their ways and very inflexible. If the idea sponsor was not in the in-crowd, the idea was dead on arrival.

There were also patterns amongst some of these organizations where they would hold events to change morale but not actually fix the problems that were causing employees to disengage and become despondent. Within a few of the reviews, workers detailed how their company had meetings without purpose but then expected employees to make up for these sessions with longer business days. Agile shops would have scrums that did not actually address blockers because the blockers included poor specifications, no conditions of satisfaction, conflicting communication from the sponsor or management and other causes that were not safe to mention. There were also incidents where idea sessions were really just psychological exercises to make the employees think they had a say when the decision had already been made leading to disengaged employees. Management could not see that the employees saw through the intention with emotions ranging from insult that management thinks they are naïve, disengaged because management does not consider that they are wasting the employee’s time to disillusionment because management seems to not care.

Having a cool workplace modeled after successful firms is a good idea. However, if you are not willing to actually change the culture and the environment in which the workers strive to generate great things, do not be surprised if the ROI in this endeavor is lacking and metrics such as retention and brain drain do not improve.