Time for a pint – in the office

21 Apr

At PEER 1 Hosting Friday night at 4pm is “beer o’clock”, time to pour some wine or open a few bottles of beer. We do it to promote a team work and a positive office environment. Some times it’s not 4pm and it’s not a Friday but the bar fridge is always full, just in case! We also have plenty of chilled champagne on hands as well as we are prone to some impromptu celebrations.

Its great to now read that new research now show working whilst mildly intoxicated is a boost to creative problem solving. Here is the recent article form Inc.com by Jessica Stillman

http://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/go-ahead-have-a-beer-at-the-office.html

One benefit of being a business owner and your own boss is that you set the rules and can feel free to break them if you find a good business case to do so. What kind of rules can you safely chuck aside? How about the one that says drinking on the job is always a bad idea.

If you operate heavy machinery or wash windows 50 stories up, stop reading now, but for those office-bound folks whose jobs entail being creative at work, there’s new research that suggests an occassional drink or two might do you and your business some good. A study by a team led by University of Illinois cognitive psychologist Andrew Jarosz recently looked into the effects of mild intoxication on creative problem solving, publishing the results inConsciousness and Cognition.

To test the anecdotal observation that creativity and moderate amounts of alcohol often go together, Jarosz’s team split a group of 40 male study participants into two groups, one of which abstained from alcohol and one of which drank a quantity of vodka with the equivalent alcohol of two pints of beer. Both groups then performed a standard test of insightful thinking called the Remote Associates Test, which asks subjects to find a link between three words. The BPS Research Digest summarizes the results:

The key finding of the new research is that the intoxicated participants solved more items on the Remote Associates Test compared with the control participants (they solved 58% of 15 items on average vs. 42% average success achieved by controls), and they tended to solve the items more quickly (11.54 seconds per item vs. 15.24 seconds). Moreover, the intoxicated participants tended to rate their experience of problem solving as more insightful, like an Aha! moment, and less analytic.

Of course, there are serious caveats here, including the obvious key word, “moderate.” No one is suggesting getting sloshed is good for much of anything other than causing embarrassment and a headache, nor should your office drinking reach Don Draper levels of consistency. Study co-author Jenny Wiley stressed this point to BPS: “We tested what happens when people are tipsy—not when people drank to extreme. There could be no argument from these findings that drinking excessively would have the same effects.”

And the context of the drinking matters as much as the quantity. Tasks that involve fine motor skills, dangerous activities, or focused concentration on routine tasks, are clearly not going to benefit from you having a couple of beers. But if you’re at the office puzzling over a problem late in the afternoon one day and have the impulse to enjoy a drink to get the ideas flowing, this research suggests that you should feel free to go ahead.

Cheers!

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top 10 ways to motivate employees

18 Jul
List of orders, decorations, and medals of the...

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Top tips for getting the most out of your team startups.co.uk 15th July 2011

Staff morale is more difficult to measure than sales or margins, but is equally important. Unhappy employees are likely to be unproductive employees so the mental wellbeing and happiness of your staff is crucial for your business’ success. Not addressing this now could be expensive for your company later – either through an inefficient workforce or high staff turnover. However, fostering job satisfaction doesn’t have to cost the earth. Startups spoke to a panel of entrepreneurs to find out their top tips for motivating staff.

1) Treat everyone as an individual

Respect that different employees have different needs. “Every incentive doesn’t necessarily motivate every individual,” says Andrew Backhouse, national contract director at Timothy James, a 2010 winner of The Sunday Times 100 Best SMEs to work for. Get to know each member of staff and show you understand them by being flexible to their personal situations. For example, if an employee is in a long distance relationship, you may want to let them leave early on Friday afternoons. As a result, they’ll be more inclined to put extra hours in during the week to keep on top of their workload.

2) Praise good work and offer feedback

“We believe in public praise. When someone does a good job, we congratulate them in front of everyone,” says Bradley Placks, co-founder of MyResourcer. Regular feedback and encouragement makes employees feel positive – and that will be invested back in to your business. It is important to be genuine, so find something that has impressed you, even if it is as simple as an employee’s presentation, and let them know that they are doing it well. Following employee demand, some companies have introduced six monthly appraisals. This offers a good opportunity to encourage staff, clarify any issues, and re-establish with the employee their expectations of the company and your expectations of them.

3) Lead by example

A productive team needs a productive leader. As the top dog you need to embody the company’s brand yourself and be true to its ethics. However equally important is that employees see you putting in as much energy as them – if not more. “If you always slope off early on a Friday, these small messages have a huge impact on your staff, undermining any formal messages of motivation that you are trying to get across,” says Adrian Moorhouse, managing director of Lane4. “A good leader needs to lead by example, by role-modelling the behaviours that are expected of staff. Be excited by new challenges, show real enthusiasm for projects and demonstrate your love of the job. Positivity breeds positivity.”

4) Encourage people to take a break

Whilst an employee who doesn’t optimise their annual leave might seem like a good deal for your business, everyone needs to take a break in order to operate at their full potential. Approach people who haven’t used their holiday entitlement and encourage them to get away. This will also show employees that you care about their wellbeing. Similarly, some organisations allow employees a few days a year to engage with the community. Michelle Fuller and Chris Russell, co-founders of eDigitalResearch, run a Personal Development Week for their team. “Every employee gets the opportunity to expand their skill set or get stuck in at charity events, to help with their personal development.”

5) Offer benefits that boost morale (but don’t break the bank)

Sometimes it is the little things that count. While large organisations may be able to offer corporate holidays in sunny climes, a gesture as simple as having fruit delivered to the office each week can show employees that you care. Tailor benefits to your workforce. You could bring a masseuse in once a month to give each employee a 10 minute boost, organise a team activity afternoon or a barbeque. “Events don’t have to be expensive, just well-planned and thought out,” says Damian Milkins, CEO of Control Circle.

Where possible, invite staff to bring their partners as well. “Having a good relationship with people’s partners really helps,” says Simon Corbett, founder of Jargon PR. “All those times when people stay late, instead of getting home to an earful, they get a much more sympathetic response.”

6) Give ownership to your team

While new employees need clear instructions and guidance, once they are on the right track, let go of the reins. Leave them to be led by their own initiative and congratulate them for doing so. “Allow them to work well and without much input. It’s the little things that give ownership to teams and allow them to feel trusted and motivated,” says Dominic Monkhouse, managing director of PEER 1 Hosting and a former consultant for The Sunday Times 100 Best Companies to work for. As well as inspiring self-confidence, this hands-off approach may allow employees to navigate your firm from a new perspective, potentially exposing inefficiencies, untapped opportunities and prospective innovations.

7) Run a ‘no blame’ culture

“When something goes wrong don’t blame the person; analyse the reasons and change whatever actually caused the issue in the first place – learn and improve,” says John Sollars, founder of Stinkyink.com. If you are always pointing the finger, employees will feel tense, which can restrict initiative and innovation. Even if an employee has committed a serious offence, take it as an opportunity to review your recruitment process. It may be that you are not asking the right questions at interview.

8) Communication is key

By keeping open lines of communication with employees and listening to their ideas, they will feel more connected to the progression of the business and thus more motivated to contribute to its future. As a director, it is easy to get distracted by your own objectives but in the present economic climate it is more important than ever that staff are kept informed about changes in circumstances – including how new legislation could affect the company. Henry Braithwaite, Operations Director of Market Makers, recommends twice weekly meetings “when the whole company comes together and shares the successes of the week and what is going on in the company as a whole” as well as an “open door policy” to the manager’s office. Simply showing employees that they are being listened to can be enough to boost morale.

9) Be flexible

Whilst all companies need employment agreements in place to set standards, be prepared to be flexible to reasonable requests for additional leave. Respect that your employees have personal lives to balance with their work commitments and don’t put additional pressure on them when, for example, they have to pick up their children, take care of a sick relative or leave early for a washing machine to be delivered. To avoid completely forfeiting their labour, assist employees with flexible working by helping them to receive their work e-mails on their smartphone or home computer. If you want to be particularly generous, IT company acs365 recommends offering staff additional leave on their birthday. “As part of your commitment to acknowledging the importance of work-life balance, a paid day off is the best present you can provide to staff. This type of initiative helps to create a positive work culture, improving and uplifting staff morale,” a spokesperson says.

10) Get the little things right

Sometimes getting the little things right is more influential than an occasional grand gesture. It is easy to underestimate the importance of basic essentials for a positive working environment. These may include well-maintained toilets, basic kitchen facilities and filtered tap water – conveniences that don’t cost the earth. “It is often possible to quickly fix many of the day-to-day gripes that bother your employees. Listen to what your employees are saying about their workplace and concentrate on these first,” says Laetitia Monereau, head of HR at Simply Business. “You need not spend a vast sum of money improving your staff morale.”

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The Hidden Secrets of finding great employees

17 Mar

Carly Chynoweth Published: 13 March 2011 The Sunday Times

Few interviewers who ask job candidates to paint them a picture of their abilities and experience mean it literally. Dominic Monkhouse, Peer 1 Hosting’s managing director, is the exception.

Once candidates have made it through the initial 30-minute telephone interview, they are invited to the web hosting firm’s office and handed a piece of paper and some coloured pencils. “I sit them down and say ‘you have 10 minutes to draw a picture of something that inspires you’.”Some interviews can take an unusual turn – to office golf

He doesn’t expect anyone to produce a Van Gogh — he can only recall one person who has shown the least bit of artistic talent — but asking candidates to talk about what they drew gives a much better sense of who they are than simply asking them questions about their CV, he said. Even a simple refusal, as happened with one senior candidate, is helpful: “If he thought that was daft, he would never have fitted in.”

For the next step the candidate has to accompany Monkhouse and a couple of his team members to the “golf course”, where he can get a sense of how competitive they are and whether they can cope under pressure as their chips skid across the office carpet and into another room.

He also uses more formal interviews and psychometric testing, but candidates who do not get along well with the team are not offered jobs, no matter how well they test.

Even traditional interviews may have more to them than meets the eye, according to Alex Linley, founding director of Capp, the organisational psychologists. He is called in when employers want someone to analyse not only what people say but how they say it. Whether the candidate knows who Linley is and what he is doing depends on the client.

“The key focus is to enable [employers] to identify people’s engagement and capabilities in what they say,” he said. “We get a good read for their natural strengths and preferences in how they answer questions.

“If people naturally have strength in an area, they typically would be able to respond faster and with a more graphic answer, and they would be more energetic and engaged when they gave it. By contrast, if it wasn’t a natural strength it might take them longer to find that answer. In terms of body language things such as leaning forward, more use of hand gestures and movement can be indicators of confidence and knowledge.”

Some candidates, hearing that the interviewer is looking for energy, say, will try to look enthusiastic and energetic on every answer, but it is obvious when this happens. “We would not expect anyone to demonstrate energy across all the questions we asked,” he said.

Hazel Carter, the founder of Carter Corson, an organisational psychology business, said she was once told to show balls by climbing on to a table in a hotel lobby and singing a nursery rhyme. She refused. This went down well, as the interviewer saw her willingness to stand up to him as a good indicator of ballsiness.

There are three key problems with this type of gimmick: it may so irritate the candidate that he or she decides not to accept the job (Carter did take it); it may not be any help in finding the right person; and, finally, it could break the law.

“There are quite strict laws on what is seen as a fair assessment and once you deviate from that you could be on quite sticky ground,” she said. “Unless you can show you know what you want to mea- sure, how you are measuring it and that it is relevant to the job, you could be in trouble.”

This does not mean all creative approaches to assessment are out. For example, Carter works with a big company that takes candidates out to dinner the evening before they undergo an intensive assessment. While there, they are plied with wine to see how they maintain their business presence in social situations.

On one occasion a candidate, not realising that the dinner was part of the test, got drunk and made off-colour remarks. At the assessment the next morning, he was told to go home.

While unusual, this sort of approach could be fair as long as the recruiter could show that the job required people to be able to entertain clients without behaving inappropriately, Carter said.

Pitfalls of the bizarre

There are a number of pitfalls to consider when using unorthodox interview techniques, said Lisa Mayhew at Berwin Leighton Paisner, the law firm. “Unusual assessment arrangements shouldn’t detract from the importance of basing decisions about whether to recruit somebody for a business role solely on job-related criteria and not, for example, on grounds of race, age, sex, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, religion or nationality.” Avoid remarks about a candidate’s appearance and steer clear of “clumsy” humour, which can offend people, and ensure you make objective notes about candidates — remember that they are entitled to see them. Unfairly treated candidates can bring discrimination complaints against individuals as well companies, Mayhew said.

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Five ways to keep your staff happy that work

12 Jan

Real Business 12/01/2010

on-strike-sign1-thumb-200x120Tube workers have threatened to strike on the day of the royal wedding. Here’s how to make sure your employees stay off the picket lines in 2011.

Strikes and unrest are fuelling our national psyche of late, which spells trouble for employers. Poor pay is the justification for bin men leaving rubbish on the streets, Heinz workers canning it for the day and Newsquest Media Group failing to make the news. Of course, with the 2011 economic forecast looking challenging, businesses should not become complacent when it comes to their employees but, in my experience, employee happiness does not start and end with pay.
There are two schools of thought as to how to analyse striking staff. The first is that if your employees are willing to strike, they are not worth keeping. The second is to ask yourself if your duty as an employer is falling short – would you really want to work for you?

Solving unrest, griping staff or malcontent needs strong leadership but it doesn’t necessarily require heaps of time or cash; most employees aren’t just in it for the money. So here are five pearls of accumulated wisdom on the simple ways to ensure your employees stay off the picket lines in 2011.

1. Make sure you are the right company for your employees. It is all very well recruiting individuals you consider to be perfect, but the feeling must be mutual. If your company is not right for them, your staff will remain dissatisfied and unproductive. If you nail your recruitment strategy from the outset, you can attract employees who see a future with your company, rather than wage slaves whose only concern is pay day. I offer all new starters £1,000 to leave after two weeks if they don’t think we’re the right company for them. It saves a lot of wasted time and investment on both sides in the long run.

2. Give your workforce a voice. Encouraging your employees to contribute their opinions and ideas to the business not only unveils brilliant ideas but ensures the “team” actually feels like one. You could give your staff a quota to suggest two business improvements per month. If the cost is less than £100, let them go ahead and make improvements for the greater good. It will never cost any more than this in goodwill or settlements.

3. Make the workplace a positive space. Offices are the voluntary equivalent of a prison cell – sterile, cramped and claustrophobic environments in close quarters with people you may or may not enjoy sharing personal space with, never mind a conversation. Making your workspace more aesthetically agreeable improves employee productivity and efficiency. I’m not suggesting you bulk-buy the beanbags immediately, but employee involvement in improving the workplace is a small gesture that gets bigger returns. Our offices now have a miniature golf course and Nintendo Wii when it’s time for the staff to take five, and turnover at our place is definitely up and not down.

4. Small but effective perks. Pay rises are not always the best incentive for employees. Regular and thoughtful perks can be really effective. “Free Food” day on the last day of the month is quick and easy, beer o’clock on a Friday always welcomes the weekend in and free use of the mooring outside our office goes down well too.

5. When it’s not right, it’s just not right. Employers (not employees) are the cardinal sinners of failing to address the reality of working relationships. So introduce a weekly happy check – ask your employees to rate their happiness on a scale from one to three, and then speak to people if they are unhappy. It prevents problems escalating and lets your workforce know you care about their well-being. However, people are all different and sometimes, despite everyone’s best intentions, it just isn’t going to work. Employers convince themselves it might get better; trust me, it won’t. This year, businesses need to have an honest look at their teams – are they full of people you’d go to the pub with for a pint? If not, the fit isn’t right and these staff aren’t adding value in the right way to your customers. Take courage and confront the situation to do both sides a favour.

Making your company a desirable place to work is not rocket science, but it is how you keep staff happy and motivated. Simple changes can transform uninspired and bored employees into happy and productive ones. At the end of the day, your employees are not robots; work needs to be enjoyable. Find the key to this and your staff will never prefer to strike again, even without a pay rise.

Dominic Monkhouse is managing director of PEER 1 Hosting

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i will give you blood and sweat and tears if you tell me why

25 Oct

emotion vs logic – why we buy

BMW or Skoda? French Connection or M&S? Chrome or IE?

These are not simply matters to be answered by reviewing the price, features, popularity and then making a rational decision. These decisions same something about who we are, even if we don’t know it.

A man test-drives an Audi, a BMW and a Mercedes Benz. He then buys the Merc. He was always going to buy the Merc, the other two test drives only allowed him to find issues with the other cars so he can engage in a spot of post-hoc rationalisation. I pointed that out to the man but he denied it and insisted he is a rationalist. Bollox, he is the archetypal Merc driver and has been ever since I have known him. I think he was miffed I pointed out how much time he wasted “pretending” to look at other makes. The BRAND created by Mercedes just fits with who he is.

a tale of two chickens

Marketing professor Raj Raghunathan  of the McCombs School of Business points to his research study that shows comparative features are important, but mostly as justification after a buyer makes a decision based on emotional response.

the case of the attractive chicken and the unattractive chicken

unattractive chickenatractive chickenIn one phase of their study, Raghunathan showed participants two photos. One was a nice looking, plump chicken. The other was a chicken that looked thin and sickly. Participants were told that the plump chicken was a natural chicken, and the thin chicken was genetically engineered.

The researchers informed half of the participants that natural chickens were healthy but less tasty, and genetically engineered chickens were tasty, but less healthy. The other half were told the opposite.

Overwhelmingly, sets of participants expressed a preference for the nice plump chicken, but their justifications were different. The first group claimed it was because they valued health above taste, and the second group said it was because taste was more important. Neither group seemed to justify their choice based on how they felt about the chicken’s looks. They felt compelled to justify their emotional choices with non-emotional reasons, to the point that the two groups found completely opposite ways to justify the same decision.

post-hoc rationalisation in marketing, politics, religion and life in general

Ragunathan said that the researchers tested the same hypothesis using political candidates. Participants were asked to rate the effectiveness of certain work styles displayed by two politicians. Not surprisingly, Republicans tended to value the work style used by the Republican politician, and Democrats valued the work style used by the Democrat. Like the chicken example, different groups were told opposite work styles for each candidate, but each group made their decision based on their pre-conceived political preference, and then justified their decision by whatever trait they had been told “their politician” used.

“This is called post-hoc rationalization,” said Ragunathan, “and it is found in every aspect of our life, whenever we made decisions. We are ruled by our emotions first, and then we build justifications for our response. You can see this happening in hiring decisions, dating, you name it.”

So next time you think you made a rational choice just remember you didn’t.

thanks to

Dave Wenger

http://blogs.mccombs.utexas.edu/mccombs-today/2010/04/do-you-make-buying-decisions-based-on-logic-or-emotion-a-tale-of-two-chickens/

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Madness or freedom at Netflix

4 Oct

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Champion people

26 Aug

Some of the companies I work with are a constant source of inspiration to me. Champion Communications the PR agency we use here at PEER 1 Hosting in the UK is up there at the top of the list. A young company with only 18 months under their belts but delivering quality advice to a fast growing client base. It’s been great to watch their rapid development. I liked the team there at the 1st meeting and have had many a laugh working with them since. They are authentic, passionate and fun. Why would you work with a firm who weren’t? Life is too short!

The video was shot at a recent party they held to say thank you to the clients who had picked them and love them. These guys and girls at Champion sum up the ethos of service obsession.

(results from PR? yes in the 1st quarter they had us topping the list of hosting firms in the UK by share of voice)

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