Goodmans CEO Leads by Listening, Workers Return in Droves

Many businesses have struggled with how to encourage their employees to return to the office voluntarily after the pandemic. Typically, this is due to companies looking for a silver bullet. Free lunches and foosball tables don’t provide long-lasting workplace satisfaction.

At Goodmans, we believe that “One size misfits all.” The old paradigm of a small committee making design choices for the rest of the business is insufficient for today’s return to office challenge. That centralized approach doesn’t consider the nuances of each employee’s motivations and preferences.

That is why we used the power of research-based design to compel our employees to return to the office of their own free will and volition. We recently completed a full redesign of our Phoenix showroom based on the results of that research.

Goodmans is a company that focuses heavily on culture and the well-being of our employees. As the president and CEO of the company, I coach our leadership team that employees have stressful lives with the pressures of kids, spouses, personal finances and so on. On top of that, the job has its own stresses. I believe the leadership team has a responsibility to return employees back to their families at the end of the day in better condition than we got them in the morning. This philosophy drives a number of physical and mental well-being efforts at Goodmans, including the flexibility to work from anywhere. Employees have worked from home since 2020 yet we enjoyed record revenue during and after the pandemic. Goodmans had its highest revenue in the company’s 70-year history in 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023.

I give the leadership team the same three goals, year after year. The first goal is to be recognized as a top place to work in the Valley, followed by a rigorous customer satisfaction goal and finally a financial goal. Those goals are in order of priority, so I instruct the team that if they are going to miss, then miss on the lower priority goals, not the highest. I strongly believe our culture would be completely different if those three goals were in reverse order.

While Goodmans enjoyed customer satisfaction and financial success, we did not achieve Best Places to Work after 12 consecutive wins. This felt like a “gut punch” that reflected a culture fraying from remote and hybrid work. I decided to prove our theory that an expertly designed workspace can attract employees and thereby enhance culture.

But first, we needed to know precisely what would compel our employees to return and be happier in the office. We recognized that an employee survey was inadequate because the topic is simply too complex, and the stakes are too high.

Instead, our leadership team commissioned a third-party research company to conduct one-on-one employee interviews. The researchers were able to ask follow-up questions, read non-verbal cues, clarify muddled responses and generally have more interactive, nuanced and contextually rich exploration of the topic, leading to deeper insights and understanding.

The results were enlightening and unexpected. For example, we learned that our employees want an office that promotes both socialization and uninterrupted privacy. These two objectives are in direct conflict with each other, but because this is exactly what our employees were asking for, our design team responded to the challenge by innovating a floor plan that isolates heads-down workers while highlighting communal spaces.

This is the kind of insight we would not have discovered from a survey. Guided by the research, our office renovation also offers:

• Comfortable, homey environments. Employees said when they are home, they like to work outside. So, we constructed a patio with comfortable outdoor furniture. We also mimicked working from home with a new work lounge/café that serves as the heart of the office (similar to our kitchens at home) with a high-end cappuccino maker and cold brew on tap. We also constructed a wellness room for employees to nap, receive red light and sound therapy, and exercise on a treadmill. In addition, employees enjoy music, plants and comfortable furniture settings throughout the showroom.
• Functional technology and equipment at every workspace. The new office offers a virtual reality lab to allow customers to experience in 3D what their designs will look like when built. Every surface someone might use for work, whether a desk, project table or kitchen counter, has access to power, and mobile battery carts enable employees to charge devices anywhere.
• Conference rooms optimized for hybrid in-person and online meetings. Connectivity has been increased to avoid frozen calls, multiple ceiling-mounted microphones are in each conference room so even remote collaborators can hear, and the addition of multiple displays allows attendees to see teammates’ faces and share content simultaneously.

We believe that workers are shoppers. Now our employees can select where they want to work based on their tasks and their current mood. Sometimes, work will look like employees basking in the sun on the patio, other times it will be a group of employees chatting around cold brew, and at times it will be a worker typing steadily at a desk. Goodmans knows that diversity, flexibility and variety will keep our employees happy for a long time to come.

Goodmans Industry Leadership

Goodmans seeks justice for the marginalized. In the summer of 2020, Adam Goodman wondered if systemic racism existed in his own company. He discovered that although the overall census of the company matched the state’s demographics, an insidious unconscious bias called “occupational sorting” was artificially limiting career growth for Latinos. Since then, Goodmans has learned how to use objective diagnostic tools to mitigate unconscious bias in hiring and promotions. As president and CEO, Goodman believes the market will reward his inclusionary practices and competitors will be forced to emulate them.

Carbon neutral by 2050. Goodmans has committed to becoming carbon neutral by 2050, using a rigorous methodology of science-based targets to reach the goal. Goodmans is one of the smallest companies in the world to make this climate pledge. With sustainability a major company priority, Goodmans is fostering the circular economy by becoming Arizona’s only commercial-grade recycler for soft plastic film and inviting customers to use its service.