…Customer experience and workplace odour
Are you aware that you have the capacity to differentiate between up to ten thousand different odours? As a matter of fact, recent studies seek to prove that the 10,000 estimate is quite on the low side. It is currently being suggested that the true figure is somewhere in the region of at least one trillion different smells. Staggering? You bet it is!
To understand the power of smells, it is important to note that we smell because tiny molecules are released from whatever object we are smelling into our nostrils. These tiny particles then travel the olfactory pathway to the strip of tissue called the olfactory epithelium. This is where the millions of sensory neurons do their magic to enable us tell the difference between freshly baked bread and a piece of koobi.
The human brain is truly a supercomputer. Its ability to detect and make meaning of all these odours is truly amazing. With this huge capacity dedicated to the sense of smell, it is little wonder that scientists are claiming that the most persistent memory of any space is often its odour. This means we might forget the faces we saw, the temperature we felt and the sounds we heard, but we will still recall the odour of the place.
It is said that when we visit a place that has a characteristic smell, we tend to store up that smell together with the experience we have of the place. Any similar experience thereafter tends to trigger memories of that that smell. That is truly interesting.
The sense of smell and how it affects our moods is so important that there is a whole area of scientific study dedicated to the subject. This branch of science is called Aromachology. The term was coined just over three decades ago and it is attributed to the Sense of Smell Institute, the research arm of the Fragrance Foundation. The influence of smell on emotions and moods is obviously a very big deal.
For a business, this talk of the power of the average individual to detect and records different kinds of smell should be more than interesting. It should be of concern. Businesses should be concerned about the way their workplaces smell. But I really do not think it is, at least to a lot of businesses I know.
In my experience, where many businesses fall short when it comes to workplace odours is that they operate a “we couldn’t-be-bothered-about-the-scent” policy. These are the businesses that are not deliberate about ensuring that the workplace has the right odour. They leave the use of the right odours out of the planning of the workplace. They would invest in the right IT infrastructure, right furniture, right paints and right branding. But they will forget to be deliberate about how the workplace will smell.
What we tend to forget is that every single item we place within the working area will come with its own scent. Therefore, when we refuse to plan for the scent of the workplace, what we get is the fusion of all the scents of all the items within the space. The scent of fresh wood will combine with the scent of leather from the chairs which will both combine with the scent of the pain used in painting the office.
There is an additional element to this mix of odours which makes the general odour of the workplace such a potent force—the human element. Every human being comes with the one’s own unique body odour and a mix of these odours from a group of people, in a mostly air-conditioned workplace can be quite forceful. But to mask our own odours, we go for all kinds of perfumes and fragrances. The environment in a typical workplace therefore becomes a cocktail of different scents and different body odours together with all the odours emanating from all other objects within the work space.
Clearly, scents are much too important to be left on their own. Businesses cannot just let nature take its course when it comes to the way offices and workplaces smell. The benefits of having the right scent in the workplace has been found to be numerous, especially for the organisation. There are enough studies to show that being deliberate about the scent goes a long way to affect the fortunes of the business.
For starters, it is important not to forget that there is a real physiological angle to smell. The pleasant smell simply means that the object effusing that smell is sending particles of itself into our bodies through our noses. Smelling is not just a psychological phenomenon. We are not just assuming in our minds that a place smells good. We are actually ingesting molecules from the place into our system. This is why the air we breathe has a real impact on the efficiency and effectiveness of our thinking. A contaminated environment makes us sick because the air molecules we are breathing in contains toxins. This is what makes us truly sick in those environments.
The health implications of a good scented workplace cannot be overestimated. Scents that have disinfecting properties clean the workplace environment and this leads to a healthier workforce. The ultimate result is a reduction in the heath bills of the organisation and its attendant effect on the bottom-line.
Unpleasant odours are a huge turn off. For the employee who literally has to live with that unpleasant odour for the whole day, it will be hell, to say the least. In a workplace with unpleasant smell, it has been found that the stress level of staff go up and this greatly affects their productivity. Studies have attempted to find out why this is so. Several of these studies have concluded that unpleasant odours increase the heart rate. This is what tends to increase stress level and result in a loss of productivity.
For a customer-facing employee, the stress from the unpleasant odour can and, in all likelihood, will be transferred to the customer. It will take a lot of effort from that particular employee to remain professional throughout the day when the air in the place is not fresh. The one might end up exerting a lot of emotional labour just to serve a single customer. This will lead to increase in the stress levels of the one.
It is also said that the presence of pleasant odours results in higher self-efficacy among individuals. In other words, people perform better when they are surrounded by the right scents. There are also studies to show that employees become more efficient when placed within the right scented environments. It has also been found that individuals even tend to set higher goals when they are in environments with the right scents.
The impact of odours on cognitive processes that affect creative task performance is another of the findings of several studies. This particular finding should be of great interest to those whose work require a lot of thinking. Individuals working in the field of banking and finance, software engineering, data analysis, cyber security, etc. must ensure that they operate in spaces with pleasant odours.
There is even a study that found that in environments with pleasant odours, people made more concessions during face‐to‐face negotiations with an accomplice. In other words, people become a lot more amiable when the ambience smells good. This should be a very important reason why businesses must do whatever it takes to have pleasant odours in the workplace. If the customer’s experience really means something to the business, then it is critical that the environment smells good. What this particular finding is suggesting is that it is obvious that frontline employees will be more welcoming and they will offer better customer service when the workplace has a pleasant smell.
Another of the benefits of having pleasant odours in the workplace is that it has been found to lead to employee retention. This might sound implausible. However, a number of studies have found that the link between workplace odour and employee retention is not really as improbable as it might seem. One study found that employees tend to feel appreciated when their office is well scented. This sense of appreciation is then extended to the organisation and this is what eventually leads to the desire to remain with that organisation for long.
From the above, it is clear that scents and smells can have a very powerful effect on the behaviour of individuals. Smells actually modulate our behaviours. A particular fragrance can put a smile on your face while another can put a frown on your face.
It is interesting to note that because a lot of the interactions we have with odours happen at a subconscious level, it is possible that a particular odour can put you in a mood, without you actually knowing what placed you in that mood. You might become moody without knowing that it is as a result of a particular odour in the environment. It will therefore not be far-fetched to say that we are at the mercies of the odours around us.
If there is one truth that all business leaders must have in mind at all times, it is this fact that the employee’s experience would eventually mirror that of the customer. If the employee is not happy—if the employee is not in the right frame of mind—it will affect the customer in one way or another. If the workplace odour is negatively impacting the employee, it will also negatively affect the customer. It is therefore important for businesses to ensure that if for nothing at all the workplace smells good, for the good of the organisation.
