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."

Comments

How about....

[ShatteredDream]

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.

Re:How about....

[ryuuzin]

Hear, hear. Just the formal introduction of 'fun' into a workplace that has other, serious problems does not a better job make. I started as an intern at a small, privately-held company, writing graphics software (I worked the integration side). Between us -- the developers (who worked hard to write the core software package), the integrators (who worked had to satisfy client needs), and the support folks (who had to answer to a seemingly-capricious collection of customers) -- we devised our own way of having fun -- playing Half-Life after COB and making a beer run on Fridays.

Then, the company was bought out by a corporation, twice over. Several rounds of layoffs happened (because each corporation was in its own dire straits), the pay rises pretty much ceased (while our output had to roughly double to meet their profit demands), everything was locked down, and we generally got no support or direction from corporate headquarters. Our phrase for it was "red-headed stepchild". Yet, somehow, despite this, folks over at corporate thought that certain morale boosters should happen, like ice-cream socials or movie outings.

I can tell you, hardly anybody was jumping for joy. These attempts to interject fun (sometimes before a layoff happened) fully backfired because they couldn't have cared less about the problems. I finally gave up the ghost when there are only three employees left of the original company and I had to help close my own office and work from home. Where I am now may not have ice cream socials or movie outings (or anything that folks here might rank as 'fun'), but at least I have a company that doesn't have anywhere near the problems of the old one (knock on wood). That right there is worth all the 'fun' times they could possibly provide.

Work is fun if...

[Junior J. Junior III]

• Encourage a relaxed work atmosphere. Allow people to feel free to be themselves and not have to put on an act of phony ass-kissing professionalism.
• Encourage people to speak their minds and to disagree, but professionally.
• Weed out employees who can't hack it. Cut down on the support nightmares we all dread.
• Reward honesty by not punishing mistakes, so long as: (1) corrective action is taken to prevent recurrence; (2) the mistake did not cause a severe impact in the company's bottom line.
• Eliminate bullshit like software licensing, tracking and auditing. Running everything in an IP-unencumbered fashion to the greatest extent possible will make everyone happier.
• Pay well, rewarding productivity and innovation. If I invent, suggest, or implement a process that saves the company money, or that brings in more revenue, pay me a bonus in recognition, or a comission on the savings or revenue increase. If you go with the commission, allow it to remain in place as long as the practice is in place, for as long as I remain with the company. If I have to have a non-compete clause, have it last until the non-compete expires.
• Pay me for on-call time. 1/4 time for merely being on call, 2x time if I get called in for off hours work.
• If I'm on salary, don't require that I work 40 hours a week, as long as I'm getting my assignments done and being productive for the company (ie, returning more value than I cost the company).
• No dress codes that discriminate against culture -- and recognize contemporary subcultures, not just traditional national, ethnic, or religious subcultures. Allow people to express themselves through their personal appearance. Don't punish people for wanting to look different or unusual.

Re:Improving Morale

[TheSpoom]

That's one of the things I see often in a lot of these companies that praise "motivational techniques" in their HR departments; they don't ACTUALLY consider their employees valuable. I think this causes a vicious cycle as well: turnover increases due to the fact that employees don't feel important, and the managers then don't see employees as being important because they'll probably be gone in a month anyway. So they try to place the blame elsewhere, on "bad attitudes", not having enough "fun" on the job, etc., where the real problem is that the employees just aren't being respected as individuals by their superiors.

I found this to be worst when I was working at a call center; I swear, upper and middle management treated people there like children more than respected employees. Immediate supervisors were often easy to deal with, but when the problem starts from the top, it's nearly impossible to stop.

OA5

[DarkIye]

Myself, I subscribe to Scott Adams 'OA5' company philosophy. Basically, nothing can make work more fun than its alternative, not working - that's why they have to pay you for it. So basically, the aim is to get the employee working as efficiently as possible by getting managers to remove obstructions to their productivity, and Out At 5 (hence the acronym). Managers don't waste their time with thinking up stupid morale-boosting techniques (just read any Adams book for excellent examples) and spend more time 'managing', also known as 'something useful'.

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.