Trends in the Office - Libraries

Employers are always looking for new ways to encourage their employees to continue learning, maintain focus, build camaraderie, and gain inspiration. Some companies encourage these through traditional means like team-building exercises, meetings, or perhaps allowing employees to listen to music as they work. While your company might have found these to be tried-and-true, there is another that might do all of the above in a roundabout way: a company library.

Regardless of your line of work, there may be good reasons for adding a library to your company’s office space.

Industry Specific Books - help employees rebuild the basics, grow and spread their knowledge, and gain new areas of expertise.

Novels - bring increased camaraderie and friendship among like-minded employees, while lighting up the imagination.

Non-Fiction - inspire employees with biographies of inspiring people or events.

Magazines - it is probably best to stick with your industry here, unless you really, really enjoy US Weekly.

The important thing in all of this is to help build a culture of engaged, knowledgeable, life-long-learning employees that can see connections between different subject areas, solve complex problems creatively, and just plain old have some perspective.

Some companies, like Blizzard Entertainment have even included video games in their industry-specific section and allow them to play at work. While you may not go that far, you might still think about creating a library for one or all of the reasons listed above. Do you have a company library? What types of things do you have there?

Here are a few examples of libraries at companies throughout the world: