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Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
In that circumstance, a periodic board game day might be better.
Its social, but much more relevant, and gets new ideas into the team, or gives them ways to try shit out together.
Plus, professional game designers are the one group of people some if the denser and more experimental board games would be a team building rather than team sundering exercise for.
There's not a straightforward answer to this because it's far too context dependent, and even a CEO at a small company won't have absolute control over the culture of that company; I've seen company culture turn from amazing to toxic after losing only a couple key employees (good managers are gold dust).
To draw a comparison: staff pizza parties are so widely scoffed at not because people hate pizza, but because, when set against a backdrop of employees not actually being respected or valued, it makes them feel worse. Good will can't be bought, whether by pizza, extra days off, or field trips. Some of those things can help, but much more important is the cumulative culture that's built at the company.
Most decisions like discretionarily giving someone time off to look after family are going to be made at a level lower than CEO. Sometimes great policy ideas arise from a great manager using their discretion to make a sensible call, and then going "maybe we could put [idea] in place for future".
If it's paid we can go to Chuck-E-Cheese for all I care
An envelope with cash!
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.
This. My social battery drains like a sieve and I find work related social events especially draining. Give me a bonus and day off instead and I'll be singing your praises.
The goal of these evens are to make co workers socialize with each other. So that way when they're working on things they know that a week ago at the event bob said he dealt with X, I can ask him what he did. Or John studied Y in school, he could probably help me with this. If you just send everyone home then you're building an anti social environment where people just exist around each other, and because they're busy with work don't take the time to get socialize and get comfortable around the people they're working with.
Co-workers are like family
You can choose your friends but you can't choose your family
I'd rather spend as much time away from my co-workers so that in the long run, I can appreciate the times I have to be around them at work because I have to .... not because I want to.
I do the same with my family (as much as I love them) ... if I spend too much time with them, eventually, I'll find reasons to not want to be around them and our relationship suffers ... the less time I spend with them, the more I appreciate them and the more they appreciate me.
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.
If I had to attend events off the clock, my union president would eat nails and spit rust.
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.
This is a good point— it should be during work hours, and yeah maybe doing a poll would make sure it’s something of interest to everybody would be a good thing— thanks!
I recommend including a "no thanks" style option in the poll. Avoid implying they have to choose from options they aren't interested in.
I like how you think.
I’d suggest some gaming museum or tech fair.
I think a trip to an arcade with a wide range of different vintage games.
Is it a paid or during work hours?
"If you gave a person a choice at the beginning of their job between a day off or an office field trip"
This future CEO is absolutely not interested in paying people for this.
I realize it changes based on scale, but the Director for my group has periodic get-togethers for our ~19 person IT team. It's only for a few hours, takes place at stereotypical "corporate event" places (think Dave & Busters, etc), is during work hours, and food is provided. It's "requested attendance", meaning if a remote employee can't make it or someone has something going on, it's no biggie. There's some minor talk like company news/discussion, who got promoted, etc but mostly it's just intended as a thank you to the entire team for our hard work. He even gives out small gifts to us, though that's certainly not necessary! It's also 100% paid for hourly associates. My company is far from perfect, but that's the way to do it.
I think it's actually insane to require people to go to an unpaid "recreational" event on their own time. I don't even think it's okay to politely ask, with no penalty!
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.
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 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.
I just want to do my work, then live my life. Those two things have nothing in common, and I want to keep them separated. If my colleagues want to meet, I ain't gonna complain. But please accept that I'm grumpy and socially awkward and I love my dogs way more than my colleagues.
My socialization at work is mostly the time clock because we all have a common interest of leaving ASAP. That is the only interest we share.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sounds like fraud but the kind I can get behind.
Creative interpretation of rules ;D
Absolute Mad lad
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.
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.
Just give them the day off FFS. Especially if that's what they are asking for.
I would want to accommodate all kinds of people and situations.
Due to personality and consequential social anxiety, I'm more sensitive than most people. If there's open communication and accommodation to all parties, and a shared goal, it should be possible to find a good way.
Activities may be for team-building, to visit places for reference, or other activities that may have more or less direct usefulness for projects.
If it's an on-work-hour activity, I don't think there's a need for alternative compensation. Either you join or do your normal work.
Off-hour work has a more informal tone and should have more distance from concrete projects.
work is work: if your going to give me free time then let me go home."
This is it right here. I would much rather spend my time doing what I want than whatever it is you imagine I would enjoy. Because mostly what I would enjoy is - no offense - time away from you/coworkers/anyone else I don't choose to spend my time with. If you make it a work thing it feels compulsory and that will make it harder to enjoy no matter what it is. A better option would be to give everyone the day off and say 'By the way a few of us are going to ', that makes it optional and I can accept or not as I see fit. Although some people will still resent driving into work if you were just going to (effectively) tell them to go home again.
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.
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.
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.
-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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
