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Solutions For More Community At Work?
CrunkCreeper writes "I work at a tier-2 hosting company (SAP, web servers, Citrix, databases, etc.). I started working at this location two years ago in January. The company had anywhere from 20-30 other employees, and now we are just over 100. People with all different IT experience are employed. At one end of the spectrum, you have accounting, billing, and sales. At the other end you have the help desk, analysts, and engineers. In the past we were hiring mainly people in their 20s, and now we're hiring more senior people in their 30s and 40s. Incidentally with our expanded demographic and recently aggressive hiring, people are not as familiar with each other as they used to be. This happens to some extent and will continue to happen more the larger our company grows, but I would like to curb the corporate feel a bit. I'm trying to bring family or community feel back to the company. The reason for this need is that great ideas are normally discussed in non-formal environments. Beside this fact, I want people to genuinely have more fun and decrease the sometimes uncomfortable discussions with 'that guy' from 'that department.' Being an IT company, I find it more natural for collaboration via computer, but welcome more traditional methods too. How does your company keep or build a community environment using technology?" Read on for some more on how it works at CrunkCreeper's workplace, and give suggestions for how to make things better.
" Here is what we currently use for collaboration, both formal and non-formal:
IRC — We have used a dedicated IRC server from the start, and it helps out tremendously when people use it (the Linux folks use it heavily), but it doesn't entice a vast majority of the employees. It's used mainly for BS'ing, but also becomes a very important tool when things are awry.
Facebook — Most people are on Facebook, but obviously there are details about the company that cannot be discussed, which is an issue since most of these profiles are public and it is a somewhat common practice to be friends with some clients.
Exchange 2007 — E-mail is the main source of communication, but can't it be painful sometimes? Everyone on the IT side receives alerts about tickets and other automated checks of systems. On any given day I generally receive 100+ alert messages. When we're not reading our filtered alerts into specified folders, general discussion about projects and fixing issues usually is anywhere from 20-60 messages a day. Quite honestly, I'm sick of e-mail and don't wish to get any more of it. I know a lot of you feel the same way.
Phone — Just using the ol' phone is the other primary way of communicating with the customer, but not ideal for communicating ideas with others at the same time. We have bridges, but they're only used for conferences with customers.
Company Meetings — We have these a few times a year. They're fully catered and consist of introducing the new people, talking about new contracts, and congratulating others on successful implementations . These generally last about an hour or so at the end of the workday. Unfortunately dedicating to these meetings is not the easiest on people's schedules, especially the help desk, and is not an open forum.
There are forms of collaboration that I have been thinking of. To list some, there is phpBB, Elgg, Jabber (discussed a few times before), and Google Wave (hard to push currently). Personally I think that a closed social networking platform would be ideal, where ideas can be posted and read at any time. Tell me what you think of these ideas, if there are more suitable solutions, or what you use at work."
IRC — We have used a dedicated IRC server from the start, and it helps out tremendously when people use it (the Linux folks use it heavily), but it doesn't entice a vast majority of the employees. It's used mainly for BS'ing, but also becomes a very important tool when things are awry.
Facebook — Most people are on Facebook, but obviously there are details about the company that cannot be discussed, which is an issue since most of these profiles are public and it is a somewhat common practice to be friends with some clients.
Exchange 2007 — E-mail is the main source of communication, but can't it be painful sometimes? Everyone on the IT side receives alerts about tickets and other automated checks of systems. On any given day I generally receive 100+ alert messages. When we're not reading our filtered alerts into specified folders, general discussion about projects and fixing issues usually is anywhere from 20-60 messages a day. Quite honestly, I'm sick of e-mail and don't wish to get any more of it. I know a lot of you feel the same way.
Phone — Just using the ol' phone is the other primary way of communicating with the customer, but not ideal for communicating ideas with others at the same time. We have bridges, but they're only used for conferences with customers.
Company Meetings — We have these a few times a year. They're fully catered and consist of introducing the new people, talking about new contracts, and congratulating others on successful implementations . These generally last about an hour or so at the end of the workday. Unfortunately dedicating to these meetings is not the easiest on people's schedules, especially the help desk, and is not an open forum.
There are forms of collaboration that I have been thinking of. To list some, there is phpBB, Elgg, Jabber (discussed a few times before), and Google Wave (hard to push currently). Personally I think that a closed social networking platform would be ideal, where ideas can be posted and read at any time. Tell me what you think of these ideas, if there are more suitable solutions, or what you use at work."
Its simple,get a water cooler
Jack of all trades,master of none
I found internal wikis to be a huge boost at my old job. At my current job everyone seems to do similar things using word files passed around over email which are like islands in the sea of information, easy to lose, easy to become outdated, etc.
Maybe it's just me, but I don't go to work for "community". Don't get me wrong; I like what I do and we are all cordial at work and everything, but at the end of the day I don't really want to be your friend. Maybe this makes me "that guy", but that's fine with me; I just prefer to keep the professional and personal aspects of my life as separate as possible.
A room with a coffee machine, one or two tables and some up-to-date newspaper will make people sit during their break and talk about the news.
Bring the new hires in and then rotate them through each department/group in the company. Give them a day at each location to see what goes on there and meet/interact/tag along behind the group. It might take a week or two to get them through the entire company, but you will end up on a first name basis with most people and have a better appreciation for what their job entails.
I think there's a huge variance in culture of foreign-born folks, even if culturally-American is your main goal. I see a ton of foreign (mostly Asian) students in CS grad school, and they vary from barely able to communicate in English and no interest in American culture, to pretty comfortable and well-connected with their peers of all backgrounds. Time makes some difference: someone who came to the U.S. at 18 and went to an American university for 4 years is much more likely to be comfortable with the local culture than someone who moved to the U.S. after all their schooling was completed. What kind of family they came from matters also--- someone who grew up in a generally liberal, cosmopolitan environment will probably adapt better than someone from a more isolated, conservative background.
I do agree xenophobia is the biggest potential flashpoint. In particular, I have heard some... not very tactful... comments from immigrants about American blacks, the kinds of things that even racist rural white Mississippians would, in 2010, know you can't say in public. (This isn't specific to Asian immigrants--- I've also heard white European immigrants, especially from Russia or eastern Europe, say such things.)
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Back in the "old days" employees organized golf, bowling, softball, or whatever leagues. Even something like a fantasy football league that only meets a few times a year will help people get to know each other.
I work for a small company where all but two of the employees work remotely from our homes. We are an engineering-consulting company and are very dependent upon each other for we each have very different skill-sets. Here is my impression on how it works for us;
1. The hiring process is very prolonged, taking weeks and multiple interviews with many people. Only part of this is for the technical skills necessary to do the kind of work we do. The interview process is to make sure that our new hires are cultural fits into our work model and are capable of self-starting and have initiative.
2. We keep in contact constantly by telephone, GoToMeeting, email and collaborative work assignments.
3. While we have owners who are also employees we work in a very dynamic manner. It is not unusual for a very new person to be the senior of a manager/owner on certain projects.
4. We all share the same goals for our company. We know what is happening, what is important at the moment and the need to be completely flexible.
As we grow more we are certain to eventually develop some sort of central office but the heart and soul of the company will be spread across the company.
Tisha Hayes
Nerf Guns
As an older guy in your scenario (40ish), I'd have to say that I don't want to socialize more with most of my co-workers unless there is a charge number in it. As with the rest of life my desire to be around my co-workers follows the 80/20 rule. In this case, about 80% of my co-workers should not be near me without a charge-number.
Sheldon
Troll. And fascist. BTW, Latinos are in the West. And, FWIW, "America" is an entire continent, not just the United States *OF* America...
Buanzo Consulting - 15 Years of GNU/Linux experience, for you.
and take a barista class. a couple classes in rebellions and revolutions 101, too. and perhaps some study of war, peace, and public speaking. shoot the computers.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
100+ emails a day from automated checks? Talk to whomever set these checks up and they surely will help you curtail the flow. I've been in "automated monitoring" for years and usually when people get a lot of email it's because:
- The monitoring system performing these checks hasn't been tended to for awhile
- People become passive with email alerts because they can filter them into email boxes (ignored or glanced at once a day/week), causing the problem to get worse as time passes because "I get all this email all the time, but I can easily ignore it, so I hardly notice 2x more"
- Some people/companies/groups LOVE setting an alert in an automated system and blasting out every alert to an email distribution list because it's easy to maintain....and then people get used to all this junk automated alerts filling up their inboxes...then they filter them/delete them off.
- Some people love getting all that spam because they think they're "staying informed" on what's going on. In reality they just use it as their own personal database when things go south so they aren't the one guy/manager who didn't know there was xyz outage when upper management asks them.
Having said all that, I would say to have all these alerts be posted on something "central" that all of IT (and management) can just look at whenever they want to know what's going on with the systems when something arises. If they're willing to use it, that *might* quickly bring everyone together/up to speed, at least when things go south, and keep some sort of communal feel that everyone is supporting the "entire company" as opposed to "my stuff, which is always the most important". It could keep the junk mail down as well.
People will get along with people they know they are going to be working with for a long, long time. People aren't going to form emotional attachments to people who may mysteriously vanish from their cubicals after the next quarterly results. Older workers know the game ... the younger ones are still naive about what lays ahead.
In Santa Cruz, it is customary for employees at high tech companies to have a few beers at a local pub after work on Friday, grab some dinner and then head to the CEOs or VPs house for naked hot tubbing. It's a great way to get to know each other and and no one has anything to hide. SCO even had their own hot tub in the office court yard.
I've worked in several startup companies that grew quickly. You can't *make* people want to get to know each other or spend more time together. You're fighting the natural changes that happen when a company starts getting bigger. Implementing technology will not solve the problem you're trying to address. If you really want people to know each other and interact, then find ways for them to spend face time with each other. Host parties, organize events at local bars, have some group lunches, etc.
Your problem is that you don't see much between Facebook and a fully catered company outing.
Once a month, a volunteer from every department gets the department to go to a local bar or local eating establishment. If they're lucky, the manager will cover half the costs, the grunts pick up the rest. My manager orders a few pitchers of Shiner Bock and a few appetizer plates and asks for $5 from everybody. Not everybody attends, and there's more than one person who doesn't drink alcohol, but they have O'Douls or whatever monstrosity, so they're placated.
Of course, the word "volunteer" is important. Once one person does this in one department, and they get to talking, hopefully another department will pick up too. If two departments complete a big project, then two departments can get together and maybe the other one will think it's a good idea and try to do it too.
Alcohol
As you get more and more people involved it's only natural for things to get colder. Human beings aren't built to get close to everybody , most can only "handle" a certain amount of friends.
You can certainly try to make them all get along with various teambuilding activities , parties and the like , and that will help to some extent , but you can't force them to feel close to one another. After all you can't offer 10 people the same amount of time you could offer 5 , if you were to divide it equally.
The only thing you can do is hope that people working in the same team will start to bond while at the same time not gather any negative sentiments towards other teams.
The best way you can do that ? Make sure everybody is doing their job right _and_ not pissing all over other people's job.
Example Case : You've got the IT service guys fixing everything up , cleaning all the viruses from the network, but the rest of them can't be bothered to remember one secure password to their account.
IT will hate everyone for making their job more difficult than it should be , and everybody will hate the IT workers because they caught them on a bad day and got shouted at.
Another thing I've found helpful is having a friendly face pop in and ask if there's any unresolved issues in any department or if there's any improvement that can be made. This person can't always be their direct boss , people get scared of talking about things that bother them to people that have a say over their future.
In the end all these people are only there for one thing , their job. Make sure they can do it as easily as possible , and as good as they can and you'll see people getting along.
What pisses people off the most is _wasting their time_ even if they're getting paid for that waste time it will hurt them and they will take it out on others. At the same time don't force them to pretend their having fun if their not , that just annoys people further
Now since they're all trying to do their job , if you can show them that it would be easier if they worked together , that would help even more. GIve them the proper tools to collaborate and help each other and they'll all thank you for it.
As a SENIOR staff member @55, it "resemble" that remark! IBM use to promote work at home, home at work. Don't know if they still do. More lip service anyway. My advice is not to get too chummy (overtly) at the work place, making it too family oriented is not all good. Keep the work professional and "on task" keeps folk as better more productive workers and happier, of all age mixes. Yes, you can still have fun but your there to your job to do. It also helps to keep the inevitable work place politics to a minimum.
Please mod me 1 or troll. It's where the truth is these days, even on Slashdot. Beware the power of moderators everywh
There are also OSS tools. I had a play with BoonEx Dolphin recently, and it did lots of the "internal Facebook" sort of stuff. It was pretty easy to deploy, and allows nice little bits like chat/walls/video/photos. Might be overkill for a small group though. Places I've worked, Jabber/XMPP is really handy. I found that IM neatly bridges the gap between "warrants a phone call" and "can wait until you check your email". Also it's a far better way to get alert messages.
Shameless plugs and inaccessible site design FTW! - www.mistletoestreetmusic.com
Most companies I've ever work for especially in the US think its OK to put their employees in conditions you wouldn't keep an animal in.
If you want people to feel good about working there then the first thing is to make the office a nice environment to be in.
Get rid of dehumanising things like cubes, dress codes for people that never face clients, institutional wall and floor colours, and especially kill that horrible strip lighting that most offices use. Get some plants, shared spaces with comfortable furniture and as much natural daylight or eyestrain-friendly lighting in the place as you can.
... brought to you by the Department of Community Relations (formerly HR)
You actually hit this nail on the head.
The submitter entirely misses the point when he asks "How does your company keep or build a community environment using technology?"
Answer: YOU DON'T!
You build a community through SOCIAL ACTIVITY! That means get rid of as much technology as possible.
There is no single answer here, as it's going to depend a lot on culture. One thing that will definitely not work in Utah is to stock beer in the fridges and on the occasional Friday afternoon have managers pull their groups into a free-beer (or beverage of choice) activity. Or twice a year blow a paid day and have everyone go somewhere as a company outing.
No matter what you do, the most important part is LEAVE THE TECHNOLOGY IN THE CUBE!
paintball
You probably haven't been here recently, either (Thank Deity...).
I live in a part of the South where a high proportion of the population is actually 'people from up North', and I can tell you that racial prejudice is not a latitude-defined problem. In fact, of the people I've known in the 40 years I have lived in the small-town South, it is frequently those whose families have been here far longer than most, like since Kings Grant times, who are the quickest to get pissed off at others indiscriminate use of racial slurs. IME, prejudice and bigotry are, sadly, something that you'll find everywhere about equally, regardless of location in relationship to the equator, or the color of the skin of the bigot, or even things like level of education and/or intelligence. No one area - or people - has a corner on that market.
So stuff your overused and under-accurate generalities where the sun don't shine. Right up there next to your head.
"...there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can." ~ Mark Twain
It's simple really -- the same way you build up relationships with people outside the office -- around food and drink.
Things that have worked very successfully at my workplace (not all in place at the same time over the years):
- Friday Beer Bash. 3PM on Fridays (or most Fridays) have a self-sponsored beer bash. A few volunteers buy beer, some non-alcoholic beverages, and some chips/cookies etc. Everyone is invited to come, sit, and visit. Everyone is expected to chip in a couple bucks toward the food.
- Donuts. A set of people gets together at the same time in the morning once a week (Friday at 8AM when we did it) for donuts in the conference room. This isn't a "come grab a donut and go back to your office/cube" thing, but sit around the conference room and talk about anything and everything (work related or not). The participants are on a rotation to bring donuts, milk, and juice, paying out of their own pocket whenever their rotation comes around.
- Grilling. Pitch in together to buy a grill (or get one donated by someone, or the company). During months where the weather is nice enough, grill lunch outside, everyone bringing their own items to grill that day. Probably do this once a week. Organize payment for propane/charcoal however makes sense (chip in a buck once a week/etc).
- Cooking contests. An annual brownie contest, chili and cornbread contest, etc. A panel of employee judges gets to judge the contest, or everyone in attendance votes for their favorites. Have some sort of small prizes for the top three (e.g. small gift cards), funded however makes sense (company, entrance fee, proceeds from employees chipping in at the door to cover extras like beverages).
- Often the "self-sponsored" events above (beer bash, grilling, donuts if you choose to do it that way) end up generating more cash than actual costs. Whenever the amount builds up to a sufficient level, have a "free" pizza/whatever lunch paid out of the proceeds.
- Not quite a food thing, more of a beer thing, but start up a bowling league, company softball team, or something like that that gets people from different departments to join up around a common interest.
Cyrano de Maniac
You are fighting an impossible cause. We aren't designed to know and care about this many people. If you intend to let your business grow beyond 10 individuals (Yes! Ten. Those people each have at least 3 people they care about, making the minimum count 30 already) then you will fail to accomplish what you are looking for. More importantly, if some of them fall for it and begin to trust others at the office, they run the risk of being *deceived by someone they are attempting to trust*, while at work. You will have effectively attached their desire to work there to the outcome of any one relationship they build at work. If *one* relationship goes sour, the person is that more likely to leave altogether. This is why you want all relationships to "not mean anything" at work. It's important to the business.
Other than that, best of luck.
http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
Nowhere, EVER, does "America" refer to an entire continent. That's because there is a North America and a South America. "The Americas" can refer to both continents combined, or if you want to stretch it, even "America" can refer to both continents combined.
But context matters. When using English, "America" in the singular almost always means "United States of America". Especially in comments on a website based in the US.
Not that the rest of the GP's post makes any sense.....
paintball
Nobody gets close working on work-related projects. It's the non-work things you have in common with people that makes them something other than their position. Unfortunately, you can't force this from the top, and your HR department can't be tasked with making everybody like each other*. You will need to get the ball rolling for extracurricular clubs. Note: this will cost company time, both when you set it up, and every time an event occurs. Golfers and bowlers will leave 10 minutes early to hit the links/lanes, and then waste another 20 minutes the next morning discussing the particulars of the event. It's worth it - worth every dollar.
Sports: Golf, bowling, flag football, (insert other sports as appropriate)
Arts: Dinner/show clubs (you provide busses, if possible), singing groups (a holiday chorus that sings at local events or ret. homes)
Environmental/Community Service groups
Anything where you have a group of people that cuts across the company (i.e. - no correlation to work stuff) is good.
Help out with meeting space, minor cost items (weekly gift for lowest foursome, maybe a small trophy at the end, a room for group meetings or practices), but mostly leave them alone. If you meddle, it will backfire.
Finally, understand that there will be some people who completely separate work from play - they're there for a paycheck, and have no desire to interact. Offer them inclusion, but mostly let them be.
*The "company picnic" is about the worst function ever to try and engender camaraderie. You throw people together who interact in smaller groups, with interest completely apart from the activities you will provide.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
StatusNet is a neat platform that runs Identica, a twitter alternative. It's free as in freedom (GNU AGPL), and it has pretty much every feature twitter has and more. You can view conversations people have instead of searching for hours for who-responded-to-what-and-how-many-people-were-involved. You can customize the theme and upload files, too! There's lots of other optional features you can use as well, and it has a similar API to twitter, so lots of applications already support it. Try it out and see if it works for you; you can even chose where it's hosted!
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
"If I were going to live in Mexico or China, or anywhere else for that matter, then I would seriously immerse myself with my host country's language and social/behavioral norms."
Except you wouldn't get any job because, you know, you shouldn't hire first generation immigrants as it's highly undesirable: They are very xenophobic and they will congregate into their respective groups and, in their native language, will badmouth and gossip about everybody who is not like they are.
Firstly, I congratulate you for your caring enough about taking on the issue.
However, I think it is worthwhile to ask (if you, like most companies, have not already considered) whether employees have enough incentive to really want to work together in your company.
If companies gave a share of the profits to every employee in the company, not only would those employees have a stake at being more polite to clients, more innovative, etc., they would also see that their own interests were tied up in the interests of the other employees. It wouldn't be us-vs-them as far as other departments, or me-vs-them, it would foster working together, and a sense of ownership in the company, especially if the company also regularly consults with and consider the employees as part owners in decision-making.
When the employees stand to gain from greater cohesion, executives aren't solely responsible for attempting rah-rah motivation that encourages them to do so. No executive would join or stick around with a company which wasn't rewarding him or her, so executives need to stop thinking they are in a special class of people who are inherently motivated for grander things like team-work and service.
Just because one hopes employees will just naturally have an ethic to work in the interests of the company--including fostering good relations with other co-workers--doesn't mean they will.
Too many companies assume that only executives are worthy of enticing with a share of the company's profits, or they make the program opt-in or dependent on the employee spending some of their own money, while some of the strongest benefits may come from there literally being collective ownership by everyone (at least as far as having a share of the profits and some decision making). Everyone has reason to work together, beyond the inherent but more elusive rewards for doing so.
While this might not be your company's issue, and while the suggestion may only seem tangentially related to your question, ensuring people are motivated for the fundamental reason most choose to be with a company (and to work at all) really needs to be taken into account before they will be more productive and more interested in collaborating and feeling at home at work.
Capitalism has it right when it recognizes people need incentives, but oddly, such incentives haven't been adequately brought to the common people who might otherwise be wooed by communism. Many executives today actually come off as rather communistic in assuming people should just work for the benefit of the "state" (corporation). They insist that workers should just be satisfied with a salary and fear of losing their job, and that this should be enough to motivate anyone. It isn't.
To reference Slashdot canonical authority, note that one of the serious moments in the film Office Space was when the main character is asked whether having a share of the profits would motivate him, and he actually admits it might.