Investing in Bonds
When Jennifer Zhang sent out an e-mail soliciting members for a ballroom dance club at Hewlett-Packard Co. in Palo Alto two years ago, she expected only a few die-hards to show up. An amateur dancer herself, and new software support specialist at the company, she thought the club would allow her to meet peers who share her fondness for fox trotting.
But Zhang never anticipated the tidal wave of responses she received. During the next few days, almost 800 messages flooded her mailbox, many of them from engineers and computer people who, she says, would normally be too shy to take dance lessons outside of work.
“HP people feel comfortable around each other,” Zhang said. “People make friends [in the club], and some have even formed groups to go out dancing on a Saturday night.”
This chummy “my company, my friends” sentiment, distasteful as it may seem to some, has spread like wildfire in recent years, fueled primarily by employees working longer hours. Managers have been quick to embrace the trend, saying it helps attract and retain key employees. But it also has put a new burden on them to become “caretakers,” providing fun for beleaguered employees who feel emotionally and socially deprived.
About 18% of HP’s Silicon Valley employees have joined one of its 13 corporate-sponsored clubs and five leagues, everything from bowling to a company choir.
An even greater percentage of Internal & External Communication’s twentysomething employees in Marina del Rey hang out together in the evenings. On Tuesdays when it’s warm, employees of the Web-based training firm in-line skate on the beach, other evenings they share take-out from an Indian or Vietnamese restaurant or go on group outings to movies or company softball games.
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In fact, some of IEC’s employees joke that if it weren’t for their co-workers, their social lives would suffer.
“I hang out with people from work a lot,” said Adam Pawley, a 26-year-old technical support representative. “It’s more of a little family than just coming to work and leaving.”
For Pawley and others who work at high-tech firms, the distinction between work and personal life is perhaps the most blurry. Office environments are casual, workers are young and hours can be incredibly long--especially before a product ships.
“If they don’t have a social relationship there, there are few hours left to have it,” said Ed Lawler, director of the Center for Effective Organizations at USC. That means companies that want to hold onto valuable employees are having to orchestrate outings, organize clubs and come up with diversions to give employees the social interaction they crave.
It’s the “Gee, look how much fun we have here” pitch, Lawler said.
And the social gatherings are more important to today’s “gold-collar” high-tech workers than traditional perks such as a large office or reserved parking space.
“The more virtual the world is becoming, the greater the need for people to interact,” agrees Peter Miscovich, a workplace productivity expert for Arthur Andersen in New York.
Producers at Los Angeles-based computer game maker DreamWorks Interactive are given “morale budgets” to keep the people on their software teams happy and productive during the intensive stretches before a new title is launched. These funds cover everything from afternoon “playing hooky” trips to the candy store and the movies, visits to a nearby entertainment center or even beer for a Friday afternoon game of charades.
Without these indulgences and the freedom to decorate their work area as wildly as they might decorate their bedroom, many programmers and artists would find it hard to work the necessary 60 to 80 hours weekly to meet game deadlines, and morale would plummet, managers say.
“We’re not spoiled here,” said Jeff Nuzzi, a DreamWorks marketing manager. “It’s not unusual to see the parking lot full at 8 p.m. on a Friday night and cars here on weekends.”
In addition to the planned company outings and catered lunches, team members often hang out together after work, playing computer games or watching television at someone’s house, said 30-year-old Stephen Ratter, one of the company’s graphic artists. After spending so much time together, two members of the team even married.
“The company should probably start its own dating service,” Nuzzi said laughingly.
Those kinds of services might not be too far off. Analysts say relaxed work rules, more casual dress at work and the evolution of project teams are bringing people closer together than ever before.
“You work hard with a certain group of people,” said Elna Hubbel, project manager at IEC. “You start talking about work, and the next thing you know, it turns personal and you start sharing different parts of your life.”
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But what many workers think is payback for a job well-done, experts say, is really thinly disguised corporate business.
IEC’s weekend ski trip to Mammoth Mountain in February sandwiched company meetings between slope time and happy hour at its rented condos. Although many of the 80 workers who went on the partially subsidized trip say they looked forward to it and enjoyed it when they were there, they acknowledge they had very little choice whether to attend the meetings. Those who didn’t make the trip had to come into the company’s headquarters the same Saturday for similar meetings.
Even HP’s ballroom dance club members say its Thursday night outings at the Starlight Ballroom aren’t entirely free from workplace politics. Some use it as an opportunity to network with people in units they are interested in.
Still, most employees say they don’t feel used by this intermingling of company agenda and entertainment, and they don’t fear a backlash if they don’t participate in one of the company’s seasonal parties or outings.
“It’s important to me to have a sense of community and loyalty to a company. If they are willing to make sacrifices for me, why not put in my own time on weekends to help the company out,” Pawley said.
That’s what most managers hope their employees say.
“A lot of this bonding or socialization is in the context of how do we get these people to believe in the company, to develop good leadership and a sense of purpose,” Miscovich said.
