I Done This Blog

Humor in the Workplace: What’s Funny or Not?

June 12, 2017 by Kathryn Vandervalk Leave a Comment

Sending great gifs to your co-workers gives you more than just a laugh.

Humor in the workplace benefits:

Productivity. Humor replenishes your employees and makes them more productive.
Group Cohesion. Humor can increase a sense of belonging.
Stress Management. Humor is known for its “cathartic” emotional benefits that release stress.

Creating an office culture of humor can help you cultivate all these benefits. Keep in mind that humor can also go sideways fairly quickly, too. The wrong type of funny can lead to serious HR problems—there’s a thin line between goofy and unprofessional or between delightful and inappropriate.

Humor in the Workplace

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You want your company to be a fun place to work, but you also want to make sure that it’s fun for everyone.

Here’s our guide on how to improve office humor that makes everyone feel included and unified.

4 Subtle Signs Your Employee is Looking for a New Job

June 20, 2017 by Sasha Rezvina Leave a Comment

You come into work, thinking it’s going to be just another day in the office. You have a friendly chat about your weekend with the office manager while pouring yourself a hot cup of coffee. You make your way over to your desk, and just as you start looking through your email, a nervous employee pops their head in and asks for a minute of your time.

At this point, the next sentence comes as no surprise: “I’m giving my two-weeks notice.”

employee-retention

Job-hopping has become the norm. While fifty years ago, people held positions for ten or more years, today, workers only average about four years at each job. And the stigma associated with switching jobs has also decreased. Employees that spent less than a few years at a job used to be considered flighty—now they’re considered ambitious and ahead of the curve.

The odds are stacked against you, but all hope isn’t lost when it comes to employee retention.

While some clues will tip you off right away—such as too many “doctor’s” appointments, or employees coming in dressed suspiciously well—most of the time, the signs that your employees are job-hunting are considerably more discreet. If you learn how to pick up on these subtle cues, you can nip this problem in the bud and retain some of your most valuable employees.

Here’s how to spot when employees are looking for a new job (and what you can do about it).

3 Stages of Successful Team Bonding

May 8, 2017 by Jonathan Figliolino Leave a Comment

Your team won’t stay together just because they work together. If you don’t give your team a chance to bond, you’ll spend more time handling workplace drama and politics instead of getting work done. You can use team bonding activities to encourage cooperation outside of the office and strengthen workplace bonds.

Team building helps everyone get to know and trust their fellow coworkers, but you don’t build trust overnight. Your team goes through gradual stages as they grow from a collection of strangers to efficient collaborators. Psychologist Bruce Tuckman’s team building model describes three stages — forming, norming, and performing—to show how teams can become more united over time.

The Five Questions That Might Bug You the Most as a Manager

May 2, 2017 by Jason Evanish Leave a Comment

“I need to give my notice. I’ve found another job I’ll be starting soon.”

Stunned, my coworker sat not sure what to say. Julia was one of his best team members, and he thought she was valued and appreciated. Yet, here she was moving on to another role somewhere else.

What happened? Unfortunately, what was satisfying for someone a year or two ago, may not be so today. Fresh, exciting challenges from their early days on the job can grow to become stale, and boring once mastered.

Does Working in Pajamas Affect Productivity?

April 21, 2017 by Jackie Cohen Leave a Comment

Work remotely and people might ask you if you report for duty in your pajamas every day.

People who don’t work remotely think that those of us who do sleep in and then enjoy a few hours of gleeful twirling in an office chair while wearing boxer shorts.

Not Mutually Exclusive: Small, Secure and Productive

April 17, 2017 by Kathryn Vandervalk Leave a Comment

Don't let security worries interfere with your productivity use RingCaptcha

Time is in short supply at every startup. Everyone wears at least four different hats, and you need every second you can get to make sure things get done.

You have to be as productive as possible—which is why it’s tempting for your business to neglect security concerns, or make them an afterthought. But at the same time, all your hard work can go away in an instant if you let yourself be vulnerable to a cyber threat.

This is the phenomenon known as the security paradox: you need time to create work worth protecting, but you also need time to protect that work. But in the growing software-as-a-service (SaaS) economy, security and productivity don’t have to be a tradeoff. You don’t need to hire an IT team or develop complicated code to keep your data safe—external services can do it for you.

How to Focus on the Magic Even When Scaling Up

April 10, 2017 by Jackie Cohen Leave a Comment

Onfleet Product Design and Strategy Director Ivan Tolmachev (right) discusses a prototype with Vice President of Sales Andrew Travis.

Teams of all sizes struggle with their processes at some point in their lifetime. If you’re a startup, one of the your advantages is how quickly you can move in a space where the big boys take a while. But what happens when your team is in transition mode and needs to keep scaling up as quickly as it did in the beginning? And how do you this in a design capacity?

Your Employees Lie About Their Motivations — So What’s a Manager to Do?

April 3, 2017 by Jonathan Figliolino Leave a Comment

Employees often say that the best way to motivate them is with a raise. But that’s not really the truth. Only 20% of employers in North America say that a pay raise drives higher levels of performance. Most of your employees are effectively lying if they say that more money will make them a better worker.

We’re all guilty of hiding what really motivates us. But our internal desires are often very simple to identify.

We all have basic human needs that get to the root of what truly motivates us. The Self-Determination Theory states that people have three basic needs—autonomy, relatedness, and competence.

a-manager-must-instill-these

Autonomy is the freedom for employees to choose what to work on and when to do it. Relatedness is the need to have close relationships with team members. Competence is the desire to master challenging projects.

As a manager, if you can meet these universal needs, your employees will grow and thrive within your company. We’ll discuss these needs to show how you can empower your team to succeed.

The State of Human Resources (Before I Done This)

March 27, 2017 by Jackie Cohen Leave a Comment

Human resources needs a swift kick in the butt. I say this based on experience — I’ve done a lot of back-office work while running TypeFrag, Carbonmade and other companies. I’ve set up and managed payroll, benefits, and on-boarding of employees more often than I care to remember. It’s always a painful process that you put off to the last minute because you just don’t want to deal with it.

Remote employees feel closer when you can offer them perks.

The Science of Stress Management: Your Brain on Cortisol

March 20, 2017 by Jonathan Figliolino Leave a Comment

You’re swamped with a huge project when your boss suddenly asks you to complete another urgent assignment due tomorrow. Your heart’s beating a mile a minute and you’re wondering how you’re going to get this all done. But somehow you’re going to try to make it work.

Too much stress will overwhelm you, but too little stress leaves you bored and unmotivated. The right amount of stress motivates you to succeed instead of making you crack under pressure.

Your ability to thrive or choke under pressure is ultimately based on the Yerkes-Dodson Law: Moderate stress up to a certain point can actually improve your performance. But beyond that point, your performance suffers.

Stress management is actually built into your brain’s chemistry. Here’s the science behind your body’s stress levels so you can maximize your productivity.

Humor in the Workplace: What’s Funny or Not?

4 Subtle Signs Your Employee is Looking for a New Job

3 Stages of Successful Team Bonding

The Five Questions That Might Bug You the Most as a Manager

Does Working in Pajamas Affect Productivity?

Not Mutually Exclusive: Small, Secure and Productive

How to Focus on the Magic Even When Scaling Up

Your Employees Lie About Their Motivations — So What’s a Manager to Do?

The State of Human Resources (Before I Done This)

The Science of Stress Management: Your Brain on Cortisol

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