Changing employee behaviour through smell

When it comes to motivating employees has the thought of using smell (scent) crossed your mind? It hadn't mine either which is strange because I do use it at home. So why not our work places? Can motivating employees be as easy as lighting an oil burner?

Can lemon scented air freshener boost an employees behaviour? Does the waft of lavender soothe the stressed out worker? How about using the smell of cinnamon to cure employee errors. Recent studies suggest that all of the above can be true. But is it too much like big brother in the workplace? As the author rightly pointed out you can't "not" smell the scent being pumped through the workplace air conditioning system (unless one has one's own air supply you carry with you). But it is something to think about if you want to find pleasant ways to boost employee behaviour.

Anecdote

Retailers have long recognised the positive effects that smells can have on people's buying behaviours. Supermarkets lure shoppers with wafts of baking bread and we have all heard stories of Real Estate agents telling people to freshly brew coffee when having an open home. Other businesses are signing on too, some choosing scents that carry apt connotations for particular products they want to sell, a technique called billboarding.

Bloomingdale's, for instance, billboards the smell of baby powder in its infant-clothing department, while hints of lilac waft around the department store's intimate-apparel displays. American upscale ice cream chain Emack & Bolio's recently adopted a waffle-cone smell to attract patrons to the scoop shop within their Hard Rock Hotel branch, where sales had been flagging. The effect? Ice cream sales shot up more than a third.