Slashdot Mirror
Does Having Fun Make IT More Enjoyable?
Lam1969 writes "ComputerWorld is running an article stating that some senior managers in IT think the answer to boosting morale is to have more fun on the job. The IT managers interviewed for the article claim making people laugh contributes to successful businesses and reduces turnover. How do you have fun? According to the article, Dale Sanders, head of IT at Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation, 'has posted photos on the intranet of staffers caught in awkward moments installing cables or servers, for instance. Sanders encourages others to add funny (and tasteful) captions.' John Wade, CIO at Saint Luke's Health System Inc., sometimes dresses in drag and encourages other unusual behavior. Other potential tactics for laughs include encouraging self-expression, encouraging 'serious play', and asking potential hires their favorite funny movies or comedians."
Does having fun make ANY job more enjoyable?.................. *yes*.
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Does having more fun make it more enjoyable? It doesn't seem to be to be a very big stretch at all to define "fun" as that which is enjoyable. So, if you are having more fun, isn't it more enjoyable? This question seems easily answered by definitions alone.
-Da3vid-
No
Think of the thousands of $$$ these guys spent on getting MBAs to come up with this...
This seems like a great idea. Improve everyone's morale by making fun of people. I can't believe it would be too long before someone's feeling are hurt by the made up captions provided by other employees. We certainly wouldn't to go to the effort and cost of providing decent pay, decent benefits, and treating employees like valued members of the company as a way to improve morale.
I dunno, that's a tough one...someone help me out here...
(That was sarcasm, in case someone out there didn't figure that out)
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
So how long before "Monty Python" is added to the Comp.Sci. curriculum at the local university? I'm all for having a fun and enjoyable workplace, but I'm not sure I want my professional qualifications trumped by whether or not the interviewer agrees with my sense of humour.
Yes, that is a universal principle. At the office, I've instructed my staff to give every 100th Big Mac "extra-special" treatment.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
They say it fosters a more special bond between you and your employer.
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
I like to laugh. A lot. I kid around more than any other person at my office.
I would just like to note that taking photos of your co-workers caught in akward situations sounds to me more like something that will lower morale than anything. So if you think they look funny the way they have to bend over while running cables, don't capture it so that everyone can laugh.
Unless you want those cables wrapped around your neck.
You've got it all wrong.
Clearly, the title was referring to It - from the Stephen King novel.
Creepy clowns... I find them to be neither fun nor enjoyable.
You be as understanding as possible with them when they need to take care of their families
How about accepting a little less profit as a price to pay for supporting good workers in your community (and companies need help defending and encouraging this practice)
How about getting rid of employees, especially managers, that are abusive and/or want to build little fiefdoms
Lastly, how about you take the bitter employees who like to complain about every little perceived slight and fire their asses ASAP for being disruptive. I know my girlfriend, who works as a softare developer and hates working for women, would back this wholeheartedly, but perhaps that's because it'd be the cause of most of her female peers getting fired on the spot.
Look, work is typically what we wouldn't do if given the choice not to do it. That's why it's called work, it's supposed to be laborious and when it's not, you've got something great going for you. The best way to keep good people is to protect them, challenge them and give them excellent opportunities to get rewarded for working hard for their employer. You can let them play Halo for an hour a day on company time, but if they still work for a typical good ol' boy network and/or hyper-PC office or a PHB with sociopathic tendencies, you'll never have the kind of work environment that can match the aforementioned environment that makes work be work, but makes people feel like they get something good and safe from their blood, sweat and tears.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Oh, yeah, I've pissed my pants laughing at techs in "awkward moments" installing servers. Yawn. Well, at least maybe they'll win $100K on America's Funniest Home Videos for the crap they serve up there as funny.
Evil Overlord Rule #86. I will make sure that my doomsday device is up to code and properly grounded.
that when companies recognize and reward effort, it tends to make the job more enjoyable. It also helps if they get rid of those that don't put forth any effort.
Sure, being able to enjoy your job and have fun is good, but I think the first thing is being able to do your job without having to mop up after someone else. After that, you break out the arrows that go through your head.
Southwest has had this strategy for years. Must be why they are posting profits when all other airlines are sinking into debt.
He lasted longer than most of them but was fired after 2 years. Morale is a function of a lot more than a preprinted sheet of funny interview questions or a corporate approved list of funny movies.
Better morale techniques are giving people the opportunity to get more out of their day job than a dumpy apartment or a better quality of life than they had 5 years ago. A popular technique in consumer electronics is to let people design things they'll actually want to use.
I think the biggest problem is that a lot of IT companies don't trust their employees enough to allow them more free time on the job.
Where I work, we have a 7 foot projector with Xbox and Xbox360 hooked up, and frequently a few employees will go and play games against each other for an hour or two.
Does work still get done? Of course. But nobody likes to work all the time, and video games are a good alternative to say surfing aimlessly around the web, because this way you get to leave the desk and interact with co-workers.
Why so many companies seem to think you *have* to work every minute you're there baffles me, it's very unproductive. As for the state of my company, we're #1 in our field, and doubling growth every year. It's a mid-size company, and maybe that's why this works, it's small enough that the employees feel (and are rewarded) regarding to company success.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
According to the article, Dale Sanders, head of IT at Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation, 'has posted photos on the intranet of staffers caught in awkward moments installing cables or servers, for instance. Sanders encourages others to add funny (and tasteful) captions.'
Know the easiest way to suck the fun out of a situation? Have it encouraged by management. Fun just happens. Make it a policy, and it becomes work again.
Ok, again, from the OED:
fun - noun - enjoyment, amusement, or lighthearted pleasure : the children were having fun in the play area | anyone who turns up can join in the fun. a source of this : people-watching is great fun. playful behavior or good humor : she's full of fun. behavior or an activity that is intended purely for amusement and should not be interpreted as having serious or malicious purposes : it was nothing serious; they just enjoyed having some harmless fun. [ attrib. ] (of a place or event) providing entertainment or leisure activities for children : a 33-acre movie-themed fun park.
DUH!
I had a boss recently who thought it was his responsibility to keep the workplace a 'fun' place, he just wasn't very good at it. His antics simply frustrated myself and the other employees who were simply trying to get the work done, to the point that we got more work done when he wasn't in than when he was. There is a line between 'having fun to increase productivity' and 'having so much fun that you prevent productivity', and it's a damn fine one. My boss crossed it and never even realised, I can't help but wonder if others will as well as a result of this kind of report.
Does having fun make ANY job more enjoyable?.................. *yes*.
So in this case, does IT stand for "Information Tautology"?
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
Of course a fun work environment is more enjoyable. I've worked in an IT company though, that was lots of fun, without being very productive. The company doesn't exist anymore.
Fun doesn't pay the bills. Think of it as a nice fringe benefit, but not something more than that. I
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
depends whose fun and morale you are talking about. I know many IT people who's morale is improved by allowing them to make others have less fun....
From my experience working a crappy entry level tech support position, stuff like cube warfare can make all the difference between hating the customers you're on the phone with, and actually wanting to help them configure Outlook Express (for the 3rd time).
As I moved up in the IT world, and moved through different companies and positions the trusty Nerf Vortex guns came with me. There's always someone who appreciates a good cube shootout as much as I do, wherever I go.
hi mom!
* Does breathing make living more enjoyable?
* Does having paint make being a painter more enjoyable?
* Does having a computer make developing software more enjoyable?
I could go on, but I think we've all paid this post far too much heed as it is.
-volve
It's christmas eve, and I'm spending my time commenting on slashdot... Now that's no laughing matter.
At least according to a study from the University of Alberta.
Summary being that sad workers make less errors, presumably because they focus harder to block out the relentless hell of their lives.
fortune -o
My coworkers and I have a great time at work. In fact, that is the only reason I am not really looking for another job and probably why I am still there. We just hired a hardware guy from another department, he too has commented many times that he actually enjoys coming to work now. The guy I replaced took another job for about 15K year more and he left only because of some differences with the IT manager, he would come back at his old pay if she ever left. People have reasons for staying and leaving, our IT manager is the definate odd man/woman out and a definate negative across the board with all of us. We overcome that though and we enjoy our time because WE make it enjoyable, our fun did not come down from above as a directive that we "should promote some fun" with a benefit analysis and it was not a "follow the leader" either.
so all the transit workers union wanted was for someone to make fun of them? could have avoided that strike with a fake moustache on the union president i guess. seriously, it shouldn't take a premeditated management decision to create a relaxed atmosphere. perhaps the employees would like adaquate pay and reasonable pension and health. maybe a little respect too. btw, i'm assuming "fun" makes all employees happier, not just IT. i guess it's cheaper to create a funny ofoto album than to increase wages or not decrease benefits.
"has posted photos on the intranet of staffers caught in awkward moments installing cables or servers"
I hope it wasn't a fat guy bent over showing some crack
YES!
Worst, Headline, Ever.
-> Fritz
Spooooon!!!!!
"Does Having Fun Make IT More Enjoyable?"
That's like saying, "Does having a penis make sex more pleasurable?"
I'm 60. 30 years ago it was the coolest thing to be doing. I had a sense of growth, future, learning and making an important contributions. I bought terminal with my own money to work from home! What killed it? Greedy, arrogant bosses who just politick their way up. Insecure techies who hide code, secrets and, possibly evidence of their own lack of expertise. Distrustful managers who want you to fix broken fund transfer links but without any ID's or passwords. Getting reamed for wanting to really improve matters by cleaning up the code I have to repair at 3 am. Big companies actually wanted us to keep track of and maintain LINE NUMBERS in the code which contributed nothing.
Does Having Fun Make IT More Enjoyable?
Is having fun enjoyable? Read what you just wrote.
You can answer that for yourself, right?
My page.
Yes.
The title, thats a retorical question, right?
I've worked at places that did this well, and I've worked at places that did it poorly.
At a place that did it poorly, the employer tried to "lighten up" the place with all kinds of stupid shtick and encouraging the employees to get into the act. Naturally, employees felt pressured to participate and to pretend to think it was fun, when it wasn't. (Cue Bill Lumbergh saying, "Friday is Hawaiian shirt day, so, you know, if you want to you can go ahead and wear a Hawaiian shirt, and jeans.") This didn't exactly improve morale.
If you want to reduce stress, give your employees the freedom to be themselves. This starts with you being yourself. Don't try to be funny if you have no sense of humor, but if you do have one, use it. Don't try to be silly if you're naturally stoic by demeanor. Don't try to be a cheerleader if that's not who you are. If you're anything but genuine, and you have smart employees, they'll sense it, and that sends the message that this is what's expected, and your employees will feel stressed by it, though they may be unable to articulate the source of the stress (even to themselves). So just let your natural personality shine through.
Unless, of course, you're naturally a complete jerk. In that case, the best thing to do is to shoot yourself in the head. Your employees will love you for it.
I used to read Dilbert for fun. But with my current job I have so much fun trying to get some reasonable behaviour out of WebSphere Application Server 4.0 and WebSphere Portal Server 4.2.1, that I am known company-wide for my hysterical laughter. Sometimes a coworker says something completely innocent, like: "when we upgrade to WAS 5 ...", and I almost faint from the cramps of laughter while rolling of my chair down onto the floor.
I no longer read Dilbert. It's dull in comparison with real life. It's like cutting yourself with a pocket knife to distract yourself from the pain you feel from having been run over by a truck.
Down, not across!
Is there any grant money available, I have an proposal for a study. It will take a few years, require international travel to get a good subject sample. It'll have to be repeated before publication of course.
Are there any volunteers out there who'd like to be subjected to fun?
Homestar Runner, Maddox, David Firth, and soundboards. I work as an IT Admin at Rhino Video Games and we have an awesome time just messing around on the forums and video sites. It helps us "bond" as a department and we feel like family. We have many inside jokes and sayings that keep us in good spirits all the time. Oh, and sure we get a lot of work done ;) hah!
I will forever be a student.
There's also the difference between fun and funny. Some of the suggestions seem like they're trying to use funny things to enforce fun in dull situations, which in my experience is a bad idea.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Frankly, the only companies that can and should be trying to improve the morale of their employees (I mean the grunts, not the management) with techniques other than money or free time, are the ones with proper mechanisms are in place where smart people get to decision-making positions. Come to think of it, there probably isn't much to be done on the morale front there anyway.
To prevent this day from getting worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD TH
John Wade, CIO at Saint Luke's Health System Inc., sometimes dresses in drag and encourages other unusual behavior That kind of hilarity I can pretty much do without. Especially if the "encouraged other unusual behavior" is at his place after 10 beers & poppers...
That's not to make work more fun, he just has "issues." Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Maybe not
TFA reminds me of Greg Sniper, AKA Grass Valley Greg, the man who invented the Delete button. His company's motto was "Where ideas can hang out...and do whatever!" GVG made his employees take tofutti ice cream breaks whenever HE felt like it. There was a poster in the workplace that read "Arbeit ist spiel", "Work is play".
If I remember correctly, the sketch was based on a Microsoft executive that made his employees listen to Jimi Hendrix...whether they liked it or not.
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
They also tend to only hire people who are nice, willing to help others, and are always respectful to others in the company. According to mythos, sometimes managers will pretend to be prospective applicants, and walk in and sit with the real ones, to watch them. There have been applicants at the final level who have lost the job because they were rude to a secretary.
And really, except for the mechanics on the field, nobody there is in a job where training and experience could absolutely trump being nice, thoughtful and being able to learn. And even the mechanics, you want to have caring and thinking about the people in the planes. That probably also contributed to why they lasted so long without a plane crash.
It makes sense, doesn't it? It's a lot easier to enjoy your work environment if you don't hire jerks.
Very few do in the IT world. Most people are not happy until they have a certain $$$ figure with their job. Little do these people know that $$$ does not always come hand in hand with respect.
||| I still can't believe Parkay's not butter.
no fun in /bin /sbin /usr/bin /usr/sbin /usr/local/bin
The Admin and the Engineer
Forgive me from my comments, I just had a shitty day at work (Costco, boxing stuff for members), and have to admit that ive never had issues with customers before today. Anyways, on with the post
A) Since this is IT, fire moron people who pull stupid shit and waste your time. ie, an idiot keeps getting email viruses from personal email. or, if your working with customers like me... Cancel their membership and remind him of what an ass he is (And I know that ppl will say that this would be bad, but this dude took lots of time, pissed off both the cashier and I, and was overly unpleasent. Him, his family and his friends wont detract largely from the 100k we generate in an hour)
B) Take pictures of the employee/customer from answer A of you strangling them with a computer cord, then let the staff add funny captions or comments to them. Or, if you work at costco like me, smash their eggs/bread, and make sure their chicken gets grease all over the new cloths they bought (after the transaction is complete, of course), then have their membership cancelled.
Customer Service blows
-------------
By the way, if any of the morons I had to deal with today are reading this, I will A) Assume i've lost my job, not that I care at this point, and B) want to wish you a Merry Christmas, err, excuse me, "Happy Holidays"!!
Scott Swezey
I'm moderating.
Today's show is brought to you by the number 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0: 25
Does having fun make ANY job more enjoyable?.................. *yes*.
.................... MONEY!
Not as much as
like every time I ask about bonuses or when their going to lift the salary freeze from 2001 "becuase times WERE tough".
make: *** No rule to make target `fun'. Stop.
MOD THE TROLL UP!!!
This fun-from-above standpoint is akin to "expressing yourself" by wearing your 35 pieces of flair.
Fun that is fun because it's fun is fun. Fun that is fun because the boss says so is not.
I pretend to know more than I really do by mooching off google and wikipedia.
-bash: kill: fun: no such pid
The Admin and the Engineer
I currently work in a higher-ed environment, and one way that our team stays relaxed and ready at the same time is by spending time with each other. I know this sounds a bit corny, but if you like the people you work with, then you enjoy spending time with them. Part of improving morale is knowing that there are actually *good* parts to your job and working those to your advantage.
One thing we do is having daily Quake fragfests around lunch time. Even the director drops by, shakes his head, chuckles and shuffles away. We are even in the process of designing (when we are not doing projects or solving problems, of course) a large Quake map after the actual physical buildings of our school.
Each team is different, and each company/organization is different. For us, we find that (a) we like the work, (b) we like each other (except when "J" has a BFG10K and all I got is a lousy gauntlet). We work to use that to build relationships within the team, and that has positive, outflowing effects on our attitude towards the customers.
You see, in the IT industry - there are all these sales people who are constantly trying to push this proprietary crap down your throat 7x24 that is alsmost always expensive, and will almost certainly be obsolete in a few years. You will have a much more fufilling career, if you are cyincal about all of this, and embrace non-proprietary stuff whenever you whenever you cen even if it is a little more work and a little less feature rich. Over the years, the non proprietary also has the advantage that it tends to build on itself while the proprietary stuff will often keep re-inventing the wheel and charge for it.
I have lots of fun working at a high paying job. I'll have MORE fun with higher income.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
If you read their job benefits and what they have in their main building, it's easy to see why people like working at Google.p age=why-ca-mv.html
http://www.google.com/support/jobs/bin/static.py?
Of course having fun makes a job more enjoyable, regardless of what the job actually is.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
$ echo fun fun $ echo fun fun $ echo fun fun
Does Having Fun Make IT More Enjoyable?
This is a tough one, but I'm going to go with yes. Its fun. Everyone enjoys fun.
I'm pretty sure that IT is NEVER fun.
nay, it's just the editors loosing capitalization skills like the previously lost anti-dupe skills, grammer skills, and spelling skills.
"Secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy
At the same time, this reminds me a lot of the hilarious series The Office. I mean, just because a boss is trying to be funny and cheer everyone up, doesn't mean he's succeeding...
Software is like sex. It's better when it's free. -Linus Torvalds
it's just the editors loosing capitalization
Heh. You know what they say about the pot calling the ketle black.
I hear ya...and agree with you...fun at IT jobs DO help things.
My first IT job years ago was a great atmosphere. Our BU mgr. basically gave us programmers carte blanche to do what we wanted...as long as the work was done on time and done well. We spent lunch hours that ran over quite a bit over an hour each day playing Descent, Duke Nuke'em...and other games over the network...with speakers at full blast and all the yelling and all that went with it. No problems.
We'd take breaks....play hacky sack outside our cubes. Hell...we were in a new bldg....and had scuffed up the walls with our dress shoes (dressy casual there). The bldg. admin had gotten in a huff...dragged us all in with the BU leader to chew us out....before she could get up and and start bitching...he stood up and said, "hey guys..play that outside...or just be careful not to scuff the walls.....and dismissed us without any scolding.
This is the same place that would send our team out twice a year, during the day, with pay on the company dollar to team building days....these involved all day tubing trips down the buffalo river...ski days at a lake, bowling...lazer tag..keg parties for the whole company (I think was a few 1000 people then)....etc.
I gotta say..we were the tightest team...got many things done way ahead of time and ahead of schedule...they paid for us to have fun, and let us be adults about how we used our time...and it paid off.
I think tho...they finally dropped out of that mode after I left...it is a shame..I seriously doubt they got more response and work out of people acting like every other company....
I don't understand why more companies, even ones that get big, don't just try to let people enjoy their jobs, have fun....etc. If they abuse the privileges...then can them, but, as long as the job is done...let them do it 'their way'.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
DUH!!
So, not only would I have to deal with unorganized management who promises the clients the world in a horribly unreasonable amount of time, and without consulting IT, but I would also have to squeeze into my already overtime-qualified day some more time to have "fun" with my other co-workers in order to boost morale??? Forgive me if I sound cynical, but I would much, much, much, much rather have organized timelines, clear specifications from the client, and an 8-hour workday instead of "fun." Besides, it's called going to work , not going to fun . Besides, the geeks & dorks that I work with in IT don't know the meaning of fun. Now, the cute girls in sales & marketing... that's a different story!
fun
...
fun
fun
fun
fun
fun
Uhhhh, kettle?
"Oh, and remember, next Friday is Hawaiian shirt day"
Well I hate to be the killjoy here but you know I wouldn't be suprised if some of those things (like the pictures with captions among others) could be considered harassment of some form or another.
What can I say, it's the world we live in I guess...but one person's jokes could definitely be another person's lawsuit.
So Know your audience first....and remember that there -are- some things which are funny regardless of (insert sociological grouping here)'s orientation or whatever.
fun: No such file or directory
The Admin and the Engineer
Cheers
Robert A. Wukich, Sr FF/EMT-B
King of the double entendre! I had to read that title three times before I figured out it WASN'T about sex!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Gee, now that I look back, I have enjoyed myself more during those times I had fun versus the times I didn't have fun. I can't believe how seamlessly this correlation works.
Furthermore, I've noticed that I've been unhappy during times of sadness. I can't help wondering if there's a relationship here.
Dammit. I meant so ignore most of Slashdot over Xmas - I do have family, etc.
.. accounting ) will ponder if the Pope is catholic.
But the DUH! factor of this set me off.
Thank (fill in your favorite deity here ) that I'm out of IT. Whilst this stupidity is not limited to management, its just another reminder that due to the environment, politics, etc of (your workplace) some really stupid ( people, trends, and behaviors ) can foster.
There's no cure for this kind of shit, so I have no real soapbox. However, for those of you who can spot management bullshit like this (including the new fake moreale boosting ), dont buy into it.
Next week, some senior managers in some other aspect of a firm ( lets say
I just tell my team to read the details of their company "benefits" package. why waste all that time *trying* to be funny?
What the head of the department thinks their staff think bears little relation to what they actually think.
Yeah, at a place i previously worked we did a similar thing...
:)
We would play small simple games at lunch (Think Flash Games), though we usally didnt take anymore than the alloted hour
After hours was a different thing all together, we would play Half-life, Counter-strike, TFC, DOD and many other games... We would usually play for about 1.5 to 2 hours each day...
and Managment Loved it... Why? Simple...anyone working overtime who was having problems with computers could still call IT... and they didnt have to pay us to be there for the extra time...
I also found that out of every place i have ever worked the team morale was much much much higher...
"I reject your reality, and substitute my own" - Adam Savage
This is a trick question righ?
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Does Having Fun Make IT More Enjoyable?
I dunno, is tonight Christmas Eve?
DUH. If you're not having fun, you're probably not doing a very good (or enthusiastic) job.
Imagine Scotty the engineer not having fun on his job. Sure, he got frustrated, but he was still having fun.
I, for one, welcome our new Antichrist overlord.
that's a great way to get punched in the neck.
Of course not. Fun? Enjoyable? Bosh!
What makes your IT job more enjoyable is being treated like a second-class employee. Having to reheat the coffee when you're called in by someone who can't find the "any" key. Training your own replacement before he takes your job home to Bangalore.
Fun? What an astonishing waste of time.
no.
you sir, are fuckwit for asking. Now go audit your TPS reports dickhead.
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
"We certainly wouldn't to go to the effort and cost of providing decent pay, decent benefits, and treating employees like valued members of the company as a way to improve morale."
Of course not. You're suppose to be providing your own "love", as in "doing it for the love". We tried it with money, and look what happened (dotBOOM!). Plus all your friends are going to make fun of you if we start giving you money "Neener, neener. Mordors9 is doing it for the mooonneey! Let's torment him till he cries." I don't know about you, but I'd give in before they ask you to leave the club. Nothing sadder than an ex-IT worker making thousands as a lawyer.
In the developer cubicles, when we want to get someone's attention we often throw something -- a pen cap, a soft frisbee, a packet of parmesan cheese -- at the person so they'll take off their headphones and look around. We call it an "Instant Message."
One of the gifts at our office White Elephant party yesterday was about 30 small koosh balls. That ought to keep things interesting.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
DOH! (More DOHs so that the stupid lameness filter will not kick in!)
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Give them job satisfaction, not some BS cartoons. Give people respect for doing challeging work where they can see results of their contribution. Unfortunately there are too many talented people without the courage to leave their PHB in a Dilbert work enviornment.
I derive far more enjoyment from my work when my manager actually takes me seriously when I tell him that module he wants is going to take 2 months to code, no way around it. Or that all Bob's code is going to have to be rewritten during his extended hospital stay (What with the tragic electrocution and all) because he's such a crappy programmer. It doesn't hurt to throw a new technology into the mix every so often, either...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I'll gently disagree. I've had jobs I've enjoyed not because they were fun, per-se, but because the Not-Fun was kept far away from me. Basically, the jobs were interesting, management was supportive or absent, and i was left unencumbered to actually do work and accomplish something. You can skip the foosball tables, hawaiian shirt day, and mandatory bowling outings, and instead fire the incompetent cow-worker and preening, empire-building, managers. Average pressure decreases, more work gets done, and the employees are more contented.
I had a job years later that had more outright "Fun", but it also had some gold-plated broccoli moments, which in the end trumped the former, and caused me to depart. Fun is fine, but if the work in between gives you an acid stomach before you even arrive, whether or not the trigger incident happens that day, then the job is not enjoyable. Of course, the compensations were fun like trying out large simulations on new machines before they were released to users.
So, it's not fun, but the lack of its opposite, that makes a job more enjoyable. I think the motto for workplaces should be "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Nirvana."
the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
Yes, but having fun with your own IT job makes your coworkers' jobs impossible.
*****
Dear Mary,
I yearn for you tragically,
A.T. Tappman, Chaplain, U.S. Army.
"A popular technique in consumer electronics is to let people design things they'll actually want to use."
Works for the sex industry.
I share much of the same philosophy- I'll take that bundle of cash even if the job sucks, and it will enable me to do whatever I want when I'm not there.
However, while earning lots of money offsets the will to quit a bad job, it doesn't make it any easier to put in the 40 hours. We spend a lot of our lives at work.
Sometimes it's not worth it. If you're at a shitty 80k/yr job, and you have the chance to get a much more enjoyable job that's closer to home for 70k/yr, a lot of people might take it.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
It use to be that you just had to be good at your job in order to be employed.
Then they made it so you had to be an egotistical, self-confident, and extroverted. If you were in the least bit shy, realistic about your own abilities, etc, then you were out of luck.
Now you have to have a sense of humour too!
Bah humbug!
Max.
" Does having fun make ANY job more enjoyable?.................. *yes*. "
Having fun implies we are doing it because we want to as opposed to because we have to. It signifies choice, even if it is an illusion of choice. It is the difference with allowing the horse to walk to the water and drink versus dragging it to the river and forcing its head into the water. It would die before it drinks. Regardless of how thirsty it might be.
Its xmas morning. I'm thirsty.
I love humanity, it is people I hate
Read Slashdot!!! DUH!
...and let me be the first to say I've never seen the man in drag, but it would be worth a laugh.
That's what work gets every single day...
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
This reminds me of when one of my best friends of mine started with the same company. He and I had been in IT for years and had met through our hobby of computing. We used to have fun, cut up at work, and generally enjoy the work we were doing. Mainly because it was the same "work" we did at home for fun. A supervisor pulled us aside and told us that the perception around the cube farm was that we didn't appear to be very serious and joked around too much. Our response was that we enjoyed our work. Frankly, it wasn't "work" to us, we were having a ball. Our work reflected our abilities and our systems were solid. Our application servers were running great and when problems arose, they were generally handled quickly. Our background certainly showed in the knowledge we brought and we generally had more to bring to a problem then most of the people we worked with. I think IT, even more so now, is made up of people who love the work and people who said, "Hey, I'll go into IT. I could do that." It doesn't mean they're incompetent but it does mean they will never truly love their work. They may like their job, but that probably would have liked any job they had put the time in to study and learn about. For them IT is like being a bank teller or stocking shelves or any other job. It's neither fun nor not fun at any given time.
Laughing and having fun is a great thing to do and keeps interest alive. But it is like that only when done impromptu - when not planned for. When you make it a routine and part of the daily exercise, it loses the charm.
succeed.
If you are succeeding, and people have a meaningful part in that sucess, and are treated like they have a meaningful part in that success, then you don't have motivation problems.
Of course, that's like Steve Martin's routine about how you can make a million dollars and never pay taxes. Part one is get a milion dollars, part two is don't pay your taxes. Most of us don't know how to get to step one.
It's like whistling when you walk past the graveyard, the cargo cult management formulas for improving morale and productivity. I remember once spending a week long retreat with the CEO, in a cabin on a remote island with no electricity, nothing but the senior managers, a Phd management consultant and piles of flip charts. The topic: what is the business we are in. I remember thinking, if the CEO doesn't friggen know, we're in deep shit.
Incompetence, lack of direction and above dread of that which must not be spoken are like millstones around our necks. Doubt gnaws at us: fear that the terrible secret of how poorly we have managed our commitments will be made public. Anger and resentment eats at us like a canker, patched over with thinning layer of hopeless bravado. We struggle daily through a morass of pointless activity: the bulk of the work we do is cleaning up our messes, shifting blame, or delaying the inevitable.
Free your workers from these burdens and you won't need any tricks. Tear of the covers on the festering mess and let the light and air in. Don't try to manage the morale problem: you can't without patronizing, and if your workers aren't smart enough to know they're being patronized, they're probably not smart enough to work in IT.
If you try so hard to make things come out the way they are supposed to, and it doesn't work, perhaps dealing with the way things are wouldn't be so bad. If you are so much less than the sum of your parts, then perhaps you are misusing your parts. Look around with open eyes: things may be bad, but they aren't so bad that they can't be improved. Mere mediocrity would be outstanding in the cesspool of dishonesty and pretense that is business. Our model of success has become exploitation, where there are only two classes of people: winners and suckers. Many have done well by this model. But not you. If you are worrying about motivation you don't have the stomach for that game. Real operators don't need gimmicks, they keep the suckers eating out of their hands until they're done with them. You obviously need a different model.
In short: Promise little, deliver much. Don't manage the people around you, relate to them. If managing appearances doesn't work, then live by eternal virtues like honesty, fidelity, honor and bravery. Don't think like a manager, think like a primitive barbarian hero: company after all comes from the same linguistic roots as companion: it means people who share each other's bread.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Hiring a professional comedian for the office, except don't tell anyone he's a professional comedian. Just make him pretend to be working behind the computer, but his real job is cracking jokes all day and boosting morale.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
As I was reading this article, I realized that this is so true. I started working for a company about 3 weeks ago. The company has 300 employees. The manager, Al, has a very boisterous style. Everyone jokes that you don't look for Al--you listen for him.
I realized that this is actually a pretty clever management style. Nothing wakes you up on Monday morning than a lively atmosphere and a jovial manager. This also keeps all the company's informed about the goings on of the company--which is always a good thing.
"A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age." -Robert Frost
I work for a small computer company and 3ware sent us an infatable beachball which still to this day is somwhere in our shop, apparently they subscibe to this idea of fun on the job. :)
Personally I can say the beachball has made some of my days more enjoyable, and other tech companies need to follow this example.
*.sig
If Fun(IT) = infinity, then Fun(IT) + More Fun = infinity.
And we ALL know that IT is infinitely fun.
So the answer is no.
http://www.TheGamerNation.com/Forums
How about outsourcing? Downsizing, reorganization or aqusitions? It would be fun if I could just do my job and be left alone. That would be fun. I like what I do but I hate my job. Yes, I'm IT.
Take care of your people.
They will then take care of you.
The leaders I've been most loyal to are the ones that first make sure I have everything I need to do my job, and then get out of my way so I can do it. My morale is best under such conditions - I will move mountains for such a leader if I have to.
That said, reasonable office hijinks that don't directly relate to the job can be a lot of fun and take the drudgery out of things. Wouldn't do much at my job, most of us are out in the field most of the day, hell, I'm not acutally in the office more than once a week, occasionally twice. Which goes back to my main point. I'm getting the job done, so they don't force me to check in all the time and be seen. They know that if they put the calls in my box, they will be completed, it's as simple as that. So they stay out of my way and let me get it done.
Cold water isn't hot.
:-)
Welcome to your common sense award of the day.
Everybody remembers the scene in Office Space where the whole room is covered in Post-It notes.
I did this.
I got in SOO much shit. My manager (the person who's office I did), kept bringing it up after 3 quarterly reviews and mentioned again for that last 2 Yearly reviews.
Then the fucker had the nerve to say that "We want to support an atmosphere of fun and play."
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
That's easy, just push out the project deadline. Just make it more realistic. Everyone will be overjoyed. The entire app development team will be ecstatic.
It's certainly a popular thought right now.
Maybe, but I think the main thing that would make work more enjoyable is... MONEY. More money.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
...to Bangalore, oh noes!
Our Staff gets its daily dose of laughter getting Windows to work.
If your team is going to have fun, it's going to have fun. An employer will have to get draconian to stop it. However, if your team lacks that particular chemistry necessary, nothing the employer can do will create it. As other posts have had it, employers should work to maintain an open, un-oppressive environment, with good pay and benefits, and a work-life balance that's not too skewed; the fun will take care of itself.
Thinking outside my Head
Hey... don't knock shoveling turds for a living. I work at an animal control facility, and after you get past the grossnes of it, cleaning up after dogs etc gets a sort of rewarding feeling in its own right. I don't know if I'd personally ever be able to get comfortable with cleaning up human feces, but dog? No problem. But yeah, working with people that can occasionally get goofy prevents the days from dragging on. It can be almost essential during stressful periods. Maybe it's just the camaraderie that you build up, so when you're feeling stress just having people that you feel comfortable around takes a big load off.
On the other hand excessive (or innapropriate) clowning can sometimes have social drawbacks. Or just create a whole mess of extra work.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
my company's idea of making IT more enjoyable is giving us more responsibility, laying off staff or not replacing those that got smart and quit, making us work round the clock, giving us rediculous deadlines, crappy hardware, and then yelling at us when things don't run smoothly. then they don't pay overtime, on call pay, or my travelling expenses, despite them being submitted a month ago.
anyone else have to work christmas weekend? and not get paid? or on call pay?
nice. my verification word is capstan. yep, i do feel like i am going round and round getting nowhere.
I swear, upper and middle management treated people there like children more than respected employees
/.ers have seen it - it's the condescending, nearly derogatory looking down upon the geeky IT workers as "funny, colorful geeky people" that will never be treated as equals in senior management, let alone mid-levels.
Having worked in IT for calls centers in the Midwest US, I have to concur. Call center hourly employees are regarded as mindless, mostly useless, barely trainable children.
At the same time, I've seen an attitude emerge from much of corporate America about IT workers comperable to the 1940s blackface attitude. I'm sure many fellow
I had an experience three weeks ago with a committee of these types. A few former accountants, a sales type and some mindless bureaucratic admin types. I was there as the "IT security expert" that was auditing their business unit and in many respects, their balls were in my hand per their need to pass the audit. They naturally humored me with all the absurd assumptions about how technical people are (my real techie friends would have laughed at my classification as one of them, but I digress!). They got very nervous when I didn't geek out over their new NIDS appliance and instead shifted to risk management and IT controls questions (things they only hear from their business unit exec). I totally related to a black friend's story about sitting next to an old white woman on a United flight and being asked to sing, since "all you blacks are so musical people."
When you understand their humorous yet degrading references are intended to reduce the threat you present to them, you can have a field day with them. My favorite is shifting from techie to calculating a modified IRR on a capital budget item (e.g. replacing an old firewall and justifying it on some cashflows) - the beancounters totally freak that you know their language as well (or better) than they do, and the sales guy runs out of the room screaming.
So if you want to survive as an IT geek, learn finance my friends. Capital budgeting, present value of cash discounting methods, you name it. Then these people have nothing left to hold over you, and you have a lot to intimidate them with.
And we ALL know that IT is infinitely fun.
Sounds like someone's either in the first stages of his first IT job, or is being sarcastic but forgot the bite at the end.
If it's the former, I really don't have the heart to tell him, especially on Christmas.
Curse you, compassion!
A good working environment makes a job more enjoyable? Why didn't we think of this before!
Indeed. What I find most enjoyable about a job is if the people there actually enjoy there jobs, and are genuinely fun people. I have had more than enough of managers putting on the phoney fun act.
That way, I can have fun buying rounds at the bar whilst railing against my stupid managers, even stupid users, etc.
I work at home for a great VOIP co but in the offices they can enjoy and do greatly, playing post lunch rounds of fusball, a rack of billards on a full sized table or the lesser used ping pong.
At random the CEO and the VP will make southern ribs on a BBQ and sodas are always plentiful and free.
As a result people are happier, more relaxed and we care for the orgization as people and not just numbers on a HR spead sheat.
...it's just the editors loosing capitalization skills like the previously lost anti-dupe skills, grammer skills, and spelling skills
Ummmmm, I take it you are one of the aforementioned editors who lost his spelling skills?
I recently started work in the Support dept. at a large corporation (I won't mention where, but they're known as a lesser demon here on /.). For a few months, my cube was isolated from my fellow team members, and right next to the Manager's cube.
Recently I moved over to where everyone else is, and literally minutes after doing so, I was more productive, happier, less stressed out and generally getting along much better with everyone. My new job seemed all of a sudden less daunting, and much more managable. The magic ingredient? The ability to screw around and bullshit with my coworkers for a few minutes here and there. Works absolute wonders.
I mean, just because a boss is trying to be funny and cheer everyone up, doesn't mean he's succeeding...
Yes, yes, yes. I would far rather a boss who actually respects his team, takes our opinions seriously, fires the incompetant people and lets us do our blue-sky R&D projects now and again to one who makes jokes or tries to take the team out to lunch every week but lacks the former attributes.
I suppose that's one step above:
The thing is, you don't neccessarily have to enjoy or like what you are doing to have fun. In my experience, having fun is more about who you work with, rather than who you work for or what you do. I don't particularly like my current job, but I like the people I work with quite a bit. I don't think I would put up with nearly as much crap from my employer if we didn't have a shrine to Napolean Dynamite and daily shock treatments. I've had some pretty boring jobs in my time, factories, garbage companies, IT... But even some of the most repetitive and boring were really fun thanks to some great people. The problem occurrs when the fun people leave, or the crap outweighs the fun. If the shock treatments aren't working anymore at this point, you have to move on.
Where I work, new members are automatically joined into the "social club." The idea is that the social club plans events for those in our board office (where my desk is situated) in an effort to, ya know, bring everyone together and have fun...
Instead it was a royal pain in the ass. Try adjusting to a move, a new job, and trying to handle social events. In addition, while my desk was at the board office 90% of the time I am on-site elsewhere.
Another bright idea pushed on employees down the drain. I think I made all of 2 social club meetings and after missing about a half-dozen or more they finally gave up with last-minute emails trying to get me to attend.
I think that the best "special day" I've had was "casual friday" at the marketing/sales department of a previous employer. Nothing specifically that you had to wear, just leave the suit and tie at home. It was particularly nice since friday being the lead-up day to a weekend after work, one could dress prepared for the night ahead.
As to the subject of my post though, one of the nicer ways to improve employee moral is to have a budget available for it. As spontaneous needs comes up, use it. Somebody work through lunch, take him out for lunch the next. Is one of your accounting department members feeling a bit chilly, get her a porcelain heater.
Little things with custom touches are the best way to show that you care, and the best custom touches are often the ones that show you are 'in touch' with your employees
I would sue for emotional damages.
I can tell my boss to fuck off (and regularly do when he starts talking in boss talk) we laugh until we are sick when we are talking water cooler talk. I enjoy the sociopathic / neurotic tendancies of my coworkers who are all completely psychotic.
So all in all work is fun, like running through a mine field while breathing heavilty on laughing gas.
You know what else makes work fun? Feeling good every day that either you did cracked soem great specs / code or at least, if you jerked off all day, you managed a good +5 and/or -1 on slashdot.
oiks. Merry Christmas.
please type the word in this image: tapered
random letters - if you are visually impaired, please email us at pater@slashdot.org
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
David Brent.
1) Put BOFH into practice
2) ???
3) Profit
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I keep wondering where I can find one of these jobs where management is open enough to let the staff have fun. Everywhere I go, including working for a friend's business, the people running the company have been stuffed shirts with no sense of humor and no concept of the word "fun." Then again, living in the auto manufacturing capital of the world, where just-in-time practices keeps everyone on a razor-thin edge of keeping or losing a job due to a scheduling fuck-up, it's no huge surprise that no one can allow fun.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Too bad not many employers realize this.
As someone who has been working for more than 10 years I find the idea of doing superficial things to cheer people up as just another example of bad management. The only people who it works for are young employees with no goal in life but to surf porn at work.
:) or :(
How do you make work more fun for your employees?
By allowing them as much freedom in doing what they like to do best. So get out of their way. Let them express themselves in their work and take ownership of what they do. Do not manage them, but lead, guide and mentor them.
If you are not technical with a proven track record, then don't innovate, analyse, design or mandate things that you don't understand. Always consult your team, discover whose inputs you can respect and trust, who is good with what and let that knowledge guide you. You work for them, not they for you.
Protect them from the crap from the top, even in total disregard of your own ass if it is the right thing to do.
They may be totally incapable of managing people themselves, but they are smart and they watch what you and your bosses do. They have a gut feel of what is right and how things should be done, even for your job, and they feel very strongly about it.
So by all means, trust, respect and protect them and they will give you the same in return. Your bosses on the other hand will throw you to the wolves any day.
Now who would you rather have as your friend to have fun with?
BTW. I'm looking for a job. Not sure if that makes me
I guess IT means plain "it".
If you are old enought you won't need further explanation to understand what "it" means in that sentence.
Does having fun make "it" more enjoyable?
this post contain no useful information, no need to mod it down
Please, sir, may I have another? We are all Masochists in IT.
Is there fun that != enjoyable? Why can't we mod the title "redundant" while doing so for my post as well?
Nobody's gay for Mole-Man.
We tell children all the time that nature belongs in nature. Don't feed the animals, don't steal the babies, don't try to pet the bears, etc. In other words, let things be the way they flow naturally and stay out of the way. Of course, there have to be rules and production quotas have to be met, but the best environments I have been in were the ones where the managers got involved as minimally as possible. They let the grunts know what they needed, how important it was on the priority list and then stepped back. In my current job my boss made it clear that I had 100% freedom to do what I wanted. He only would take those freedoms away if I wasn't doing my job. He has lived up to that promise. I can take time off when I need, come in when I want, talk to whom I want, when I want as long as I want. As long as I get the job done and play well with the others.
Of course, I am a programmer and these things become harder if you work in an environment like an assembly line or other such high paced fields. But even then the job can be made much more enjoyable if the managers just learn to back off and let people do their job.
In the end, however, it is still work. Like someone else posted here, can work ever be "fun"? Maybe not. But it should be satisfying and, at least some of the time, enjoyable.
That said, the worst environments I have ever worked in were the ones where the managers tried to make working "fun".
- It's not fun watching the ceo drive off in a bmw after hearing benefits will be cut... again.
- It's not fun watching your employer downsize and your friends leave.
- It's not fun seeing your company outsource projects to 3rd world countries.
- It's not fun watching the government turn-a-blind-eye/contribute to it.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
'It' is always better when it's fun. If it's not, you're probably using the wrong hole.
More net productivity is the point and is valid. But it is really hard to convince a lot of managers.
For example, I have a sort of shared leadership role with a small set of people. At the times I'm pretty much in charge, there will be an occasional bout of gaming (first person shooter, whatever so long as it can be done quickly in the period of time like a typical break or lunch). Others who have discovered this became infuriated, and complained we are spread too thin to afford any time whatsoever to goof off, ignoring the fact that we had been acheiving more than previously done.
Managers on average can't understand the concept that anything but working during a work day can possibly yield benefit. In this case once I started the gaming on occasion, it was clear how more focused and productive people were outside those breaks. It seemed like the obvious motivational and relaxed association between workers did have an effect pretty much along the lines of what people normally expect. But perhaps more importantly, the amount of individual goofing off diminished. I.e. people would spend a fair amount of time browsing forums, news, and such. Part of that may simply be part of improved morale/motivation, but another part seemed like there was an attitude of 'they just explicitly paid me to goof off, I need to work to make up for it and to show they don't need to stop the practice for me to do well'. It's like focusing the goofing off into manageable blocks and making people want to prove they can goof off and do good work.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Also, just because it's succeeding with some of the staff that doesn't mean it's making things more enjoyable for everyone. Some people might find the photo gags described in the article genuinely embarrassing... is that good for morale? The boss dressing in drag is the sort of thing that's going to be perceived differently by the straight men in the group than by any women or gay men (depending on how the guy behaves, the former might be creeped out by it, or the latter insulted by it). If the boss' idea of "fun" is Ace Ventura, and mine is Harold and Maude, introducing "fun" into the workplace - even if it goes over great with the Jim Carrey fans - is not going to make my job more enjoyable.
One of the reasons for "professionalism" in a work environment is that it helps to establish a common, neutral social atmosphere. For example, several years ago when a coworker and I started working a lot on weekends - the usual expectations of office conduct set aside - I got to see what this guy was really like (stained Confederate flag t-shirt, fag jokes), which made it more difficult for me to work with him. (And I'll bet that his discovery that I was a fan of the Smiths and the Cure didn't make him any more comfortable working with me.) I'm not saying that a work environment where everyone checks their personalities at the door is a good thing, but straying from traditional standards and encouraging everyone to let their hair down can have unintended negative consequences as well.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
I don't know if you have tried it yet...
Get back to us then.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
I think the motto for workplaces should be "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Nirvana."
Rough home life with wife and kids? Yeah, my sanctuary is the restroom with bolted lock...
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
John Wade, CIO at Saint Luke's Health System Inc., sometimes dresses in drag And he does it just for "fun". Insert Dr. Evil "Ri-i-i-ight." here.
"has posted photos on the intranet of staffers caught in awkward moments installing cables or servers, for instance"
Yeah, this will not be abused in a bully-ing like way, causing all sorts of subtle embarassment trauma that can't be argued against because, hey, it's all in "fun" right?
I can guarantee you that the executives would never be caught dead in these "light hearted" pictures, simply because they don't think being demeaned is fun. They think that demeaning OTHERS is fun, see.
I like what I do (when I'm working). I think Unix is *fun*. What makes work unfun, and leads, eventually, to me looking for another job, is when management plays Dilbert's PHB. When they meet with you and your co-workers, tell you what needs doing, and get a *real* buy-in, after y'all make comments as to how long it will take, realistically, *then* you've started making better morale.
mark
In other news, scientists have also found that not going to work makes IT more enjoyable
As long as having fun on the job is an institutional policy of the job, then having fun will be, sadly, a duty of the job. Having fun on command is no fun at all.
Example: one day at a past helpdesk position, I and a cubicle-conspiritor became so sick of the state of things that we deigned that the next day would be Sock Puppet Day. The two of us brought in many socks, fabric scraps, glitter, glue, everything we could possibly think of that might find a home on a sock. We then suggested to everyone around us that they might enjoy making a sock puppet.
The results were stupendous. Most everyone had a good time, and we were pretty adroit at hiding the process from management until we had all finished our socks. Then we hung them all over the place and went on with business as usual. No calls were dropped, tickets were still solved quickly and effectively. However, we were all in a much better mood.
One of the middle management frumps noticed what had happened and asked me if it was a team building exercise. I looked at her like she had grown a fourth nostril. Maybe in some far-removed way it was, but the sponteneity and silliness of it -- not to mention hiding it from our superiours -- was what made it fun and effective and morale-boosting. I suspect there was a sprinkling of having gotten away with something that really brought the flavor out in the moment.
The next year it was decreed from the top that we would again have an official sock puppet day. Everything was provided for us. There was a designated time and place where supplies could be found.
The results were predictably pallid, and few people particiated.
Don't make fun part of the job, you management types. If anything, make it easier for people to make their own fun on the job, but keep your mitts off of the actual process. You'll have much happier employees, and chances are they'll even take it up upon themselves to get work done anyway.
is when you get a fair-share of the profits.
Emerald Astrology
In the facility I use to work at, the management put in a game room with a fooseball & air hockey table. However, this room was for certain people only. In other words, if you were favored by management, you can use the facility but if you weren't, you better not be caught in there when one of the managers walked in. You would be asked if you had work to do and get out and do it.
By far, I was one of the least favored people by my manager and one time, I went there to play air hockey and some of his favored people walked in and I was given dirty looks by my manager's most senior person. within several days, I got called into my manager's office and was given a talk about my "lack" of performance.
I still have access to the building since I still work for the company but a different group. I have had many thoughts of going in there with a big sign, "plaster it" on the wall mentioned the room was for certain people - names will be named. However, getting in there without having to swipe my badge is the minor problem. That would cause some embarassment to management that would have to be addressed.
No, it's something completely Yuck that absolutely has to be done for the good of the organization. Think of it as shorthand for the gold-standard of yuck tasks.
the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
Personally, I find the work fun. Remove all of the obstacles from my accomplishing what needs to be accomplished, and I am thrilled:
1. Less meetings
2. No covering for other people's screwups
3. No giving me tasks that aren't in my job description (especially if they're in someone else's)
4. Tell me what you want the end result environment to behave like, and let me figure out the best way to get from here to there (don't micromanage)
Basically, let your employees do the jobs they've been tasked with, and get the hell out of the way. No "office olympics" or other diversions required.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk