Experiment

[tcepsa]

Someday, if I ever have my own company, I want the policy to be something along the lines of "You are expected to be in the office X hours every day. Or you can telecommute for some or all of that time, provided that you are in e-mail and phone contact for those X hours in case something comes up. You are expected to complete your work on time, and with a high degree of quality. Beyond that, what you do while you are here is up to you. I will not give you a hard time if I catch you using AIM, or sending personal e-mails, or blogging. You can have Everquest running in the background, or even the foreground. You can get together with your officemates and have a Quake match for a few hours. As long as the project stays on schedule, I fully support such activities. If the project begins to fall behind schedule, I don't expect to see you doing those things again until it is caught up. If you do that sort of thing when you have something on your plate that is overdue, then your attention will gently be called to that fact. If, after being reminded that you have something overdue, you do not focus on seeing that it gets completed, more extreme measures will be taken. If you buckle down and get it done, though, then you're free to go back to whatever you were doing."

But maybe that's just me, and in reality it would be managerial suicide ^_^

Comments

[princesskaite.livejournal.com]

That used to be how dot com's operated ;) I graduated at the end of that when it had mostly burst - but was still told things like 'we have a foosball table' etc etc -
There's a company in Texas called hmmm Triology? That's kind of cult-like and their environment is reputed to be like that.

Now that I work for a small company we have "core hours" that we're expected to be available - and outisde of that you can adjust your hours as you'd like. Oh and in the office in Ireland - there's a foosball table ;) Free lunch on fridays... company sponsored drinking etc

[firecracker-fem.livejournal.com]

I used to work for a job like that. Projects would come and it would be all hell. There were nasty notes from the dragon that ate the editor left on the door as a warning to all others wishing to enter the room. Otherwise we chatted and goofed off and one day we just watched DVD's ALL DAY. Production companies can be like that. We also had a daily tournament of Jungle Uno that could get quite viscious and would last 2 hours if managers let us.

[belushi81x.livejournal.com]

Pro: companies like this tend to do well in terms of employee turnover which can save you $$$ on training and HR expenses.
Con: it is hard to convince investors that this is a winning strategy
Pro: employ moral and loyalty is super high
Con: some employees might take advantage... in many ways
Pro: can me it easy to bring in good new talent
Con: leads to 10 & 12 hour days with 6-7 hours of work

While the Econemy was good a lt of compies offered more and more fringe benefits and more lattitude on time spent in the office... but now that bush has had his way with the econemy for so long... it's hard to convince TPTB (the powers that be) that this is a good strategy.

[anistastia.livejournal.com]

actually i'm blessed enough to work in an environment JUST LIKE THAT :-) Part of it is the type of job, and part of it is the independence we have in the "we don't care what you do so long as everything that needs doing is done" - although the telecommuting part is impossible in our case *g* (ask S what i do for a living *l*) but that attitude is one of the things that makes my place so fun to work in - btw, since i finally met you this weekend i did friend you now :-)