Solutions For More Community At Work? 205
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."
Facebook for enterprise (Score:1, Informative)
There are many enterprise social software tools now available, such as http://lotuslive.com
Virtual Workspace Experiences (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Older Guy (Score:4, Informative)
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
Thats a lot of autmoated junk email (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Re:Leagues... (Score:4, Informative)
environment (Score:5, Informative)
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.
I know you're trying to be funny, but... (Score:5, Informative)
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!
You fail at grammar argument. (Score:3, Informative)
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.....
Re:Its simple, (Score:1, Informative)
The water cooler isn't a bad idea, really.
An idea I tried at a former employer was an "ask us anything hour".
Some number of IT folks populate the break room or a larger meeting room (to allow for multiple conversations at a time) and take on any and all questions. From the smallest little "why did it format my text like that?" to "I have this crazy idea that
involves technology X, Y, and Z that I saw in a magazine -- what do you think?".
Hosting this event in a place that allows for a beverage in hand (coffee, soda, etc) and possibly a little treat (peanuts / ice cream bar / etc) tends to relax people by filling their stomach and putting them in a social mood. A larger room or
a room where noise is common (such as a break room) will allow for multiple, small "break-away" conversations in an informal manner. Let the IT people know that acceptable answers to anyone's questions might be "I'll have to look that up and get back to you" or "to proceed with this idea you'd have to submit it though the XYZ Process for submitting ideas, here's some feedback for doing that".
As an initial ice-breaker bring something to share first without having it be the forced center of attention. Example: if there were a lot of help desk calls on formatting text in a word processing document in a particular way, bring a few printed pages which explain how to do it properly which also include a URL to your internal website. Bring a few of these tidbits just in case people are a bit shy at the start. Be prepared to not talk about anything you brought as soon as the users figure out they really can ask their own questions.
Be honest, be able to accept criticism, be prepared to spend a few hours after this meeting finding answers. Use the questions asked by the users to shape future documentation, help desk, or wiki information. If possible, post some of the better questions on a website with the answers.
We had the fortune to be able to use a local cafeteria seating area and to be able to order hot/cold drinks and sit in comfortable chairs. The environment really does make a difference.
Our results were not what we had expected! We mostly answered "why does IT do this or that?" questions! We did get a number of good ideas which we tried to implement (with varying amounts of success), and we found (in this environment) that mostly the users also wanted us to know what they didn't like even if nothing could be changed about it. Yes, just listening to someone vent (respectfully) for a bit!
Variations can also include: submitting questions via a web site beforehand to have answers at said meetings, varying schedules to include all shifts at all hours, and include any satellite sites or remote offices.
Good Luck!
Re:Local bar / casual eating establishment (Score:3, Informative)