Yesterday, we received an email question that raises a topic I hadn’t really thought about:
I recently graduated college with my Bachelor’s in Communications and was offered an internship at a local PR firm. Two months into my four month internship, they offered me a job, which I graciously accepted. I am very happy here! My colleagues are wonderful people with diverse personal and professional backgrounds.
Around the time that they hired me full time, they also hired a new Assistant Account Manager. She and I have become very close. She was telling me about her last job and how it was louder than it is here. We are apparently a very quiet firm. A few of my colleagues have recently expressed an interest in being a more interactive office.
We have a suggestion box in the kitchen where you can make requests anonymously. We were talking about suggesting that we liven things up a bit. How should we go about making this suggestion?
A noisy vs. a quiet office is definitely a personal preference. The first internship I had in New York City was in an office with four other people who were silent. You could literally hear a pin drop. This was hard for me because personally I enjoy chatting and socializing with others throughout the day.
The agency I currently work at I would say is in the middle. You hear people talking and a ton of things going on, but that doesn’t mean that the office is ‘œloud’. It’s relatively quiet within your cube but it’s not dead silent where everyone stares at you if you ask a question.
You should definitely go about suggesting specific things that will liven up the office. This could include:
- Mini brainstorms throughout the day
- Open conversations to bounce new ideas off each other
- Play music! We did this in my old office
- Snack breaks
- Bring pets to work- I heard this happens
What other ideas can you come up with to liven up the office? Do you prefer a noisy or quiet workplace?
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Comments
It definitely is a matter of preference, but I think the best work and ideas come from an open, collaborative environment. Also, people are generally social creatures, and I’d say I’m happiest in an environment where chit-chat is acceptable and encouraged. However, all that being said, I think it’s a great idea to have a flex office or two that you can book and go to make private calls, conference calls, concentrate on editing/writing when you really need to focus. We had this as a supplement to our open cubes at my old job, and it worked really well.
I enjoyed this article very much. Even though a quiet enviornment is often needed for good brainstorming it can also be ackward when its soo quiet you can hear your neighbor chew and swallow her food away. The agency I intern at is pretty small however, you would think since it is smaller everyone would be friendlier which is often not the case.
This happened to me! I was part of a very lively, very close-knit team at work, and when we lost funding, I was moved to another team…who were so quiet and so serious that I thought I wasn’t going to be able to last. (My personality is a mix of Fran from The Nanny and Kelly from The Office. Awesome, I know.)
I started out bringing a snack to our weekly meeting, where they would ignore it until the meeting was over. Everyone would take a baked good and go back to their desk. So, I instituted a team snack rotation, and people started to get more into it. I also insisted on doing some team bonding activities (like playing movies in the conference room during Friday’s lunch hour), and just kept pushing it until people started to respond.
The new team still isn’t up to where I’m used to, but I think genuine enthusiasm really goes a long way. Also, having solid ideas and a care about other peoples’ lives. I’ll sometimes bake cookies and bring them to all the team members and then sit and ask them about their projects/days/weekends/families/whatever. It’s amazing how much people open up when you get them to talk about themselves!
Ahh, I wrote a book. But, this issue just hit close to home.