BUY A CAN OF PAINT! Roasting your company image

Can’t you afford paint?

How much does paint really cost? Are you telling me that your profit margins are so low that you can’t invest back into your company’s well-being and image? What, you can’t afford leasehold improvements? Or is it that you don’t put value into the property you own? How about this… You don’t really care the image that you are portraying to your client and employees. Whether it’s in business, your personal life, or anything in between… we should be putting the best of who you are out there, EVERY SINGLE DAY. Why? Because it shows that we care about who we are, what we do and want everyone to know what we stand for. The point here is this… I think many companies are missing the importance of their external environments. Here’s a piece of advice, if a business looks like a disaster, it usually is.

Not everyone feels that a work place image and environment is important, but I sure as hell do. Based on personal experience, places that looked a mess, were less successful at attracting business. Clients or customers that walked in and looked at the space, walked out. What did they see? … a dirty, unkempt, barren wasteland. When the basics haven’t even been taken care of, there’s something a brewin’. I’ve been in many work-spaces both as an interior decorator, and potential employee, a manager. My initial impressions have ALWAYS been right.

When a company can’t even keep their place of business clean… it means a few things: the company and the employees don’t put any value in their image or their property. That is often indicative that the same will go for their internal workings as well. No paint in 20 years?

Trouble in paradise.

Here’s a tip for you old school dinosaurs…buy a bloody can of paint, a mop and get your image cleaned up. No one wants to do business with a hot mess. As a company you may not value what these few things bring to your place of business, but your customers sure do. I have actually walked out of businesses and jobs based on their environments. Image=Potential Customer Service + Integrity.  I know what I require personally to be happy in a workplace, if I have to spend 8-12 hours a day there, the company had better have put some investment into making it worthwhile. Looking at a dingy, dirty grey wall with fluorescent lighting doesn’t cut it.

If a company doesn’t care, the employees don’t care, if the employees don’t care, you can’t run a business, if you can’t run a business, you don’t have one. If there are no expectations, then no expectations will be met and everyone lives in mediocrity.

Needless to say, I did clean it up. Everything about it…all of a sudden they had customers that cared about their own businesses instead of the bottom of the rung clients that didn’t pay their bills. Why? I had expectations of how the business should be run, I had expectations of my customers and I had high expectations of my staff. You attract customers and clients based upon your own image and beliefs about how you run a company. 

Bottom line…People want to take pride in who they are, in their work, and in their work environment. Employees want to enjoy going to work because the company cares about their well-being, which includes a clean, aesthetically pleasing, safe and comfortable work environment. Companies need to understand that you get what you provide for. If you don’t care about these things, what makes you think that you can attract or retain employees that do?

Bottom line… figure out what kind of employees you want working for your company. Figure out what kind of clients that you want to attract and retain.  Raise your expectations of yourself as a company and what you want to exude to the world about who you are.  Any place I have ever worked, you can ask them about what I have done to make my own space as comfortable and appealing as I can. I WANT to love my workspace and enjoy being in it.

CharisOnLife, my business empowers individuals and companies to put their best feet forward.  CharisOnBusiness and CharisOnDesign promote magnificent workplaces; I challenge all of those companies out there to get their image cleaned up, for yourselves, your employees and your clients.

That being said … hire a cleaner that REALLY cleans.  BUY A CAN OF PAINT!  Really? Of all the things that you could do to maintain a workplace, at least paint it every five years! Note here….NOT GRAY! Pay some attention to colors that invigorate creativity in your employees, don’t you want your employees to LOVE their space? Invest in some artwork and decent lighting. Pay attention to the studies that are out there that would help you get the most out of your employees. Get your heads out of the sand, take pride in the company that you have built and what it stands for.