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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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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