Why Part of the New Employer-Employee Relationship Should Include Music
Show 'em you care with the gift of music
Seems a lot of business leaders are not happy with workers in many office-centric industries feeling less-than-enthusiastic about returning to the office. Some workers grumble, some just won’t go back.
As somebody whose multiple careers occurred in the San Francisco Bay Area only (with work travel to other locations), I did my time in the crappy commute rodeo, and I get the resentment. But this aspect of the employer-worker disconnects about returning to the office is just one of many. Pay disparities. Halting attempts at diversity and inclusion, never mind equity. A lack of any real sense of job security that is continually exacerbated by managers babbling about their multiple “metrics” used to evaluate employees. Generalized fear of AI’s impact on the workplace. (For more detail, there are a couple of studies from American Psychological Association available here.)
So add to all that uncertainty and angst, the idea of an hour(s)-long commute in a car, a bus or a train isn’t the return of a pre-COVID benefit as far as a lot of employees are concerned.
While there’s no single answer to the current employer-employee disconnect, I have one small suggestion: music.
No, I’m not saying free subscriptions to Spotify or Apple Music, nor am I talking about free concerts. (Plenty of businesses hire musicians to play at their events.)
Music packaged and delivered as streamed playlists developed to enhance physical performance (for workouts), improve focus and reduce stress.
Years of research breakthroughs focused on how the brain processes music gained popularity with the publication of “This is Your Brain on Music” which illustrated that music’s benefits extend beyond being mere “auditory cheesecake” as one renown cognitive psychologist once described music’s role in human evolution.
For business leaders and their HR teams all this research into music’s benefits presents a low-effort opportunity to improve the quality of their employees’ work environment and might even lead to better results.
Music Playlists as an Employee Performance Enhancement?
The key here is that these playlists are developed in large part with the direct input of subject-matter experts such as sports psychologists, therapists specializing in stress-reduction and the like, along with musicologists. Collaborative filtering techniques (e.g. people who listened to the Dinosaur Jr. also like . . . ) have their place but those are based on mundane filters.
To get more personalized and to assist in better outcomes, personal trainers, Zumba instructors, Peloton coaches, professional athletes have documented – how specific pieces of music improve performance in all phases from warm-up to training/performance and cool-down. You’ve probably seen world-class snowboarders or skiers bobbing their heads, shaking their hips when they’re at the starting gate or in the warm-up area. Heck, you’ve probably seen the headphone wires. Or consider every NBA player that you’ve seen in pre-game warmups.
What these folks have known for years are related to the emerging area “wellness music” of which there are variants that go beyond physical workouts and performance.
Free Advice You Didn’t Request
Curated playlists for improving focus, stress management through meditation and even mitigating sleep-related issues. (Full disclosure: I know some of the good folks at Feed Media Group and have done occasional consulting projects for them.)
So the question I have is why aren’t more business leaders – in any market segment in any place in the world – investing in music for their employees? Given current trends in hiring and retention in our post-pandemic world, it strikes me that enterprises – of any size – need to differentiate themselves to customers and prospective employees.
For data-driven business leaders – and I don’t think there are many who wouldn’t claim to be data-driven – the benefits of wellness and functional music can be tracked with standard app analytics. In fact, one of the important factors that led music labels to embrace a la carte purchases and finally interactive streaming service such as Spotify is that mobile apps can provide a wealth of analytics in terms of number of listens, playlists and songs added to a user’s collection etc.
Given the investments companies make in their customer- and employee-facing mobile apps, the costs of adding streaming music – particularly curated playlists of “functional” music – does represent incremental costs. Because these playlists come as non-interactive streams, licensing costs are significantly less than what is available on a consumer-facing fully interactive streaming music service.
It's a small step, business leaders, and I guarantee it won’t solve all the problems besetting your business. But it would be an offer of proof, a positive step that shows you’re investing tools that can help your employees manage all the complexities of working at your company.