Every year we look at what makes a company a good place to work. It’s an interesting exercise, and certainly scientific. Even so, it’s essentially academic. We know what makes a company a good place to work.
First of all, there’s nobody yelling at us. Being yelled at really sucks. Eliminate that and you have at least 60% of the job done.
Then there are no insulting emails. The occasional one-on-one communication with some berating message is marginally tolerable. But the kind where you look like a nincompoop and a dozen people are copied? Get rid of those and you have another big chunk of what makes a company a great place to work.
Next, get rid of consultants. Get them the frig out of there. Big boost in the metric right away. And corporate reorgs. Screw them too. Mergers. Acquisitions. Buzz kills, all of them. Solid, stable corporate government, predictable into the three- to five-year term and beyond? Ten points.
Then I guess you’d have to get us a lunchroom. Not a barren place with a couple of crappy tables and a machine spitting out salty sandwiches on bad white bread. A place we can go and get food and sit with other weird people we never see except in the lunchroom. We’d want to pay for our lunch, though. Bloomberg has a big food court where people can go like wildebeests and tank up at the trough for free. I don’t think that makes employees happy, though. You’d have to ask them. I’m not voting for it.
After that, I’m thinking an exercise room. No, a gym. A big gym with lots of machines and a sauna. And a steam room. Yeah, that would be great. After a long morning of rummaging around in the murk, it would be awesome to have a good steam. Set up the whole afternoon.
Although when you come to think of it, a steam without a good nap afterward is sort of pointless. I happen to know that many, many key executives take a nice little snooze before engaging the dragon for the rest of the day. “He’s on DO NOT DISTURB,” says the assistant. Logs are being sawn in there. And for good purpose too!
A great place to work should also have a place you can go to get some fresh air and maybe, you know, toss a ball around. They could organize times for it, where people could just, like, take a break? Sort of a … recess. Yeah, that’s it. We need recess. Executives have it. They play golf. Racquetball. No wonder they’re so productive.
After that, in the old days, before everybody got so serious, the top brass used to roll out the beverage cart and treat the guys on the 15th floor to a cocktail or two. Happened around 4 p.m. Unless people are operating heavy machinery, there’s really no reason why not. In fact, those were the days things were really smoking. Economically, I mean. Recreationally, too, come to think of it. I used to have a cigar at my desk on occasion. Now, you really can’t.
Which I guess brings us to the overall quality I think all of us are looking for in a company in order for it to qualify. Fun. I think we’d all like to have a lot more fun. I know I would. And money too. It occurs to me that we’ve taken a long look at this issue and haven’t even mentioned it! That’s a gaffe, although not as big a one as you might believe. Because while money is important, and we couldn’t really consider ourselves employed without enough of it to justify putting on the monkey suit every day, it’s not about the money. A company is a great place to work if you can wake up every morning and go to the office or plant or cubicle farm with a spring in your step and a good, solid feeling that you’re not wasting the one life God gave you doing somebody else’s business and none of your own.
Now if you’ll excuse me, my phone is ringing, and if I don’t answer it, Bob will be all over me like white on rice.
Stanley Bing’s new book, The Curriculum, will be published by HarperCollins in April. Follow him at stanleybing.com and on Twitter at @thebingblog.
This story is from the February 3, 2014 issue of Fortune.