All About Working

Friday, June 26th has been designated as Take Your Dog to Work Day.  It’s being given more publicity this year so it will be interesting to see how it goes.

I’m able to have my own dog at work because many of my days are spent working from my downstairs office.  My dog, Emma, will sometimes visit with me, but she seems to be able to sense the “crunch” times and stays out of the way!  She alerts me when a delivery is taking place and when the mail is arriving.  So in a sense, she is my upstairs employee!!

Emma and I wish the best to everyone who will be participating in this event tomorrow.

This was just too good to let it pass without a mention. It seems as though Bryan Benilous, a historical newspaper specialist at the digital-archive company Proquest, said he and his colleagues came across a Boston Daily Globe article from August 24, 1902, titled, “Face Book The New Fad,” describing a party game where revelers sketch out cartoony caricatures for fun.

“I think it is interesting to note the similarities with this first iteration of Face Book as a shared social experience,” said Mr. Benilous. “It’s almost like having friends write on your wall in a much less tech-savvy way.”

According to Ellen Gruber Garvey, a professor at New Jersey City University:

Drawing games and versions of the Surrealist parlor game Exquisite Corpse were popular activities. . . . it was common for Americans in the 19th and 20th centuries to keep guestbooks in which visitors and friends could scribble thoughts or jokes -– not unlike a MySpace or Facebook profile page. One notable version was kept by Amy Matilda Cassey, an abolitionist from Philadelphia.

Mr. Benilous and his group also discovered what appears to be an emoticon in a transcript of a speech by Abraham Lincoln, they’ve uncovered a 1942 Washington Post article titled “Think Before You Twitter” about gossiping and a 1903 article referring to the first “pocket telephone.”

Goes to show, there is nothing new under the sun!

How did you and your office do with April Fool’s Day? Did a provide an opportunity for a little levity in this ever present climate of stress and uncertainty?

Here is an article from ReportonBusiness.com by Wallace Immen on this topic. He says:

Just 11 per cent of 6,940 respondents to an online Globe and Mail poll said they intended to play an April Fool’s Day joke this year.

Even in sunnier times, just 29 per cent of workers said they had initiated or been on the receiving end of an April Fool’s Day prank at work, according to a survey of 6,800 U.S. employees by job site CareerBuilder.com last year.

But that rubber chicken might not be such a bad idea after all, career experts say. Times of gloom like these present a perfect opportunity to try to inject a little mirth into the office, the pros say.

“You need a little insanity to preserve sanity in your office when the mood is as down as it is right now,” says humour-in-the-workplace consultant David Granirer, president of Vancouver-based Tune-In Counselling Services Inc.

Cutbacks, heavier workloads and worries about job security have become the new realities. Left unrelieved, the pressures associated with them are destined to lead to higher stress levels, lower job satisfaction and even physical illness, Mr. Granirer says.

His prescription: “Laughter can be the cure. It’s like a dose of cod liver oil for the soul,” he says.

Read the rest of this article for some good ideas.

If you’re reading this, be forewarned: tomorrow is April Fool’s Day…It’s always a good thing to know about ahead of time so you can BE PREPARED.

This year we might need some little prank or laugh more than ever before. So here’s a nice little suggestion from FoxBusiness.com.

A new book from Adams Media, THE ULTIMATE OFFICE PRANK BOOK by Mae B. Fired promises to make cubicle life more fun this April Fool’s Day — no matter how dire the economic outlook might be.

Whether it’s filling the vending machine with a coworker’s desk supplies, attaching fishing wire to phones and keyboards, or putting gelatin in the toilets, a good office prank can lighten the mood quicker than your boss can utter “cost-cutting controls.” Split into chapters labeled Entry-Level, Middle Management, and Executive, jokesters are entertained with over 200 increasingly dangerous pranks. A collection that is bound to improve any April Fool’s Day, THE ULTIMATE OFFICE PRANK BOOK saves the recession-dreary day.

Mae B. Fired is the pseudonym of three notorious office pranksters who found that setting out on their own business ventures was safer than risking a long career of pink slips in the corporate world.

Read the rest of the article at your own risk! And from the description printed, um, try stuff at your own risk. Please don’t say you read about it here!!!!

But seriously:

HAPPY APRIL FOOL’S DAY!

These should not be dirty words these days – FUN AT WORK! But I have noticed there is a decrease in the amount of available information on this topic since the economy went bad.

But Gail Rosenblum, a columnist for the StarTribune.com of the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, is reporting on this topic:

I want to tell you about a genuinely spirited group of workers making the rest of us look bad. They’ve created a “Fun Committee.” A fun committee in these trying times? Apparently, that’s their point.

Nearly every Friday since October, the group has coaxed together as many as 40 of their 70 colleagues in the Minnetonka-based Medica Finance Department for an hourlong fun-fest. Their secret weapon? Food.

Shrimp salad. Turkey. Curried pork. Venison Sloppy Joes. Apple pie.

Financial analyst Brian Swenson, 37, one-upped everybody. He brought meat from an estimated 545-pound bear that he shot in the Beltrami Forest in 2007. Not a big fan of surprises, Swenson included a field photo of the dead bear in front of his offering, with a sign — “You are eating bear” — in case anybody missed that detail. He served it on French bread, with dipping sauce. (Chianti, unfortunately, off-limits).

One of the best outcomes of these events is who it brings together?

Millennials, Gen Xers, Boomers, Traditionals. “We all need to eat, and this bridges some of the gaps we may have in working styles.”

Read the entire article here and be sure to note that these events all are paid for by the employees themselves. Pretty clever concept if you ask me!

Zappos, the company that began on the internet selling shoes and now has 1,500 employees and sells shoes, accessories and more, recently debuted No. 23 on Fortune magazines 2009 list of Best Companies to Work For. From an article online – Las Vegas Sun:

A Dance Dance Revolution machine, free popcorn and free books greet visitors in the lobby.

However, the online retailer’s relaxed, fun-loving and close-knit family atmosphere that has won over employees, investors and industry watchers alike runs far deeper than that. The appeal becomes clearer when approaching CEO Tony Hsieh working at his desk.

Hsieh doesn’t have a corner office. He doesn’t even have a full cubicle. His workstation, in fact, is indistinguishable from any of the other hundreds of employees in the building — except maybe for the rainforest decorations hanging from the ceiling and the giant inflatable monkey.

“The best way to have an open-door policy is not to have a door in the first place,” Hsieh said.

Hsieh is determined to have a corporate culture that is warm and people oriented:

Hsieh adopted 10 Core Values to create a corporate culture, ranging from No. 1, “Deliver WOW through service,” to No. 10, “Be humble.”

And how often do you hear a CEO say this?

To truly live by those values, Hsieh said, employees have to be free to be themselves.

All leading to this:

Really, at the end of the day, it’s about alignment — everyone moving the same direction and working toward the same goal. For us, that goal is to have the absolute best customer service.”

The entire article from the Las Vegas Sun online can be found here.

Here’s an interesting article that will get you thinking about whether or not games on the computer have viability or not.

Does Gaming at Work Improve Productivity?
Christopher Null

Thursday, December 11, 2008 10:00 PM PST

In many offices, approved gaming in the workplace is limited to the receptionist’s engagement in rounds of Minesweeper or Solitaire when the phone isn’t ringing. Admins may sneak off to Pogo during lunch, and the IT guys may stick around after hours for a game of Counter-Strike, but by and large video games have been no more a part of the typical company’s culture than pinochle.

Things are slowly changing, however. A number of companies have found that using video games as a way to reward employees for reaching their goals or increasing their productivity can improve office productivity and morale. During the current economic downturn, rewards for overworked employees can be especially welcome.

Another practice whose popularity is growing is the use of video games as training tools. Numerous public safety and military organizations use video games to simulate field conditions. (For example, the battle simulator America’s Army, developed by the U.S. Army, has become an enormously successful recruiting tool for the military.) But you don’t have to shoot Nazis to find value for games in the workplace: A company called Executive Command uses the strategy game Empire Earth II to teach managers how to improve their strategic thinking and work as part of a team.

Read the rest of the article here.

Seems like having a bit of fun at work can help increase productivity.