Ask Lemmy

Instead of coming up with cheap gimmicks for your workers in order to save yourself and the company money while playing PR games with your workforce .... just pay them all a bonus, give them time off and let them all decide what they want to do with their time and money.

Everyone share the same hobby? Is it a paid or during work hours?

Make it during work hours and something all of the people can enjoy. We once had a brunch and then went to a local Madame Tussaud’s.

For a gaming company I’d suggest some gaming museum or tech fair.

As a worker‘s perspective, just make sure it’s on the clock and during work hours.

Random field trips for shits and giggles?. Especially impromptu ones. That’s a bad idea. It’s a recipe for “I didn’t wear the right shoes for laser tag”, or “I don’t want to go see that [event/show]”, or “I have a deadline I need to meet, I’m going to be stressed the whole time”

Field trips should be planned, paid, during business hours, and if not related to business function, optional.

A neutral field trip would be: Hey, we are going to a restaurant for lunch Friday. The company is paying. Your lunch break will be extended, but the extension will be paid.

A good field trip is one you can make relevant to the project, that’s a different story. Say you are working on a medieval/fantasy action adventure: go to an arms or art museum and see all the cool swords, spears, and armor. If it’s a farm sim, maybe tour a cider mill or a historical/working farm: learn about the tools and equipment they use, etc.

Definitely do it on the clock. No one likes unpaid mandatory work fun. If there is driving involved, make sure you pay for mileage or give a gas card to the drivers. Don't surprise people with an outing or give them too much notice; I find a week is the right amount of time. Lastly, if it's just for fun, make it optional.

As long as I'm getting paid you can send me anywhere to do anything.

But expect me to go somewhere without being paid and it better be something I'm interested in and that I don't have other stuff I would rather use my time to catch up on. I have better stuff to do at home than to just hang out and not be productive while also losing a day of wages.

But if it's paid I would greatly appreciate the stress free day.

1. Plan well in advance
2. Be offsite. No pizza parties in the break room.
3. Give people the choice (goof off or work; no holiday) with a sign-ups in advance.
4. Company pays all fees 100%. Bus/Uber to/from work or nearby as possible so people can maybe not bring their car.
5. Go-karts and laser tag and escape rooms and pirate river cruises; take ideas and then vote well in advance
6. if 2 people go, 2 people go. They hobnob with the boss over the snack break and talk about the excellent discussion after. Even if it's just talk about cats because we're here to build teams not debate ticket DEV371819. 6.Vote on new ideas periodically like every few mo. Keep it fresh. If someone sees a good idea, make sure they know they should suggest it and everyone decides when/if it goes into the queue because the suspension bridge is f'n awesome.

I can guarantee that the 4th monthly field trip will show the Fibonacci numbers going up. Be okay if no one shows. It'll improve.

Movies are a fun and easy goof off. It allows everyone to self-group so they can talk about Janice in Accounts and how she stole my leftovers. Also left-handed bowling is just dumb enough that people will go ironically and accidentally have fun.

I’m not a video game executive but I’ve been an executive and every single second you make a person do something is on the clock. If you pay people for their time, sure. Go for it. If it’s on your employees’ time, no pay, then absolutely not.

Work is not family or friends. They will cut you like a bad branch and forget you existed. Work your ass off when you’re getting paid to do so. But don’t work for free.

As long as it's on the clock, everything is paid for, there's food and drinks, not on a Friday, it's an activity that everyone can partake in, and not mandatory, I'm ok to join some extracurricular activities from time to time.

[off topic]

Back in the day, Mad Magazine publisher Bill Gaines loved to take his writers and artists on vacations. Because he was both extravagant and cheap he was always looking for a way to have his cake and eat it too.

He asked his accountant if they could visit Haiti and take it as a business expense. After all, they did dozens of stories about voo-doo and zombies, so it would be educational. The accountant told him no. The only way they could go to Haiti was if it was to make a sale.

Turns out, there was exactly one American living in Haiti who had a subscription to Mad magazine. And one morning, that fellow woke up to find the entire staff of Mad on his lawn, begging him to renew his subscription.

I can't think of a more stressful work day than to see coworkers, in a new environment, with no way to immediately go home(or not compensated for my travel), unscheduled and unannounced, and being ordered to have fun and be social without breaking the social contract of the office.

I will be sick that day.

Just give them the day off FFS. Especially if that's what they are asking for.

If I had to attend events off the clock, my union president would eat nails and spit rust.

Definitely the worst part of working is to give up 8+ hours of your day. It doesn't matter if it's a trip or staying in the chair looking at a computer. You still took away 8+ hours of my life.

In fact, when I signed up for the job, I did so wanting to be hours sitting in a chair looking at the computer. Not for "socializing" or whatever. I would prefer another day in the chair, since that trip will just give me less time to meet my deadlines.

Job before last, HR actually arranged some fun shit. Being a cynical bastard, and having always hated HR, I was disinclined to go. But fuck me, it was always fun. Most events were during work hours, but the first one I attended was not. Takes some skill to put something fun together like that.

There are two types of people in the world

There are people who want to socialize with their coworkers, bond with them, have friendships with them, etc.

And there are people who just work here, man. They show up everyday, spend 8 hours doing their job, collect their paycheck every 2 weeks, and don't want to spend a moment more than they need to at work and or think about their job or coworkers on their days off.

Field trips, team building days, etc. are great for the first type of person, they're torture for the second.

I'm the second type of person. I don't, overall, dislike my coworkers. I'll joke around with them, I think they're mostly all nice and decent people, maybe even above average. But at its core, the nature of my relationship with them is that I get paid to work with them, and that is plenty enough reason to be friendly (though not necessarily friends with) them. I don't need to go get a beer with them after work, or go bowling or whatever with them to build a bond with them. My bond with them is that if I do my job and they do their job, we both get paid and can go do whatever the hell we want to do off the clock, either with each other if they're one of the rare people who manage to make the jump from being a work friend to being a regular friend, or separately if all we really have in common is that we work together. I have plenty of friends and hobbies and such that I don't need to seek them out at work, and I prefer it that way, my professional life and private life don't really need to touch.

I don't want birthday cards from my coworkers, I don't want to contribute anything to the office Christmas party (I work for my county government, I really don't think we should even have an office Christmas party) and when they're taking up a collection for a coworker who is sick or about to have a baby or whatever, my only thought is "how 'bout they just pay us enough that we don't have to do this?"

So if it's decided that I don't need to work for a day, I'd rather just be home. Or have the option to go in and work to get caught up/get ahead on my work in exchange for overtime while all the type-A, middle management, people-people, chatty Kathy, office gossip, busybody types are out of the office doing whatever.

I certainly don't want to come in on my day off to deal with any of that. Those days off are the reason I work, so that I can enjoy the rest of my time.

Two particular examples I recall that ground my gears.

I used to work in a warehouse. The company used to do two Christmas parties, one for the office staff, one for the warehouse employees. Usually the office staff would get treated to dinner at a restaurant after work. For us warehouse people, they would usually get us a catered lunch. Never anything particularly special, but at least I didn't have to pack a lunch that day. One year they decided that they'd take us warehouse plebs out to a nice steakhouse for dinner. I declined. I was busting my ass all day in a warehouse, I'd be gross and sweaty and want to go home to shower and change after work. I had time to do that, we got off at 5, and the dinner wasn't until I think 7, but after dealing with almost an hour of rush hour traffic, and being tired from working all day, I really didn't want to get dressed again and go back out. And to top it off, I was one of only like 3 people in the warehouse who spoke decent English, and the other two were 2 or 3 times my age, and one was my boss. The rest mostly spoke Spanish, and they were nice enough, but I couldn't really have enough of a conversation with them to even determine if we even had anything in common to talk about, much less actually talk to them about it. About all we could manage is "hey, can you go grab this box for me?" or showing each other funny videos and laughing.

To me that sounded like I was going to spend a couple hours sitting mostly in silence with people chatting in Spanish around me.

And of course, they were paying for food, but not for drinks. If I'm going to a nice steakhouse, I'm going to want at least a beer, glass of wine, or cocktail with my dinner, and I'll be damned if I'm going to pay anything out of pocket to attend a work function.

I also really don't get the appeal of a steakhouse, don't get me wrong, I like steak, but I can make a steak with some sides as good or better as any steakhouse at home for half the cost. Steak isn't complicated.

My boss was surprised I didn't want to go. I'm surprised that anyone wanted to go. I'd rather they have me a few bucks to order some pizzas, grab a six pack, and stay home with my wife (who was invited to this as well, I asked her if she wanted to go, she felt the same way) watching Netflix.

The next one is more recent. My current job has been on a big mental health thing lately. We have to do a mandatory training thing a couple times a year, usually it's pretty bullshit, but at least there's a thing veneer of ",you need to do this to keep your required certifications, even if none of it actually applies to what we do"

But this last time they decided to do a "wellness retreat"

Which consisted of us mostly sitting in an auditorium listening to about 4 different speakers talking about mental health, suicide prevention, fitness and healthy eating, etc. and a guided meditation thing,, doing a middle school science class egg drop experiment as a team building exercise, and a Cornhole tournament. We had to provide our own lunches, and they had therapy dogs visit us, not really giving any presentation or anything just kind of there and we could pet them during our lunch break.

Half of the presentations felt like I was watching an ad for these people's businesses, and the other half were just boring rehashes of things we've all heard a thousand times before interspersed with some sad stories.

I had to give up my day off for that. I wanted to flip a fucking table when they had the nerve to mention work-life ballance. And half of us are night shifters, and they never schedule any of these things overnight, so it was downright insulting when they talked about how important it is to get enough sleep.

And I don't even want to play Cornhole when I'm drunk with my friends I actually want to be around, I really don't want to play it with a bunch of coworkers totally sober.

I got overtime pay for it, but I gladly would have paid that much out of my own pocket to skip it.

If you want to surprise your employees, let them leave early (with pay) on a Friday, hand out gift cards for takeout or a movie or something, buy them pizza, or better yet, just give them all a raise or a bonus. If they want to go hang out together and bond, they can go do that with their extra money after they leave work early on a Friday, maybe invite them to join you for whatever you're doing. If they don't, they can go enjoy life on their own terms.

-Must be paid

-Get employee input on desires and liked events before planning anything.

-Make sure deadlines are accounted for and adjusted a day or two later to compensate for a lost days work. getting a paid event but knowing in the back of your head that it's going to make you fall behind on what you had laid out for the day is the absolute worst.

My job has a yearly thing and i would want to go but while at large the company is very open and inclusive they tend to forget such when planning these.

If you do this, you must organise them well. I am autistic and the mental challenge of Figuring out whether an event is compatible with me. (Where do i need to be, what are we doing, how much people/noise will there be, when will i be back home) is often more straining and time consuming then just doing my job.

Also a bit beyond topic but a small indie gaming company should not have a dedicated CEO. Creative works genuinely do not benefit from corporate structures. But that is my opinion.

My workplace tried to make me attend a steak dinner after work with my "coworker" who I don't like and some random new shift supervisor in the highest turn over position on site. Predictably he was gone 4 months later. I refused to go. While the food would be compensated, my time wouldn't be and that's the #1 thing of value to me. I don't work for free.

A day off is ten times better than a field trip for no reason. I'd be annoyed if I lost a day because the CEO now decided we're going wine tasting and cheese shit something. Especially since they're the ones pressing the production team for results. Come on.

Now a field trip that is relevant to what I'm working on sounds great, although you probably have a window of relevance for those during the concept or pre production stage, maybe pushing a little bit after that but absolutely not relevant after you have already figured out most of your aesthetics and plot.

For me it depended entirely on how happy I was in the rest of my job.

If I'm, say, being death-marched, or requirements are written in sand, or senior management refuses to ever make a decision in writing, or my manager looks over my shoulder when I'm typing, or you just told me we're going 100% AI for QA, I don't want your fucking playdate.

If the team is happy, offsites can be a fun way to get some bonding in.

If the team is unhappy, they are there for their check and that is it, they are not paid to pretend to like you at an off-site. Take the money you would use for the party and hand it out as cash in an envelope to everybody individually.

The best managers can find out exactly what motivates their people, and lean into that to make things fun and rewarding (or as much as possible, being work related).

The tricky part is that this won't be the same for everyone, so a one-size-fits-all field trip won't necessarily be received the same by all the employees. Maybe the group dynamic is such that everyone has a good time, and this may work out well. Maybe some members resent being compelled to spend relaxed time with people they don't want to see that way.

In a perfect world, everybody could get their own individualized rewards and recognition, based on what they value most. The only way to get there is to put in the work to know the employees as people.

If you gave a person a choice at the beginning of their job between a day off or an office field trip, most would probably just choose an extra day off.

Then why would you force anything else? You know what they'd pick but you're still considering forcing some bullshit holiday? I've worked both type of places and I'll take the day off every single time.

A truly diverse office will be full of very different types of people - people that'd rather be with their kids, older people that won't enjoy the same things, introverts, people keeping their mental disorders secret, etc etc. Statistically, probably some women that are uncomfortable around some of the men because of some shit they overheard.

You don't know what's best for every single one of these individuals. They do.

This was my career. Seeing popular sci-fi/fantasy movies maybe 1-2 times a year (especially on opening day...woot!) seemed fun and to boost morale a bunch. The studio was large enough so that several times we could rent out the theater to ourselves and be extra raucous, which was also fun. I don't think people complained, since this was during office hours and not after hours or on a weekend. Otherwise, I think 'if your going to give me free time then let me go home'.

I think longer 'field trips' might have sucked, even if they related to a game we were making. Sticking to sci-fi and fantasy films with cool fx was close enough.

I can't imagine anybody would prefer work-sanctioned "fun" to the same amount of PTO and the money the activity would have cost.

Meh, even if "relieved of responsibility for the day", projects and tasks still have deadlines and it could easily have a ripple effect that increases stress more than relieves it.

My company has a summer picnic. They get a few rows of seats at the MLB stadium, and a dedicated area with free food and drinks. I think they pay for a bus from the office to the stadium too.

It’s on a weekend but they let people bring family members or a date (not that they check)

It’s actually pretty fun.

I would be interested! But I think the best way to implement this would be to give people the power to choose. Maybe, for whatever reason, they want to work that day? Or maybe they'd rather go home and get some good zzzs in? If the goal is cultivating a healthy work environment, then I think letting people take the day to recharge in whatever way suits them best would be ideal. Having a fun activity or excursion available to join in on only enhances this imo

No fucking surprises. Work should be the least surprising thing ever. "Surprise, we're going to have a meeting just the two of us. No agenda". Surprise, you thought you would close the last tickets today but now I am taking you socialising.

I despise the ones where it's basically like "get on the bus, we're having mandatory fun!" and then you get going and it won't finish until 2 hours past your quitting time, but it's totally cool, because it's a good time!

OTOH, I'm not at all interested in sports and I've had a good time going to a baseball game and once a company took me to an arcade which was a lot of fun. Alcohol provided by the company.

For me, as long as quitting time stays quitting time, I'm more or less happy even if I don't actually like the event, but if you keep me away from my family, I'm unhappy and I can't imagine how pissed the people who pick up their kids from work/school/etc... must have been.

If it's paid we can go to Chuck-E-Cheese for all I care

I would want my employees to be happy, so I'd be lenient any time they needed to take off. Bonus them well. Give them paid vacations