photo credit: paulswansen

Gossip. Some of us take part more than others, but we all contribute a little from time to time.

In the workplace, gossip can get really mean. A former coworker was recently telling me about attempts to undermine her that came from others in the office who saw that she was away from her desk while her boss was out of town. (The truth was that she’d had a doctor appointment, and had emailed her boss about it in advance.)

But it doesn’t stop there. Office gossip can trump up single instances of a behavior into a gossip-worthy pattern: maybe someone who’s having a tough morning is observed stepping out for a 5-minute fresh air break and suddenly that person is suspected of having a pattern of idling. Or maybe someone is observed taking the last cup of coffee without starting a new pot because he or she is in a hurry to a meeting, and suddenly that person is the culprit whenever the pot is empty.

Whatever the behavior, gossip has a way of turning trivial events into something sinister in the retelling over time. There is also, according to an article in this morning’s New York Times, a tendency for gossip to grow due to the pressure to contribute to it:

The earlier studies found that once someone made a negative comment about a person who wasn’t there, the conversation would get meaner unless someone immediately defended the target. Otherwise, among both adults and teenagers, the insults would keep coming because there was so much social pressure to agree with the others.

You know what our suggestion is: be the one to shut it down. We’ve talked before about how important it is to empathize with others around you; great accomplishments are rarely made without true collaboration, and for true collaboration, you need at least reasonable compassion and empathy for those you’re working with. But nothing breaks down trust and creates barriers to collaboration like gossip. Shut it down. Move on. Foster a culture of empathy and understanding. If something needs to be communicated to someone, talk to the person directly or communicate with his or her manager if need be. But no good will come from spreading gossip around the office.

Besides, you’ll only be making it more likely that one day, office gossip will be spreading about you.

I received an email recently from a friend here in Nashville, who works at a significantly-sized healthcare company. I paste:

“Our CEO sent out a company-wide e-mail saying every employee had to get a flu shot or if for religious reasons we didn’t want to, we’ll have to wear a mask. If we choose not to comply he’s considering that our resignation.”

Say what?

In the midst of the media powervomit and alleged angst about healthcare reform in America – beyond the pissed-off placard slogans and “should Obama be killed?” poll – comes an opportunity to try a little reasoned discourse on a healthcare matter we can all wrap our hankies around. Since most of the government, medical and insurance language surrounding healthcare is impenetrable to even well-read folks, a discussion about the flu, fever and getting poked with a syringe is comforting, in an ass-backwards kind of way. So let’s talk about it.

I’ll withhold my two cents on it until the end (or you can just skip to it here), while we haul this out into the sunlight and take a look at it.

While we all agree that coming into the plant or office (or anywhere you’re breathing my air, buddy) and spreading communicable, bad mojo  is irresponsible, we also all do it. Notwithstanding our temptation to take a day off and watch another Mackenzie Phillips story on tabloid TV, all of us go to work sick. Maybe it’s because of some deadline, maybe it’s because we think, “Oh, it’s just the sniffles,” or maybe we used up our sick days being really sick from too many Hendrick’s martinis – but we’ve all done it. The more thoughtful of us say: “Don’t come too close – *sniffle, hack* – I think I’m dying and I don’t want you to get it,” but there we are, scaring the crap out of our co-workers, sneezing into monitor screens and using the company bathroom.

So let’s stipulate that it’s the responsible thing. Get a flu shot, so you can avoid using sick days, infecting your co-workers (ever notice the asshole who you’d love to imagine hacking his or her vocal chords out never gets sick – only your friends?), and do your part to keep the company ship churning on its merry way.

Fine. On the other side of the gurney, consider: what about all the other irresponsible health choices folks make that affect the company? Like the aforementioned martinis, going out to smoke in 12-degree weather, and eating heaven-knows-what-and-not-exercising until you wheeze on the way to the vending machine? You’re making my health insurance more expensive, mon frere, and the first ittybitty cold virus that flits by is going to kick the daylights out of you. We have a presentation tomorrow! I may have the flu, but I run 15 miles a week, eat tree bark, and I’m healthy as a Budweiser Clysdale the other 51 weeks a year.

From a practical standpoint, there’s also this. Flu shots are a crapshoot. That’s because they only inoculate you against about three strains of flu, which they guess at months in advance. It’s even money that they miss, because flu viruses like to stay alive, just like you. So they mutate faster than teenagers.

And now, the last, obvious point. This healthcare company is pretty much forcing its folks to get pricked.

Boo. It ain’t right. Even if your religion has an injunction against modern medicine, who wants to walk around wearing a mask all day? You think coming back from the bathroom with toilet paper stuck on your heel is embarrassing, try looking like you’re from the cast of Lawrence of Arabia all day. If Bill’s retro Vargas girl calendar is making this a hostile work environment, making Susan wear her religion on her face is even worse. Hey, would you like a really big cross to go with that?

This is America, baby. We invented Vick’s Vapo-Rub, acetaminophen, and sour mash whisky. We work. We don’t tell people what to do with their bodies. We take our sniffles with the sweet. Good to see you, Lenny. Stay the hell away from me and go back to work. Love ya, here’s some Kleenex.

photo credit: Iván Santiesteban

You know that adrenaline rush and the pure focus that comes with the last few hours in the office before a vacation, when suddenly you know exactly what the most important next steps are and you don’t waste time on the piddly stuff? You know how you always wonder, why can’t I be like this when I’m not rushing out the door?

Well, at least I do. And I bet some of you do too. Now a study suggests that it may be exactly because we’re getting away that we do a better job at planning, organizing, and communicating. Or, as the WSJ.com article about the study says:

Working together to make sure each consultant got some time off forced teams to communicate better, share more personal information and forge closer relationships. They also had to do a better job at planning ahead and streamlining work, which in some cases resulted in improved client service, based on interviews with clients.

It’s not totally shocking, is it? There’s a good deal of common sense in the idea (and it’s definitely an area we’ve talked about before) but somehow still many of us don’t allow ourselves the time off we’d need to ensure that we actually experience this benefit.

It’s Thursday morning. What can you do between now and Friday afternoon to ensure that you can relax and enjoy your weekend? Ready? Set? Go.

photo credit: kainet

How would you like a three-day weekend every week? That’s the upshot of the four-day work week where each work day consists of 10 hours instead of the 8 in a 5-day work week.

We’ve talked about the Working 4 Utah initiative before, where the state has instituted this 4-day schedule across some 70% of its workforce, but now that the program has been in place for a full year, GOOD has circled back to review and is reporting several key benefits, of which our favorite, predictably enough, is this:

4: Happier, healthier workforce

Lori Wadsworth, a researcher at Brigham Young University, surveyed Utah workers who’ve transitioned to the 4 x 10 schedule and found that 82 percent prefer it. And, according to Wadsworth, “Utah employees actually show decreased health complaints, less stress, and fewer sick days.” And while absenteeism has dropped, productivity and quality of service have improved—customer complaints, for example, at state agencies like the DMV are down. Early evidence seems to quell the initial fears that 10-hour workdays would “burn out” employees.

Of course, on the entrepreneurial side of our audience, where there’s more and more push for the  four-hour work week (popularized by Timothy Ferris in his book of the same name), the idea of working four tens probably has little appeal. But if you’re in a traditional office environment, as we know many of our readers are, we’re curious to know if you’d be interested in this arrangement.

Would you prefer a schedule of four ten-hour work days each week to the standard five eight-hour days? Let us know why or why not in the comments.

photo credit: Jacob Bøtter

Recently I stumbled across an older article at HBR.org about cultural transformation within a company through fun and laughter:

We’re a company—maybe like yours—where having fun was long viewed with suspicion. Sure, a lot of start-ups and Silicon Valley companies have wild and crazy cultures, with pillow fights around the foosball table the order of the day. But ours is a traditional, Midwestern manufacturing company, one that didn’t even allow employees to have coffee at their desks until 1989. Although we pride ourselves on our technological innovation, we make industrial signs and other identification products, not PalmPilots or rainbow-colored iMacs. We are an old-line company that has always taken business very seriously—again, maybe like yours.

So perhaps it comes as a surprise that, for the past seven years, we’ve made fun an integral part of the culture at Brady Corporation—not simply as an end in itself but for serious business reasons. We’ve found that getting people to loosen up and enjoy themselves has numerous benefits. It can break down jealously guarded turf boundaries. It can foster an esprit de corps throughout the company and greater camaraderie on teams. It can start the conversations that spark innovation and increase the likelihood that unpleasant tasks will be accomplished. It can help convey important corporate messages to employees in memorable ways. It can relieve stress—and, heaven knows, we can all benefit from that.

And it made me want to ask you, our readers about your work environment: is your company environment fun? Do you laugh a lot at work? Is fun encouraged, or are you sneaking laughs with coworkers behind the bosses’ backs?

photo credit: torres21

For some of us, creativity just spews from our core, touching everything we do, whether we design a newsletter, write a song or paint a bedroom. For others of us, it may come a bit more slowly as we wait for inspiration to strike or a skill to develop.

Whether you work alone, at a small shop or for a big corporation, you’ll often have the chance to collaborate with other people. And, whether that collaboration takes the form of a strategic partnership, a volunteer committee or a special project team, there is an art to making sure that the group inspires action and change, rather than prohibits it.

Sure, group think and stagnation can set in. Or, the collective wisdom and inspiration of a particular assortment of people can raise the level of everyone’s participation and performance.

For example, I recently participated in Nashville’s 48 Hour Film Project. A group of friends and I had just two full days to write, create, shoot, edit and produce a 7-minute film that used a required character name, prop and line of dialog.

Like many things, inertia was key. Things started slowly, but in no time (once the pizza and beer arrived on Friday night), ideas were shared, improved upon and agreed on. Each team member made the others better and come Sunday afternoon, we had a product that we were proud of – and one that was a lot of fun to make.

There’s a difference between making a movie on the weekend and working on something for the boss. But, we’re wondering this weekend: Do you think teams inspire or kill creativity?

Tell us in the comments, or even weigh in on the following questions:

• How do you keep your team creative?
• Are teams better when participation is voluntary, as opposed to required?
• How do you decide when teams are worth using in the creative process?
• When is it time for a team to call it quits?

photo credit: itchys

You know all about the “rules” of the business world; but I bet you also know how a judicious breaking of those rules can create trajectories of productivity and employee morale.

One rule I’ve frequently observed was “no drinking in the office.” Sure, there is always plenty of leaving work to lift a cold one with a colleague or client, but it was always an understood thing that it was for off-site.

I had a wonderful boss once who found a great way to revise and update this rule with good results. Our office was in a restored old house with a deck opening onto a wide green field of a side yard. Because it was a former residence, the office also had a full kitchen.

At the end of an especially stressful day, or upon completion of a big client project — or heck, when the moon was full on a Tuesday — she would stock the kitchen with wine and call everyone to the porch at 4:59 p.m. Wine flowed, as did conversation.

Perhaps not surprisingly, in our down time and with slightly lowered inhibitions, we would come up with some of our best ideas. One did not have to drink, but everyone was expected to come to the porch and laugh and talk and be creative and relaxed. It was genius.

I miss those days. I’m not sure if they are still doing it or not. It may have been the personalities working there at the time that made it magic, but I like to think a good broken rule like this can work wonders at any time and with any group.

Tell us about your most productive, rule-breaking work experience!

photo credit: Refracted Momentsâ„¢

Since I’m sick today but sitting at my home office desk struggling to think clearly enough to write, I’ve got presenteeism on my mind. Presenteeism — the notion of showing up for work when you probably should be absent — has been an increasingly hot topic in workplace research. A Harvard Business Review article called Presenteeism: At Work — But Out of It by Paul Hemp addressses the workplace productivity costs associated with employees who show up but don’t perform. From the article’s description:

By some estimates, the phenomenon costs U.S. companies over $150 billion a year–much more than absenteeism does.

And yet, presenteeism has always been a loaded concept to me. Certainly it’s best that people stay home when they have illnesses that may be contagious. Everyone hates the office cold or flu. But it’s also been my experience that there’s a certain cowboy attitude amongst top managers (male or female) when they get sick. It’s as if they must prove that they don’t need time off to recover from illness like normal humans do. And that sends a very clear message to the middle managers who are striving for promotion into top management ranks, which of course sends a message to their direct reports and so on. It’s not difficult to see where corporate culture reinforces this idea that it’s better to show up than rest up.

So what’s the solution, then? I can’t say I know, but it should probably start at the top, with leaders setting the example of taking the time they need when they’re sick to be away from the office (hey, they’re doing wonderful things with the internet these days; you don’t have to be onsite all the time). Perhaps the rest will follow over time.

Easier said than done, I’m sure — as I sit here in my pajamas and bathrobe pondering climbing back into bed. And you know what? For the good of corporate culture, I think I’ll do it.

What are your thoughts on presenteeism? How have you seen it addressed? Tell us in the comments.

At Brazen Careerist, Peter Epstein addresses this in the context of Gen Y’s preferences:

She talked briefly about what the company does and what she’s gonna do there, then she went into a 10 min rant about how employees are allowed to wear casual clothes to work, how they go to happy hour regularly, and how they have a lax scheduled time of work. It was as if the company didn’t matter, the position didn’t matter, but the only thing that did matter was the environment that she would be working in.

It’s understandable that Brazen Careerist would look at it from a youth angle, but I suspect this goes a bit beyond generations and into what motivates people to work. Even more to the point, it would seem that, for those who are driven to take part in meaningful work, a relaxed culture might lend itself better to a sense of passion and commitment.

On the other hand, some of my most idealistic work has been done in environments that were more traditional in nature, partly because it’s there that I really felt a strong need for it.

What’s your take? How important is company culture to you?

photo credit: Alex Barth

We’ve written before about alternative workplaces and arrangements like coworking, and we’ve discussed working conditions like the 4-day work weeks in Utah, but we haven’t touched on what makes a workplace really stand out as exceptional.

Is it access to freebies like soda and snacks? Is it plenty of opportunity for downtime with games and TV? Is it having coworkers whose company you enjoy? Is it something else more elusive?

Well, if you have an opinion, Lifehacker is asking its readers what constitutes a good place to work:

“It may seem silly to think about what makes a workplace great in an economy in which many of us just wish we had a workplace to go to, but we are curious: In your experience, what makes a workplace great? Let’s hear your thoughts in the comments.”

Their inspiration for asking the question comes from the results of a Australian survey in which Google Australia ranked as the #1 place to work:

“After its outstandingly successful parent company topped a 100 Best Places To Work survey conducted by the US magazine Fortune, Google Australia has claimed the No.1 spot in a similar Australian poll.”

Definitely go and leave a comment with Lifehacker, but then come back and tell us, too. What’s been the formula for a great workplace, in your experience?