Culture at your company

There’s two sides to every story, and i’m sure for some it didn’t work as well for their work style, especially the ones who need to be babysat and can’t be self sufficient, and some others just need more structure, which is fine. There’s definitely not a one size fits all, but I am finding this conversation helpful and I think there are elements that could help our culture (not that its bad, just could be refreshing to try some things new)

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One of the things important is that, next to a good and productive group atmosphere, the company never loses track of individual goals and wishes of people in the company. In the end, it is great management/coaching setting up occasional one-on-one meetings that does this. People need a way to develop and exploit their talents and if it can be done in a work environment, all the better!

I’ve never worked anywhere that didn’t have a ping pong table, nor would I. :wink:

Great first post Michael Roberts!

Inspiring thread. Will post some deeper thoughts with more time in my Bands.

mo-i

When I first read this at a quick glance I thought it said “Clutter at your company” … this also can be a problem :laughing:

Clutter is never a problem! Just don’t try to find anything on my desk.

I think that this is very important. One of the least productive things I have experienced is a workplace that doesn’t care about the development of their employees. The company should always be aware that most employees are there for more than a salary, and to nurture this for their mutual benefit. Happy employees are hard-working employees.

I totally agree, and on the flip side the employee has to meet the company half way. An easy topic is to talk about the company’s role in attracting and retaining talent. Less talked about is the employees’ role in making sure this is a place they really want to spend time, and the company’s duty to remove poor fits who damage the team dynamic. I’ll give you an example, at a previous company I had a very unhappy employee. I was her director and I tried everything in my power to make her work life better; rearranging projects, workflow, schedule. Her demeanor was so poor that it had a negative effect on the entire team, but she was talented and skilled so I was trying to work it out. In one of our monthly one on one check ins she told me that it didn’t matter what I did, who she reported to, or what the projects were, she just hated the company. I went to HR and got her a severents package. Once I knew for certain there was no way for her to improve, the right thing for the culture was to get her to move on. Not a fun thing to do, but as a boss not all of life is arranging fun offsites and presenting to execs. A lot of it is making really tough calls where you are not sure if you are doing the right thing until after.

I agree with yo, it is a two-way street. A company should invest in their employees to make them up to date and more efficient. My apologies to equating them to equipment, but if you aren’t using Windows 95, why wouldn’t you want an employee trained to the latest and greatest out in the world? There also needs to be a wifm for the company too. Why would you train an employee who wants to learn C++ but the company has no application for it?

That said, it gets hard when the company claims culture A, but in reality, culture B is what is in place. In that case, I would work for a severance for an employee who was “misled”. On the other hand, if the employee is expecting something other than advertised, I have no problem showing them the door.

We have a pizza oven, great garden, no dress code, friday pub lunches and a drinks cart. A good coffee machine we can hit up any time and a full fruit bowl at all times. No “why were you late?”, “that was a long lunch”, “where were you/where are you going?” like I’ve had in every other job.

A professional boss and a friendly working environment

Essential! Companies over here are also doing the fruit bowl thing and it has great effects I hear.

On hiring new employees, a trial period makes sense but a sort of uptight ‘belong fully to us or leave’ mentality results only in a mediocre company at best because the best ones will leave to where they have more autonomy. Also staff evaluations have to happen but in my experience it is best to go by feeling as to when that is necessary.

Absolutely.

I would also add - development-driven team culture with short design cycles.
In my experience, when people have some variation in the projects they work on and work with different people regularly, it makes us the happiest.

Diversity, Knowledge & Skills development & Good Management would be a part of great culture.

I’m curious - how often does the ping pong table get used? I haven’t worked somewhere with one, though I did intern at a firm that had some video games in a break room of sorts that I never saw anyone use. And I remember visiting another local firm that had a ping pong table looking sad in their storage room. It seems like one of those things that in theory could help give employees a mental break or get the juices flowing for brainstorming, but but might end up rarely used if employees fear looking like they’re just goofing off all day.

At my last office the Ping Pong table was used daily… and we had Forza and sometimes Halo tournaments, and usually there was a group that would shoot 3’s on a hoop outside at 3:33 … When I was at frog Ping Pong and Foosball got played everyday at 4… I think it depends on how the people at the top set the tone. If the execs will play a little ping pong every once and awhile, everyone will play. If the execs sneer when people are playing, people will quickly feel like it is just for show. It is something I’ve started to think about as I’m thinking about growing a bit of a team. As an owner it is easy to get lost in working all of the time. Every hour worked directly affects me. But to attract and retain the right people my expectations have to be different… it is a design problem,.

Good observation. From the employee side, I would add that playful bosses have made me feel much more at ease to spend time on things that aren’t core deliverables. I think it sets the tone that you trust your employee as professionals with their time. - Look at that 10min product photography youtube tutorial if you’re stumped with getting nice reflections on a rendering project, take a look and question our processes if you’re really being frustrated by some inefficiencies, see if that weird idea your colleague pitched actually has legs even though everyone dismissed it.

Most organizations will say that they value this type of time use but it’s another thing to make employees at ease to do so. As creative professionals, a lot of the value we bring is outside the scheduled mission critical deliverables - it’s also makes you feel a lot more valued and empowered.

A strong culture, in which members agree upon and care intensely about organizational values, can improve business performance by motivating employees and coordinating their behavior towards a vision and specific performance goals that benefit the company.

Straight from the HR handbook.

:unamused:

A ping-pong tables does not a culture make, it is the conversations and interactions that take place while it us being used paired with the belief that the company supports and values (and trusts) the individuals having them and the relationships they are building.

This of course isn’t limited to Ping-pong, it can be the classic water-cooler (or more contemporary pour-over) gathering / chatting that helps build relationships, but also often leads to cross-pollination of projects, ideas, etc.

In a healthy office culture, these things happen a little more frequently / naturally. Like YO said, a lot of it is very top down, people will read their audience, if the boss doesn’t participate, or worse seems to disapprove, it dies.