There’s this saying “not being able to smell someone”. There really isn’t a worse way to express that you don’t like a person. According to studies, smells determine which friends and even which partners you choose, they store childhood memories and can transport you back in time in a matter of seconds. This smell of freshly baked cookies at your best friend’s, of potato pancakes at grandma’s or of classmate Jan-Peter’s vomit on the way to skiing. You never forget something like that.
Some company bosses have now thought: What has worked in love for centuries, or even millennia, must also work in the office. Why don’t we just spray a pleasant scent – and the employees will come crawling out of their home offices in droves?
Basically a secret weapon for company bosses who no longer feel like sitting alone in the office. After all, skilled workers are competitive and fruit in the office is no longer an employee magnet. So I’d rather go with perfume, it doesn’t have such strong would-be start-up vibes. What sounds like a publicity stunt is actually what the real estate company Hines is doing. It has developed a special scent that it has been quietly pumping into the heating, air conditioning and ventilation system at its Houston headquarters since late last year. Apparently a success, because this year the scent will be rolled out in more than 20 more office buildings and apartment complexes, from Chicago and New York to London and Delhi. The “eau d’office” so to speak.
Of course, all of this is done with the idea that employees work more productively. It is not known whether this plan will work primarily because people no longer have to breathe away the sweat from bicycles or the smell of cigarette butts and coffee from the people sitting next to them. But that would probably be the only logical explanation.
A scent that creates belonging
In any case, the company has put a lot of effort into making it really work. It took her over a year Wall Street Journal according toto perfect your scent. It contains 35 (!) ingredients, including Asian Sambac Jasmine (said to increase happiness and confidence), Indian Sandalwood (to relieve anxiety) and Italian Pine (to combat fatigue). Fear of failure, Red Bull and deadline stress are goodbye. Each note was carefully selected “to ensure that entering a Hines room creates a sense of belonging,” co-director Laura Hines-Pierce tells the WSJ. A bit like that terribly sweet smell of the Hollister fashion chain, where you can smell the stores from 50 meters away.
The company does the whole thing in the style of luxury resorts – and is therefore part of a trend: Some companies want a visit to the workplace to feel like a day at the spa. The smell is of course part of it.
First office plants, then fruit, now perfume. But why stop there? If you daydream a bit in the noisy open-plan office, you can see a butler serving exquisite appetizers from a fine dining hood – and also fulfilling every conceivable wish from your lips. A sensitive man who occasionally pours more tea asks whether you need warm, damp towels (for the sweat from work) or whether the keyboard needs to be dusted again.
Luxury limousines that take you to work and back again, complete with massage chairs and minibars, would be conceivable and therefore also feasible. And the concierge who holds the door open when you enter and takes your work bag. Maybe these are just daydreams, who knows. But you can still dream. There must be some good side to the shortage of skilled workers.