For our upcoming May IDEAS newsletter I recently interviewed Graham Weston, Chairman of Rackspace Hosting, the world leader in web hosting. Graham, a 2006 Winning Workplaces Best Boss, will be a keynote speaker for our ROI of Great Workplaces Conference in early October.
We spoke about many things, including Rackspace's gradual move-in from their second headquarters in San Antonio, Texas, to their third and probably last one for a long, long time: San Antonio's old Windsor Park Mall, where Graham went as a child. (Visit this section of Graham's blog to see a video journal of their transition into what the company calls "The Castle.")
As you'll hear in the following audio from my interview with Graham, they hope to have all of their roughly 2600 employees fully moved over within a year. Our discussion of their new home, where Graham is installing his office in the old Orange Julius space, led to me ask him about what they're doing or hope to do when it comes to employee engagement in a particular workspace configuration. Would they go Google – with their now oft-copied workspace pods or clusters – or would they do something else?
Here's the clip:
The answer to my question is essentially "TBD" because they're waiting until everyone is moved in. However, it did spark Graham to compare Rackspace's employee engagement best practices to those of Google. Graham feels that Google has been guilty of structuring its perks and pay to bring employees pleasure. But this is not the same thing as long-term satisfaction, and the Chairman explained the difference.
For more on Graham's thoughts on everything from their still-evolving service model of "Fanatical Support" to what he will speak about at our conference this fall, click here to get our newsletter – it's free. See also our Success Story on Rackspace.
When it comes to your own workplace team building activities, how do you strive for employee satisfaction over merely pleasure?
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