Today’s office worker is pickier than ever. Not necessarily about cafeteria food or perks like unlimited vacation; rather, they are fickle about their work environment. As the space where most employees spend at least eight hours a day, is it unreasonable to want that space to be comfortable?

Results of a survey of 1,601 North American workers published by Harvard Business Review had the researchers floored. The question: What wellness perks mattered the most? Surprisingly, the answer was not standing desks or access to elaborate gyms. Those polled wanted a well-controlled environment with plenty of fresh air, accurate temperature control and access to natural light. For those in the facility management field, this may not come as much of a surprise as many daily complaints stem from basic comfort requirements. But what’s interesting is how much an office environment factors into the rest of the organization. Enterprises are relying on a strong brand and company culture to help attract the industry’s top talent. Salary aggregator Glassdoor’s recent study suggests that company culture may be more important than salary for some job seekers.

“Across the countries we surveyed, it’s clear that job seekers are seeking more meaningful workplace experiences,” Christian Sutherland-Wong, Glassdoor president and COO, said of the study. “Job seekers want to be paid fairly but they want to work for a company whose values align with their own and whose mission they can fully get behind.”

A key metric behind this stunning finding is the growing millennial workforce. According to Glassdoor, the millennials, defined generally as those born in the 1980s to 1990s, are more likely to put culture above pay, with 65 percent of those surveyed believing in this mantra. That speaks loudly to the shift in employer benefits. Building a culture starts from the ground up, and certainly a company’s physical work environment cannot be discounted. But how does environment factor into culture? Why should FM collaborate closely with recruiters and employee retention specialists? These studies suggest that it has to do with the authenticity of culture messaging. When an organization claims to have an “employee-first culture,” workers are less likely to believe that message when they’re asked to work in small, enclosed spaces with artificial lighting and stale air.

Prominent global organizations are at the forefront of this evolution and change in mentality that begins at the executive level. Thrive Global, Pinterest and GE Healthcare Korea are prioritizing office environment as an extension of their company culture. They join well-publicized tech leaders such as Google and Microsoft that have spent millions of dollars to design and build world-class facilities to help establish their company culture. That being said, does a company need to belong in the Fortune 500 to create a superior working environment? The key factors in an individual’s assessment of a working space are identified as lighting quality, air quality, environmental temperature and noise levels. Office layouts are often determined by the need for collaboration. Teams are placed together based on a job function or project focus. However, individuals in these teams can have myriad preferences for their work environment. Just because an individual is working on the same project as the person next to them does not mean they want to collaborate in the same way, or they prefer the same temperature while working. Companies are paying more attention to the individual as a way of reinforcing their company culture.

When focusing on the individual instead of the team or business, the key word here is choice. People feel more satisfied when they are given options or choices about their environment. Some companies are switching to unassigned seating in their facilities as part of the transition to an open office floor plan. In that scenario, employees are fully empowered to make choices about where they sit based on the noise level, temperature or brightness of a space. People who enjoy more extremes in the temperature of their environment can move to the peripheries of the building. They can sit next to windows, where indoor temperatures fluctuate in line with outside weather conditions. Those individuals can take more advantage of natural light. If freedom of choice is a given, they can select collaborative environments that might be noisy or quiet environments where concentration is maximized. However, not every business can design their workspace around an unassigned seating layout. There could be constraints on the amount of space as well as concerns about the benefits of increased productivity. Nonetheless, individual choice can still be maintained in those cases. Harvard Business Review indicated that “nearly half [of the employees surveyed] want an app that will let them set the temperature in their workspace.”

Thanks to advancements in building automation technology, individual choice is more accessible than ever. It starts at the networks that run building automation systems (BAS). The standard network type of BAS communications is RS-485: a low-bandwidth network that is inexpensive to install, comprised of twisted pair wire and low-cost communication hardware. These networks were more than enough for the bandwidth and speed requirements when they were designed. The low cost of hardware and installation helped keep construction and retrofit costs low. These networks are not very accessible to other systems, though, and data needs have exceeded their capabilities. This caused BAS integrators to incorporate Ethernet backbones in their networks, evolving to full Ethernet networks and eventually Ethernet networks using IP communication. This means that BAS networks are now using the same technology found in computers and communication systems. The most advanced BAS networks incorporate wireless IP, Bluetooth and IoT protocols. All these communication methods are making it easier and more cost-effective to bring control to the individual. BAS devices that individuals can use to interact with the system are not limited to thermostats and proprietary touchscreens. Users can access their systems with computers and smartphones.

With this enhanced connectivity to their building systems, companies are now able to increase worker satisfaction of the environment without making any other system changes. Just as people want more say in controlling projects, deadlines and workflows, they also want to be able to influence the surrounding environment. Collectively, these elements come together to cement the foundation for a workplace culture. Companies nowadays are experimenting with flat organizational hierarchies and employee-run projects. For instance, executives are offering more leeway to staff members on how and when projects are carried out. The Harvard Business Review study, however, revealed that all these strategies might not be the most important factor to employee satisfaction.

“Our survey revealed that employees, by a margin of 42 percent to 28 percent, would rather be able to personalize their work environment than opt for unlimited vacation,” the study found.

Specifically, the study found employees want to personalize workspace temperature, overhead and desk lighting, and the ability to “soundscape” their workspace. With connectivity in automation systems becoming so prevalent, it makes perfect sense to invest in something that can contribute so heavily to the perception of a company’s culture, which serves to lift employee productivity and reinforce worker loyalty.

When considering workplace culture, it is no longer leadership styles or job perks that solely define an organization. As employee well-being emerges as a top concern among executives and HR professionals, sending mixed messages is frowned upon: “You have a choice about how to complete your projects, but you can’t dim your lights.” “You can choose when to take vacation, but you can’t control the temperature.” “We care about you as an individual, as long as you like your workspace exactly the same as those around you.” The advancement, accessibility and ease of use for building automation technologies enables employers to do away with the constraints that once bogged down old facilities. Whether the answer to an organization’s workspace culture is unassigned seating, a BAS retrofit or just increased access to the system they already have, it is evident that an organization cannot control their culture if their team members cannot control the lights.