It’s a big reason why business owners are waking up to the new reality of building strong employee retention: It’s not just about titles, benefits or even money alone. The newer generations of employees also value a company with a higher purpose and mission. Part of that purpose and mission includes spending quality time in an environment that is healthy, collaborative, productive and buzzing with energy.

Property management companies who are in serious competition with co-working spaces to retain growing companies and attract new tenants align with a “work hard, play hard” philosophy of such companies. In addition to open door policies and transparency in decision making, we’re seeing more companies fostering a culture where imaginative ways of increasing productivity are occurring.

Managers who once might have viewed games and team building activities as efficiency killers have come around to the idea that they are full productivity boosters.

The reasoning is simple: You can approach potential and existing tenants with the concept that such interaction helps breed revolutionary ideas. With this in mind, look at the current spaces your tenants occupy and ask yourself, “Could this area better promote interaction and connectivity?” If so, there may an excellent opportunity to develop the common area further for an outstanding return on your investment – namely, happier tenants who are maximizing their space and enabling their people to become more fully engaged with one another. Not to mention this type of area can be a cultural selling point for those very same tenants when they are striving to attract prospective new employees.

Of course, a more dynamic workspace area isn’t just important for tenants aiming to hire new talent. It’s just as important for their employee retention too. After all, when an employee decides to leave a company, the organization faces a potential loss in which all of that knowledge walks out the door with them. This brings new expenses of selecting and hiring new employees, transition costs, disruption to the talent pipeline and more, all of which are estimated to be one to three times the employee’s original salary, depending on his or her level of skill.

Conversely, a positive work environment provides your tenants with the motivation to sustain them throughout the day. And here’s another added benefit: Tenants who are calm, stress-free and happy are also more likely to be productive. Their mental attitude produces increased oxygen, endorphins, and blood flow to the brain, which enables them to think more clearly and creatively. Laughter creates a bond that brings others together; people like to be with employees who are having fun. Their ability to attract customers is that much easier in an environment of hospitality.

In an instant, you’ll be reaching across separate locations within your building to provide tenants with the sort of health and wealth benefits they hadn’t even thought of.

For example, it’s no small gesture to show your tenants how much you care about their health, especially since the risks of office employees sitting all day are real. When an individual can’t get away from their desk for periodic breaks, their concentration goes down. They’ll feel lifeless and tired. As a property manager, this is your opportunity to seize for the well-being of your tenants: Instead of using that break to run off to the nearest fast food restaurant or scroll endlessly through their Facebook timeline, you can show them how to go #UnPlugNPlay, thanks to a newly developed area that ramps up the friendly competition of table tennis as they reduce stress in the work environment. 

One more terrific thought: Whether in a common area space of the building that’s shared among tenants or within an individual tenant’s space, you can play a fundamental role in transforming a typical conference room into a table tennis meeting room! When the room is not in use for discussing an agenda, you can offer your tenants a place to take a short but active break.