How to Turn Your Hellhole of a Company Into a Great Place to Work

How to Turn Your Hellhole of a Company Into a Great Place to Work:
There are some companies people would kill to work for, and you probably know already whether yours is one of them. At some companies, people love coming in every day. At others, the paycheck is the only thing stopping the staff from burning the place down. If your company sounds like the latter, here's what you can do—at any level of the organization—to make your company a better place to work.
Being a great place to work goes deeper than high pay and great benefits: the work environment and attitude of the employees are important too. The best companies appreciate their workers and offer them benefits and perks that make them feel valued. They also train managers to work efficiently, treat their employees like adults, trust them to get their work done, and judge them on their performance. It all sounds logical, but if all companies were so above-board, everyone would love their jobs. Sadly, we know better.
In this guide, we'll walk you through some things you can do, whether you're entry-level, standard staff, middle management, or a manager, to make your company—or at least your team—more friendly. First, we need to discuss what makes a company great.

What Makes a Company a Great Place to Work?

Every year, tons of magazines and blogs publish lists of the "Best places to work." Many of them work with the Great Place to Work company to poll employees and evaluate the results. For example, the 2013 Best Companies to Work For list has been published, and you'll see some familiar names at the top of the list. Not all of them have the same things in common though. Great Places to Work says the criteria for a great place is simple:

Employees believe they work for great organizations when they consistently:

• TRUST the people they work for;
• Have PRIDE in what they do; and
• ENJOY the people they work with.

It's important to note that a long list of benefits and perks does not a great company make. You can offer employees free lunches, tons of relaxation space, flexible work hours, and more, and they'll still hate working for you if they don't have the more basic needs met. Photo by Promisa Art Studio.
Great Places to Work goes into detail about this here, but the point is that if you're looking to make your company a better place, benefits and perks only go so far. They have to be used in a way that doesn't just make people happy for the moment, but reinforces the fact that they're appreciated, their work is appreciated, and they're working with people they like and trust. Keep that in mind while we walk through some of the things you can do to improve your workplace.

What You Can Do To Make Your Company a Better Place to Work

You don't have to be an executive or an HR director with a budget to make some basic changes that'll improve your work environment (although it helps.) Let's take a look at what you can do on any level of the company to improve things for yourself and your peers, your department, and the whole company. Photo by Russell Yarwood.

Entry Level, Non-Management, or Any Employee

At this level it might seem like there's nothing you can do—or nothing you'd be allowed to do—to brighten up your workplace. That's not always the case. We discussed a few things you can do for yourself when you feel like your job sucks, but there are other things you can do with your colleagues to make things better for everyone:

• Start small and talk to your manager. Before you go too far, the first thing you should do is make sure that there's something you can do without upsetting your boss, or their boss. For example, your manager may be more than happy to help you organize a potluck lunch or something, but they probably can't cordon off part of your team's work space as an impromptu lounge. They may be able to give you some flexibility to work from home, but they can't make that change for everyone in the company, or maybe even your department. Let your boss know that morale is low and you'd like to do something to bring it up. See what's possible.
• Break down the walls between your colleagues. Small social activities can go a long way. It sounds corny, but when they're genuine and meaningful (and most importantly, things that everyone wants to do versus things they feel forced to do because management is asking them to do them) they can brighten up a workplace and help foster the kind of trust and collaboration that the best companies have in droves. How you do this is up to you and your office—a lot of companies have potluck lunches, but why not turn it into a chili cookoff with a prize for the best pot? Better yet, have a panel of judges—make them all regular people judging managers' recipes. At my last company, we were all gamers, so every couple of months we all brought in our rigs, set up a small LAN, and held LAN parties. It's amazing how lobbing a grenade over a wall at your CIO makes you appreciate him more.
• Organize and sit down with management. We're not talking about forming a union or anything, just making sure everyone's on board with a very small set of proposals that you think your manager or department head can help you with, and then see if they're possible. Start slow with small changes that you think will make the biggest impact for everyone, whether it's a place to eat lunch in peace that isn't your desk, a potluck luncheon every month, or something else small that will help everyone warm up to each other a little more. Whatever you do though, make sure its genuine: skip the trust falls and go for the things that people actually enjoy.

Middle Management or Senior Staff (eg, When You Speak, Your Boss Listens)

If you're the type of employee that has a little pull with your boss, you've been around for a couple of years and have some friends at work, or you're just in the position to suggest something bigger than a potluck, consider some more substantive changes:

• Don't forget to start small. Just because you're more senior doesn't mean that you can just jump in feet first. Again, make sure you're clear on what you can and can't do, and start with some of the smaller suggestions. They can get your feet wet, show you how much resistance you'll run into, and whether or not anyone will actually appreciate the changes you're trying to make. You may get more traction starting with something small, like asking if a supply closet can get some lights, a table, and some comfortable chairs so you can have a comfortable place to eat lunch. That'll probably fly before you get a full-on lounge. Similarly, if you can't get a sandwich counter in the office, ask if anyone would care if you asked some local food trucks to come down to the building around lunch time—if you can get your colleagues to go with you, everyone wins: your coworkers get a treat, you get delicious food, your company is suddenly more attractive ("Yeah, we have food trucks come down from time to time,"), and a local business gets valuable customers. Photo by Robert Banh.
• Suggest policies that encourage happier, more productive teams. See if your department could start a telework program, or ask if everyone can try working from home one day a week. There's been a lot of controversy about working remotely lately, but for most people and most companies, it's still a great option. Plus, it shows a lot of trust when management can say "Yes, we trust you to get your work done even if we can't see you doing it." That's huge, and its impact on individual workers can't really be minimized. If the work that your team does doesn't require you to have your butt in a seat or a physical presence in your working area for eight hours a day, it can go a long way. Telework is a great example here, but it's not the only one: starting a "bring your pet to work day" can help a lot assuming your office isn't dominated by people with allergies, for example.
• Lead the charge. The key to making any place a better one is to be tenacious. You won't be able to just throw a suggestion at your manager or their manager and then walk away assuming it'll happen. You have to be willing to take the reins and do the work required. Bonus: you get to be a leader and show your commitment not just to a project, but to the company, which will go far with people who may not even be involved.
  An example: at my last job, when we moved into a new building, the company built on a bistro as well—a small cold counter where pre-made sandwiches and salads, delivered every morning, were sold to employees and there were plenty of tables for everyone to sit and have lunch. We even had a pair of fountain soda machines, an iced tea brewer, and an espresso machine. Pretty sweet, but none of them would have been there if people didn't ask for them and the CEO didn't agree. Ultimately it was our receptionist and a few others who led the charge in selecting the vendors who provided the sandwiches and salads: the side benefit being that whenever they came in to show off their culinary skills, everyone in the office got to benefit with a free lunch. You don't have to be an exec to help make those necessary decisions, and since the receptionist asked us all for our opinions about the food, we all had a role in making sure the food we got was food we would enjoy. Photo by Mike Beltzner.

Senior Management, Directors, Execs

If you're a real power broker in your organization, or you have the ability to influence company policy as a whole (or maybe just your own department), why not use it to make your team happier, and more attractive to new talent? After all, you will need to hire at some point, and your position will be much stronger if you can outline the ways that your team is one of the best teams in the company to work for. If they catch on, or the rest of the company takes notice, you could be responsible for something big that really does make the whole company a great place to work.

• Chat with HR about the changes you'd like to make. You're not in this alone, and your HR department may be able to lend you some help when it comes to making the changes you'd like to make. Whether you want to give some people on your team the option of telecommuting, or you'd like to give your team a lunch area, you never know—instead of just turning a spare closet into a lounge, see if there are any empty spaces in the building that everyone could use, not just your department. Turn a conference room into an Xbox or Wii room for an hour or two every Friday. Also, if you're planning anything after hours, make sure you're not running afoul of any company policies or regulations around overtime or employee hours in the process. Photo by Tomas Quinones.
• Don't force your team, let it happen naturally. If there's anything most employees have, it's a finely tuned BS detector. They know when you're doing something because you want to "improve morale and make the department more fun" versus you genuinely want them to be happier and have a good time. Err on the side of the latter, and don't judge your team if participation is low at the outset. If morale is low, you'll have a hard time getting people to stay late for a poker night when all they want to do is go home. Just make sure you get a few people and start building a core group that really does enjoy the activity you've planned. It'll grow organically from there as long as the doors are open and you invite people on a no-stress basis.
• Shamelessly borrow policies from the best. Some of the perks and policies that make other companies a great place to work are actually surprisingly easy to implement. Granted, they'll differ based on the corporate culture you have and the type of work that you do (if you're a director in a shipping company, for example, the benefits at a tech company may not be work for you) but network with other directors at other companies. See what makes their teams successful and how they're handling the challenges of a team that's interested only in their paychecks. Make no mistake, some people will only ever be interested in their paycheck, but you all have to see each other for 40+ hours a week—the least you can all do is enjoy the time you spend together. Get in touch with other companies and managers that understand that and agree with you and see how they made it all work. Not only do you have the benefit of networking, you'll get some valuable insight you can bring back with you. Photo by AoStefan.
• Build a better working environment from the inside out. Remember, Great Places to Work says that the best places don't just have a laundry list of perks, there's actually a sense of mutual trust and respect among employees, managers, and directors. It can be difficult to foster, and in many cases your HR department can help, but in the end you're the one who knows and leads your team. Treating your employees with fairness and respect, trusting them to do their jobs and evaluating them fairly on their performance, and encouraging them to help and work with one another will all go much further than speedy new computers and free lunches (although all of those things help too!)

Every Great Place to Work Has to Start Somewhere

Let's be honest: It's easier to just quit and find a company that has the perks that you like, or keep searching until you find a corporate culture where you really fit in than it is to actually make these small changes and try to improve your working conditions from the inside. It's why so many of us just give up when things start sucking and start looking for a new job.
Unfortunately, jobs are scarce these days in every industry, and everyone knows it. Sometimes it's better to put in a little effort to keep the one you have, and starting off small and slow like this is a great way to make the kinds of changes that will ultimately make your company not just better for you, but more attractive to other great talent. You need to be willing to stick to your guns, lead the charge, and go out on a limb to make the time you spend at work a little better for everyone. After all, you spend at least 40 hours a week (and many of you said you spend more than that) at the office. It should at least be an enriching experience.
Title photo made using Asa Wilson and Elnur.

184 year-old Indian library goes digital, including 444 yr-old book on Alexander

184 year-old Indian library goes digital, including 444 yr-old book on Alexander:

One of the oldest libraries in the country located in Trivandrum, the state capital of south Indian state Kerala, has digitized hundreds of rare documents and many rare books which can be accessed online.
The Kerala State Central Library, established during the days of Swathi Thirunal Maharaja of Travancore province in 1829, contains many rare books which is being digitised in phases.
An update posted on the library’s website said

During the first phase 707 rare documents (644 English and 63 Malayalam books) containing 3,28,268 pages have been digitised and a Digital archive was opened in 2006.

480 English books have been digitised and 1,84,321 pages were added to this Digital Archive during the second phase in 2010.
Some of the rarest books like “An Account of the Trade in India,” by Kockyer Charles published in 1711 and scholarly books on the ancient Vedas and Islam are available in digital form and can be accessed from anywhere.
A book called the “Righte Noble and Pleasant History of Successors of Alexander Surnamed the Great,” published in 1569 is one of the rare ones that got digitized.
If you are a history buff, or simply a curious soul, there is a treasure trove of information out there. We couldn’t wait to write about this ever since we heard about it. This is truly amazing. Not only does it give access to rare books, it gives you an insight into the working of the Travancore province through the documents of the legislative assembly from the early 20th century.
Physical access to these books are highly restricted.
Some two months ago, another rare collection of documents and letters went online. A large collection of documents and letters preserved by the British Library’s India office was digitized and hosted online in December last year. This was the first collection of World War I India office records to appear in the cyber world. According to the British Library blog, it’s got reports of the censor of Indian mails in France, letters from soldiers, treatment of British and Indian prisoners of war in Germany among other details of the first world war.
More and more libraries should do the same to truly democratise access to information.
Recommended read: Indian Sepoy (read cannon fodder) letters from the world war trenches are now online

184 year-old Indian library goes digital, including 444 yr-old book on Alexander

184 year-old Indian library goes digital, including 444 yr-old book on Alexander:

One of the oldest libraries in the country located in Trivandrum, the state capital of south Indian state Kerala, has digitized hundreds of rare documents and many rare books which can be accessed online.
The Kerala State Central Library, established during the days of Swathi Thirunal Maharaja of Travancore province in 1829, contains many rare books which is being digitised in phases.
An update posted on the library’s website said

During the first phase 707 rare documents (644 English and 63 Malayalam books) containing 3,28,268 pages have been digitised and a Digital archive was opened in 2006.

480 English books have been digitised and 1,84,321 pages were added to this Digital Archive during the second phase in 2010.
Some of the rarest books like “An Account of the Trade in India,” by Kockyer Charles published in 1711 and scholarly books on the ancient Vedas and Islam are available in digital form and can be accessed from anywhere.
A book called the “Righte Noble and Pleasant History of Successors of Alexander Surnamed the Great,” published in 1569 is one of the rare ones that got digitized.
If you are a history buff, or simply a curious soul, there is a treasure trove of information out there. We couldn’t wait to write about this ever since we heard about it. This is truly amazing. Not only does it give access to rare books, it gives you an insight into the working of the Travancore province through the documents of the legislative assembly from the early 20th century.
Physical access to these books are highly restricted.
Some two months ago, another rare collection of documents and letters went online. A large collection of documents and letters preserved by the British Library’s India office was digitized and hosted online in December last year. This was the first collection of World War I India office records to appear in the cyber world. According to the British Library blog, it’s got reports of the censor of Indian mails in France, letters from soldiers, treatment of British and Indian prisoners of war in Germany among other details of the first world war.
More and more libraries should do the same to truly democratise access to information.
Recommended read: Indian Sepoy (read cannon fodder) letters from the world war trenches are now online

Flow Charts

Flow Charts:

Flow Charts

23 February 2013
Yesterday I was browsing the Computer Science shelf at a university in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The selection was ... classic. Everything from "PC/MS DOS Fundamentals", to "MicroSoft BASIC", to "The Internet Guide". The latter was from 1997 and included information on Gopher, MOOs, and AltaVista.

The most interesting book was "Computer Programming in COBOL". The first chapter was the usual introductory fluff about what programming is and what it is for. Then the book gets down to business, by teaching how to draw flow charts. You see, before writing 'if' statements and 'while' loops, it is strongly recommended to draw these structures using a flow chart. Like most people of my generation, I was taught the use of flow charts in school. And like all my classmates, I promptly ignored this advice and started coding instead. Drawing a low-level flow chart never made any sense to us.

However, reading the third chapter of the COBOL book suddenly opened my eyes. COBOL code was written on paper, sent to a punch operator, who would type the punch cards, then the stack of cards would be added to the computer's input stack. I'd known about punch cards (don't drop the stack!). But I didn't realise the implications of being a programmer who could not type. This workflow is from the era when typing was a rare skill among high-level professionals. Managers had secretaries who would take dictations. Programmers had punch operators who would transcribe code.

Thus was the rationale for flow charts. Whereas we can trivially cursor up and insert an 'if' statement, a COBOL programmer writing on paper would have to start the page again. Drawing flow charts saved time.
The history of Computer Science will certainly remember the prevalence of flow charts in the 1960s and 1970s, though the reason may become blurry with time. But what will most certainly be forgotten is there was a generation of students in the 1980s and 1990s who were encouraged to use flow charts, long after the reason for using them had disappeared.
Yet another onion in the varnish.
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I Can't Find a Single Productive Use For My Tablet [Opinion]

I Can't Find a Single Productive Use For My Tablet [Opinion]:

First off, I have to say that like most of you reading this, I love technology. I love it. I dream about it so much that I just had to write an article about where technology is going to be in 20 years. I imagine a world where everyone is wearing augmented reality glasses, riding in anti-gravity vehicles that run on renewable energy, and everyone is telecommuting from home via a global high-speed wireless network.
So, it should go without saying that when tablets first came out, I got pretty excited about it. When I saw those first large touch screens sitting next to the smartphones in the cellular store, and realized that they had finally made such larger computing devices capable of accessing the Internet via the cellular data plan – and wi-fi as well – that was really exciting.
That excitement culminated recently when I received my very first tablet – a really nice Asus Transformer Prime. It’s a sleek, fast and powerful device capable of playing games, running awesome productivity apps, and letting you browse the web and do online research from the couch or the bed. It’s convenient, fun, and ultimately completely and utterly pointless.
Weird right? The thing is that no matter how hard I try to do something actually productive and useful with the tablet, I always migrate back to my laptop, and my tablet ends up back in the pocket of my computer bag, uncharged.

I remember when those little Casio personal organizers first came out – you know the text based ones that looked like flip-top calculators with little miniature keyboards? When I first saw them, I had dreams of storing the addresses and birthdays of every member of my family and all of my friends. I figured I’d have my entire schedule completely, digitally organized. My life would be streamlined, efficient and productive.
Eventually, the dreams got the best of me, I bought a Casio organizer – an SF-4700L to be exact. I diligently loaded my life into that little organizer. I’m talking everything; my to-do list, calendar, personal passwords and contact info. I used it to keep assignments for classes, and to remember meetings and important events. This went on for about four of five months, but gradually I realized that if I was going to be completely honest with myself, it was getting a bit annoying.

The truth is that it didn’t make life easier. It made it harder. Instead of quickly handwriting someone’s name and address into a paper address book, I had to use this puny little too-small keyboard with my thick fingers to try and type in names, addresses, phone numbers and birthdays. It took forever. It was painful.
When I wanted to enter a to-do item into my list, it took at least two or three times longer than it would have taken if I’d just written those items down into a paper notebook. After a while, out of frustration that this little nifty gadget just wasn’t making my life any easier, I set it aside one day in a desk drawer, and there it remained ever since.

Smartphones Led To The Tablet

Once smartphones came out and had access to the Internet – that was exciting. Now, something actually useful. Smartphones weren’t just about applications for storing addresses, birthdays and a calendar planner, but now you could actually browser the Internet with this little, mobile, pocket-sized device. I bought a Windows Mobile phone for the sole purpose of researching antique prices while attending auctions. Withing a few short years, these little gadgets quickly took off a life of their own.

Everyone – and I mean everyone – has one of these things. Well, except for Justin, who impressively has resisted the mainstream adoption of this technology. But, why did the smartphone take off where other gadgets eventually fell by the wayside? It’s because they filled a void. Up until that point, people were regularly checking email whenever they were home or at the office, with access to a computer on the Internet. However, with the Internet-enabled Smartphone, you were no longer detached.
You can check your email while waiting at the doctor’s office, you can text your friends while riding the bus, you can reply to your boss just like you’re at the office while you’re hanging out at the bar with friends. Smartphones filled a void and made life easier and more convenient – and that’s why they were successful, but what about tablets?

Tablets As Another Novelty

So, while I found the Windows Phone, and later the Motorola Droid, to be wonderfully useful devices that greatly improved my productivity – devices that I really couldn’t live without today – my experience using a tablet for the first time was not the same. It didn’t fill a void. Instead, it felt just like when I first purchased that Casio organizer years ago.
The idea of a tablet is really cool. The concept of sitting on a beach chair at a beach on the coast of Maine, typing up a blog entry for my site while spending a sunny day with the family – now that’s cool. Certainly better than being stuck at home trying to get work done, right? In theory, it sounds great. In practice it’s a whole different ballgame. You can see this from Christian’s experience when he attempted to use only a laptop for a full week!

Okay, so he wasn’t just about ready to slam his tablet to the floor, but you could tell by the end of the experiment, Christian was outright exhausted. And that’s exactly how I feel whenever I try to use my tablet to get real work done – be it a blog post, or something as simple as taking notes.
As I mentioned in my past articles here at MUO, I thought the SuperNote app for taking notes was very impressive, because it could literally take your hand-scribbled letters or words and piece them into sentences on a note page.

Guess what though – the novelty wears off. It’s cool and everything, but it’s still faster to write notes on a pad with a simple pen. If we’re just counting seconds on a clock and evaluating efficiency – a pen and pad wins out.
Then you’ve got blogging. The WordPress app appears pretty full-featured and functional when you’re on the main dashboard, but once you really start digging into writing posts and trying to format – the awkwardness of selecting segments of text, copying, pasting and moving the cursor around with the touch-based tablet environment can really turn into an exercise in futility.

Sure, you get an on-screen keyboard to give you a hand, but what good is that if you’re always fighting with a cursor that won’t go where you need it to, and won’t stay there once you get it in place. It’s frustrating and too annoying to be really very useful.
Then there’s the problem with doing research. I have to admit, once I went to using dual monitors with my laptop, there was no turning back. I mean, seriously, how can you beat being able to read articles on one screen, and type notes or copy and paste links into the other?

Dual monitors increased my personal productivity tremendously, and losing that second screen to a ridiculously smaller screen of a tablet is just – well, there’s no comparison. Productivity drops exponentially.
So – quite honestly, I feel like tablets are a short-lived fad. I still use it occasionally as a very simple tool in meetings sometimes as a whiteboard for brainstorming ideas with someone. But even then, a real whiteboard is so much better because it’s so big that everyone can see it, unlike that tiny little screen everyone is trying to squint at while you diagram your ideas.
The only thing that may save the tablet is the advent of Windows 8, and the idea of a “hybrid” PC – a computer that’s powerful enough and functional enough to behave like you would expect a good laptop computer to behave, but also with the tremendous benefits that a touch-screen offers. Those are benefits that can’t be understated – a touch screen can significantly improve your productivity if used the right way.
So that’s my take on the world of tablets. What’s your view? Have you found a good, productive use for them, or do you agree that they are really more of a novelty, and that you turn to your laptop when you have real work to accomplish? Weigh in and let us know your take in the comments section below.
Image Credits: Home Office Via Shutterstock, smash digital tablet via Shutterstock, teenagers using phones via Shutterstock, palm pilot via Shutterstock, man using a tablet