I’ve heard people say, (paraphrased) “work is work: if your going to give me free time then let me go home.”.
On the other side, an impromptu surprise that you get to be relieved of your responsibilities for the day and go do something fun seems like it would be beneficial for people’s mental health and creativity.
Yet, one can imagine if someone had a sick child at home, or some other concern that infinitely more important than work that it might be a bit torturous to go out and try to have fun with your coworkers when you would rather, and rightly so, want to be home attending to the more important thing.
Although I would want to be the type of leader that I person would feel comfortable just telling that they needed to go home if such a matter of importance were to arise.
If you gave a person a choice at the beginning of their job between a day off or an office field trip, most would probably just choose an extra day off.
Yet, much like buying a gift card for someone you know would never spend money on themselves perhaps it could be a more memorable and helpful experience for them to go out and have fun with no responsibilities.
Yet this may simply be an expression of the lonely ness and desire for human connection that I personally feel, due the current circumstances of semi isolation (just me and my partner) in a new and strange city.
I am not a CEO, I just graduated and I’m working to get my first job. One day I would like to lead people, and perhaps this, per my lack of knowledge, seems a bit farcical, but I wanted to gather some opinions, thanks!
I would want my employees to be happy, so I’d be lenient any time they needed to take off. Bonus them well. Give them paid vacations
I would be interested! But I think the best way to implement this would be to give people the power to choose. Maybe, for whatever reason, they want to work that day? Or maybe they’d rather go home and get some good zzzs in? If the goal is cultivating a healthy work environment, then I think letting people take the day to recharge in whatever way suits them best would be ideal. Having a fun activity or excursion available to join in on only enhances this imo
The best managers can find out exactly what motivates their people, and lean into that to make things fun and rewarding (or as much as possible, being work related).
The tricky part is that this won’t be the same for everyone, so a one-size-fits-all field trip won’t necessarily be received the same by all the employees. Maybe the group dynamic is such that everyone has a good time, and this may work out well. Maybe some members resent being compelled to spend relaxed time with people they don’t want to see that way.
In a perfect world, everybody could get their own individualized rewards and recognition, based on what they value most. The only way to get there is to put in the work to know the employees as people.
This I think it’s the crux of it, you def want it to be something everyone is interested it which can be hard. So I guess I probably won’t know until I get to know the heterogeneity of my hypothetical team and their personalities and interests
Definitely do it on the clock. No one likes unpaid mandatory work fun. If there is driving involved, make sure you pay for mileage or give a gas card to the drivers. Don’t surprise people with an outing or give them too much notice; I find a week is the right amouny of time. Lastly, if it’s just for fun, make it optional.
-Must be paid
-Get employee input on desires and liked events before planning anything.
-Make sure deadlines are accounted for and adjusted a day or two later to compensate for a lost days work. getting a paid event but knowing in the back of your head that it’s going to make you fall behind on what you had laid out for the day is the absolute worst.
[off topic]
Back in the day, Mad Magazine publisher Bill Gaines loved to take his writers and artists on vacations. Because he was both extravagant and cheap he was always looking for a way to have his cake and eat it too.
He asked his accountant if they could visit Haiti and take it as a business expense. After all, they did dozens of stories about voo-doo and zombies, so it would be educational. The accountant told him no. The only way they could go to Haiti was if it was to make a sale.
Turns out, there was exactly one American living in Haiti who had a subscription to Mad magazine. And one morning, that fellow woke up to find the entire staff of Mad on his lawn, begging him to renew his subscription.
lol that’s gotta be a good story for the guy
Back when tax fraud was classy!
Sounds like fraud but the kind I can get behind.
Absolute Mad lad
Good luck with your job search! I hope you land something good
Thank you! Have an interview in a week so studying
Do it on the clock, during a work day. Make sure you plan for nothing to get done that day. Make it optional: go to the field trip (expenses paid), or take a free day of PTO. Either way they get paid and, because you planned for it in the development schedule, don’t have to worry about potentially having to play catch up because of the day off later. That way it gives them the choice to go do something fun on the company’s dime or stay at home and recharge. Another thing to note: don’t limit yourself to game-related stuff like video game museums.
Go to an aquarium.
Go to a zoo.
Go to a national park if there’s one nearby.
Go to a natural science museum.
The artistic side of game dev takes inspiration from a wide variety of sources, not just other forms of media. Tbh, the most boring field trip I can think of would be to go to a movie theater or video game museum. I want to see something new and take inspiration from that.
Honestly love these ideas because I get the sense that as an adult (it’s stupid) but some people would be afraid to go to these places alone
Job before last, HR actually arranged some fun shit. Being a cynical bastard, and having always hated HR, I was disinclined to go. But fuck me, it was always fun. Most events were during work hours, but the first one I attended was not. Takes some skill to put something fun together like that.
At a previous job we had outings occasionally, the last one was axe throwing and we had our bonuses handed out there.
I think going to a location related to the project would be a great idea. I’d encourage note/ pictures. Then, I’d discuss those observations as a group, and how they could be implemented in the game.
If you’re talking about r and r, throw them a day off.
I can’t imagine anybody would prefer work-sanctioned “fun” to the same amount of PTO and the money the activity would have cost.
No.
Fuck off with this shit.
Having to work for a living is more than monstrous enough without asshats trying to make it “fun”.
If you want to reward your employees give them better pay, and paid time off, and let them know you value their work (no bonuses or similar shit, though, that’ll cause even more stress than the horror of having to waste most of your life working already does; if you want to give them more money, give them a raise, no fucking strings attached; or even better, pay them the same in total but reduce their work hours, so they bring the same amount home at the end of the month without having to work as much).
As long as it’s on the clock, everything is paid for, there’s food and drinks, not on a Friday, it’s an activity that everyone can partake in, and not mandatory, I’m ok to join some extracurricular activities from time to time.
Agreed with all this, just don’t keep me past my scheduled finishing time for the day.
For me it depended entirely on how happy I was in the rest of my job.
If I’m, say, being death-marched, or requirements are written in sand, or senior management refuses to ever make a decision in writing, or my manager looks over my shoulder when I’m typing, or you just told me we’re going 100% AI for QA, I don’t want your fucking playdate.
If the team is happy, offsites can be a fun way to get some bonding in.
If the team is unhappy, they are there for their check and that is it, they are not paid to pretend to like you at an off-site. Take the money you would use for the party and hand it out as cash in an envelope to everybody individually.
