What a wonderful gift the gift of sight is. I am so grateful that all of my family are able to see clearly and enjoy being able to take in images of the world around us.

So why is it that often we seem to be blind to the environment that we are looking to get our teams to work in? On the one hand we want to inspire great performance, yet we are surrounded by a working envrironment that leaves us feeling flat.

Just last week I was in the head office of a major corporation and while the building itself was far from modern, what let the company down was the grubby and drab reception area with little around that brought to life what their business was all about. If I was uninspired as a visitor, how must their people feel walking into that building every day?

Perhaps we should have as a requirement that all business leaders should spend time in a retail environment? I know my graduate training in retail many many years ago impressed on me the importance of detail. Every day was started with the inpection of the retail environment from outside the store checking the windows, through the to sales floor, the food hall and the restaurant.

Actually one trick that was always played on the graduates was asking them on the second day at one of the retail outlets in the West Midlands in the UK what the window display covered. That was the one store in the chain that had no windows so the graduate training officer always knew if we were on the ball!

So here are some questions for you to ponder:

• When was the last time you walked through your workplace looking through the eyes of a potential employee or customer?
• What do you see when you approach your building?
• What sights greet you in reception?
• What impression would you leave with a new employee if they were to see your work station?
• When was the last time you really took a look inside the fridge at work to see how clean it was or checked out the state of the coffee dock?

How we care for our working environment says a lot for how we respect ourselves and our colleagues we work with.

Our employer brand comes to life through everything we do, yet so often I have heard business leaders say they can not afford to invest in the environment they ask their employees to work in. My response is always – can they afford not to? And if this was their home would they find the standards of the environment acceptable?

It doesn’t always take a significant investment for you to make your workplace smarter and one that instills a sense of pride. Aside from making your working enviromnent clean, tidy and relfecting the products and services you offer, how else can you brighten up your office?

One thing I did a number of years ago was to select furniture, fittings and art work for my office that reflected the colours of our brand. In professional services you probably do not have posters and frequently changing brand campaigns as you do in fast moving consumer goods businesses so we have to find alternative ways to bring our brand to life in the environments we work in.

We also recognised that we liked change, so as we had huge walls to cover, we came to an arrangement with some up and coming artists that they could use our walls to show case their work. As a result, our people had something fresh and exciting to look at and the artists had people who were excited to see their work and also enjoyed some new commissions.

So why not look at supporting new artists in your community and collaborating to help you create an inspiring workplace?

And if you are looking to purchase artwork and are based in Ireland, do check out Haydn Shaughnessy’s new art gallery for innovative comntemorary arts. And if you are in a virtual office, Haydn even enables you to create your own “personal gallery” – you could create a gallery to reflect your personal brand and to inpire you each day when you are working at your PC.

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