Office Entertainment: Pros and Cons

Recently, there was an interesting study on Habré on the topic of an ideal workplace for an IT specialist, and many respondents spoke about their desire to do more sports and actively relax in the office. We decided to look at this question from different angles.

It's no secret that at the moment in many countries, including in Russia, the job market in IT is dictated by applicants. It is very difficult to find a good specialist, therefore, to attract employees, employers not only pay them good wages, but also put a lot of effort into creating a comfortable office environment. There are, however, leaders who adhere to a “serious” approach to work and who do not approve of massage and game rooms in the office.
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So who is right after all, those who believe that work is the place where a person first receives money, and therefore should be focused on the result and not be distracted by toys or adherents to improve the office environment, who believe that without PlayStation, tabletop football and soda machine, productive work impossible?

Consider the pros and cons. Let's start with the arguments of opponents of a large number of corporate "buns".

Vs

First of all, let's talk about active ways to rest in the office. Indeed, the work of any specialist, one way or another connected with IT, can hardly be called mobile, so the periodic desire to stretch your legs is understandable. There are a lot of options for sports spending right in the office lately: there are table tennis tables, horizontal bars, punch bags and punching bags, and games like table hockey and soccer, which also have movement.

Often, especially in the case of a company with a small office, it is quite difficult to place a sports corner so that the noise that is inevitable when “beating” pears or tournaments in table football and ping-pong does not interfere with the work of other employees. Of course, the main sources of noise are loud conversations or phone calls from colleagues on openspace, but if there is a boxing bag behind the wall of your office, which in turn beats up 10 strong programmers, it will not be easy to concentrate on your work.

Another narrow point, especially in large male teams, is the lack of changing rooms and showers. Indeed, not every office where a pear and a horizontal bar hangs, at the same time there are shower cabins and changing rooms. And if there is, then we will be honest, not every employee uses all this good after playing sports. With all the ensuing odors consequences.

Video games, though devoid of these shortcomings, have their drawbacks, the main of which can be called the fact that they delay. Playing for 30-40 minutes, and then continuing to work, it is devilishly difficult for the advertising agencies and other representatives of the “creative class” not to speak.

If we take into account all of the above, it becomes clear that taking care of the staff in such a way that the working process does not hurt and the atmosphere of friendship and positive reigned in the office is quite difficult. Maybe it’s not to bother at all in this respect and it will be enough for a real professional to simply moderately comfortable office, which is convenient to reach, tea / coffee and everything that is really necessary for work?

This position is adhered to by Denis Kortunov (co-founder of the Turbomilk company), which he said not so long ago in an interview with the Hopes & Fears publication (by the way, we recommend reading - a very strong thing):

We still tried to kiss each employee in the ass, so that, God forbid, he was not bored, so no one would ever say a harsh word to him. Now I understand that you need to take a person and fire him if he is boiling.

Behind

At the same time, we all know that it is impossible to work without interruptions - in this case productivity falls below the baseboard and there is no need to talk about any positive results in this situation.

Therefore, the leaders of many companies pay a lot of attention to organizing the rest of their employees. One of the most popular ways to get away from work is games, so the offices of thousands of companies around the world began to appear as individual sports equipment or games, as well as entire game rooms in which dozens of people can hang at the same time. At the same time, to organize something like this you do not need to be Google or Microsoft and have similar resources. This is vividly confirmed by the example of small and medium-sized companies like Motley Fool, whose game room features consoles, board games, and even real slot machines (especially popular with Robotron ). It looks like this ( more photos of the office):



Motley Fool HR Director Lee Burbage, in a conversation with PCWorld, said that the company does not have any special policies that limit the time that employees can spend in the game room.

People need a break. If you sit at a table and work all day, then productivity decreases - this is proven by research.

According to Burbage, the game room affects productivity only positively, and problems with the fact that someone might prefer to work on the machines, helps to avoid "a culture of trust and individual responsibility." Better, perhaps, you will not tell.

Like we have

The situation with the organization of a comfortable office space and what opportunities for recreation, without departing from the workplace in the UIDG, tells the company's executive director Ksenia Gerasimova:

One of the specific features of the work of our guys is a large amount of information that employees need to digest every day - the same usability testing implies communication with respondents, and these sessions per working day can be 4 and 6 and 8. So the opportunity to switch is simply necessary , and it's not about the cooler with cookies in the kitchen. In our office, there are passive rest areas where you can sit with a laptop, just hang on nothing without thinking or lie down at all and sleep for half an hour (we have several employees for whom lunchtime sleep is just necessary for good work).

For a more energetic holiday there is a table for table football, table hockey is a small punching bag. Yes, this is associated with a certain noise - some girls didn’t like it when guys played table hockey. The problem was gracefully solved by a juicer donated to the female part of the team on March 8, which is also quite noisy. Now, when table hockey competitions begin, those who interfere with this can easily go and make an orange juice. But seriously, everything here is solved by common sense and, so to speak, a social contract - if you ask to keep yourself quiet, no one will play, of course.

Conclusion

As usual, the truth is somewhere in the middle - and absolutely no rest is possible, but an excessive focus on entertainment can hurt. And what about your company? How do you relax at work?