Our favorite uncomfortable office moment

It can be a bit depressing when the news headlines are lead by the story of another large investment bank filing chapter 11. Rather than focus on the negative I thought we’d have some fun by looking back at one of Steelcase Store’s marketing campaigns from November/December 2007.

The Uncomfortable Office Moments campaign highlighted how Steelcase is bringing comfort back to the workplace with its innovative, ergonomic, and just plain comfy office chairs. Playing off the concept of comfort we asked visitors to our site to share their most uncomfortable office moment by building an office pictograph. The response was overwhelming as we received 600+ submissions over the course of a month. If you browse the gallery you’ll see that some people spent some serious time working on these.

There is a voting function on the site that let our visitors rate the pictos. Unfortunately there wasn’t a weighting or a minimum vote requirement (meaning one 5 star rated picto was sorted ahead of a picto with one 4 star and forty-nine 5 star ratings). For that reason our team decided to make it even more unscientific by presenting our Steelcase Store Staff Top 10 Pictos. Most of ours fit the theme of the contest and could be classified as “uncomfortable office moments” but some of them are just plain creative and fun.

The drawing for the free Leap chair is over but if you think you’re creative you can still create your own uncomfortable office moment and then try and rate it into the top page of the gallery. We’re a little slower on the approval process now that the campaign is over but we’ll still typically approve and publish your picto within a day or two of submission.

See our top picto above … and numbers 2 – 10 (in no particular order) below:

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Telecommuting - Good Career Move?

The study has some dichotomous findings. My paraphrased summary is this – Companies are beginning to support the idea of telecommuting. However, workers are leery, thinking that if the boss doesn’t SEE them working that the boss will believe the worker is just off goofing around. 64% of people also believe it may lead to their being passed over for a promotion

So there are a couple sides to this, right? First off, there is the side of the manger. Here is an article from the Chicago Tribune. It is clear that the manager in this story is struggling because he can’t “see” his employees so he doesn’t necessarily know what they are doing. I have some insight to offer at this point. Just because people are in the office does NOT mean they are working on work. They are cooing to their two year olds, filling out there office pools, and watching March Madness streaming live. [note: I have no personal experience with the aforementioned – I have friends at other companies who tell me these things]. Look, the truth is people who can work independently and have been producing good work aren’t all of a sudden going going to telecommute and turn lazy.

Next, there is the side of the worker. If you work from home, there is always that pull to the pantry. Mmmmmm leftovers. Imagine how hard it would be to pass that up every time you walk by. Seriously, though, people who work at home have a hard time ‘turning it off.’ They tend to work more hours. There is also a concern that you won’t be caught up with the social scene at work (I have not been part of the social scene since 3rd grade kickball). The key if you are going to work from home is to be comfortable. Click here for my suggestions.

So my solution to this is to work at Panera. I love Panera. You can sit there for hours and work, all for the cost of a cup of coffee (my tip – soda’s are free refills). I throw my headphones, plug into Pandora and since there are no interruptions (see my brilliant post on interruptions), I can really cook. Ballpark, I would say I am 3x more productive when I am at Panera vs. in the office.

Additional survey findings include:
• 80 percent of respondents believe telecommuting is a trend that will continue to grow over the next five years.
• 32 percent of respondents telecommute.
• 46 percent of respondents’ companies allow them to telecommute.
• 62 percent of respondents believe companies prefer them in the office to prevent a lack of communication; 41 percent believe it is because of the cost of the technology involved.
• 61 percent of telecommuters do so to balance their family and work life, and 37 percent do so to reduce their carbon footprint

So how has this telecommuting worked out for me…….well, I’m the VP of this blog, so I’m on my way.

Have your next meeting on the "Conference Bike"

So I came across this site a few years ago but have had it tucked in my brain that I wanted to share it with people. The site shows some pictures of some really fun and cool workspaces, according to the blogger, Alexander Kjerulf. Kjerulf’s job is to make people happy at work.

It has some company on there called Google, which apparently attracts creative and fun people. Hmmm, odd that I wouldn’t have heard of this Google.

So the site also has some very interesting ‘cool workspaces.’ For example, at Red Bull in London, they have slides going between the floors. I did a little checking on another site called Designverb to verify this (because being logical, I was wondering how people get up). It turns out that not only do they have slides for going between floors, but they also have ping-pong nets on their conference tables. Can you imagine that instead of having to make small talk while waiting for Jim, you start up a ping-pong match. Pretty brilliant.

The lead picture on this post is also listed as a cool workspace by Kjerulf and is called a “conference bike.” Again, I dug into the merits of this because I was a little skeptic at first. So I went to conferencebike.com (yes, seriously) and found that people are actually using this thing. Personally, I am all for this because I find that when I go to meetings, most people are staring at their laptops most of the time. The Conference Bike would eliminate that issue and would force everyone to pay attention. Also, you could do something interesting like only the steerer of the conference bike is allowed to talk, which eliminates people talking over one another. I have all kinds of ideas, just ask……

Kjerulf has a lot of other interesting links on his site, too……“Business maxims that have to go,”“Why motivation by pizza doesn’t work…” Worthwhile to check out.

Table created by reusing magazines

Have you ever wondered what to do with all those magazines laying around? What else can you do with them other than add them to your collection of recyclables?

Well, thanks to this handy article from Re-Nest, you can now reuse them to create a table. And, better yet, it does not require any glue or scissors and takes 10 minutes or less. Perfect!

So, not only are you reusing your magazines but you are creating an eye-appealing conversation starter. Get really creative and stack the mag tables, maybe create a shelf…When you get sick of your nifty creation, you can recycle them.

Don’t think it works? Try it and let us know how it turns out.