Ice cream, Hawaiian T-shirts motivate workers?
It’s summer – time to throw on flip-flops, hit the links, or take the kids camping. What about work, though? Most working people will spend more time in the office than at the golf course this summer.
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Realizing the challenge of keeping employees’ minds focused on business instead of the beach, some local companies go the extra mile to motivate their work force during the summer. Yet employers also contend with reduced staff, as many workers use more vacation time during the sunny season.
“Once summer hits, you just try to keep people motivated,” said Mary Sadlier, executive vice president at Advertising Ventures, in Providence.
The advertising firm got an early start this year. Helping employees fit into their bathing suits before beach season, the firm began in January to offer employees incentives to get in shape. Employees who choose to participate, Sadlier said, weigh in every Friday at work. They get $5 for every pound lost but pay that amount for every pound gained.
The firm, it seems, strives to make the office a cool place to work – in more ways than one. They have Hawaiian T-shirt days, awarding the employee with the best shirt a pair of movie tickets. Managers sometimes dip into the petty-cash fund to buy workers Del’s Lemonade.
Recently, the firm had a contest for who could create the best ice cream sundae. And the office’s central air conditioning helps employees beat the summer heat.
Longer summer vacations have become more popular in recent years, often leaving less regular staff in the office. The American Management Association last year conducted a survey in which 71 percent of respondents planned to take more than five days off during the summer. That figure represented a sizable increase in the number of workers who planned to use that number of vacation days during the summer of 2003, according to the AMA, a New York-based management training group.
With workers away from the office on vacation, employers find themselves filling the work force gaps in a variety of ways. Advertising Ventures works on accounts and projects in teams, leaving ample staff when individuals take vacations, Sadlier said. In other instances, she noted, the firm hires freelance writers and designers to complete assignments in a full-time staff member’s absence.
“Though often in the summer,” Sadlier said, “you know people are going to be out so you can (plan ahead) to keep things running smoothly.”
To keep things running smoothly in the summer at Webster Bank, it uses more “floating” employees who are called to different branches when staff members are missing due to out-of-office training or vacations, said Brenda D. Farrell, the bank’s assistant vice president of public affairs.
Meanwhile, the bank plans to motivate employees this summer with Hawaiian T-shirt days, raffles and ice cream socials, Farrell said.
Complicating staffing matters at Webster this summer, the bank is transitioning to an updated computer system. The conversion has taken many workers out of the office in recent weeks to train on the new system.
“It’s a very busy summer here at Webster,” Farrell said in an interview last month. “We’re planning to hold an ice cream social for people working on the conversion.”
