When I’m in the gym 4 or 5 mornings a week I have set days for set workouts. I vary the actual exercises but I like to have a routine. Along with this, I have a set playlist courtesy of YouTube (I feel I need to add ‘other playlists are available’).

Now this playlist is ‘my mix’ but it’s put together by the little AI that lives in my YouTube app (or however it works), so it’s not an identical playlist every day but it mainly covers a certain selection of songs.

This suits me fine, occasionally it will pop a random song into the mix based on my listening preferences and this happened the other day. There I was, happily absorbed in my bench presses when up popped Kylie. Now I have a few of her songs that come up regularly but this was the one, my all-time favorite Kylie song, and yet I’d not heard it for years.

Suddenly ‘What Do I Have to Do’ belted out in my ears and I had to try hard to stop the foot tapping, it’s not cool in a gym. But also, I was surprised by the flood of memories and emotions it brought and suddenly I was back in 1991.

Still living in Chesterfield, I was at college redoing English and Math and starting what would be a lifelong passion for law through my A level.

I worked as an Ice Cream man at weekends for Fredericks Ice Cream and Friday nights were the big night out with a wonderful group of friends. Our drunken escapades, Xanadu nightclub with its silver palms and purple walls, dancing in a big circle around our bags and coats in the middle on the dance floor, it all flooded back. 

Suddenly I was younger, more carefree, and my life and all its possibilities were ahead of me. I wasn’t bound by mobile phones, emails, or deadlines. Now don’t get me wrong I’m happy with how life has panned out but it was amazing how one song could evoke so many memories and feelings.

In his blog for Psychology Today, called ‘Why Does Music Evoke Memories’, Shahram Heshmat PH.D makes reference to explicit and implicit memories. Explicit memories are more tangible, from textbook learning for example, but Implicit memory is unconscious and automatic and can be evoked through certain smells or music.

He references Jakubowski et al, 2021 who state implicit memories establish themselves mostly at ages 10 to 30 years old. He goes on to say that psychologists call this the ‘reminiscence bump’. 

These musical cues evoke not just memories but emotions and can be accessed by dementia sufferers because they are so deeply rooted.

In my later reflections on this, I started to think about the workplace culture I have always tried to create. I remember that at my later job at Granada Studios Tour which I have mentioned before and will undoubtedly do so again, we all used to say that we loved working there and that getting paid was an added benefit. 

I hope that I have succeeded in even partly achieving that feeling in my employees over the years. I strive to champion diversity, celebrate inclusion and try to ensure that no matter how big a company may be, no one feels lost in the crowd. I hope those commitments paid off and that when in 20 years’ time an employee hears a piece of music one of those memories flooding back involving positive feelings about where they were working at the time, I think that would give me the greatest career satisfaction.

As employers, we are responsible for the well-being of our teams. It’s so easy to feel that company rhetoric and hiding behind supportive policies are enough.

The problem can often be that the higher the manager the more removed they can become from the reality of the front line and yet they are, in many cases, the policy makers. Organisations and managers should never forget the people that make their business work. These people have stories, hopes, and expectations, we need to be proactive in meeting and recognising their needs.

If you’re a manager when the last time is you worked the front line and chatted to your team, same with any Directors and CEO’s out there. My CEO at the Pier Group, Anne Ackord works fast food units and clears tables if the need arises, and takes the time to talk to her front-line team because we should never be removed from our employees and team members. That way we get the best from our teams and hopefully they get an excellent workplace, one that, in years to come when a piece of music takes them back, will provide them with happy memories.