Kim's Blog

Company Culture: White Space Day

Posted on July 31, 2009 at 11:19 AM

The past couple of weeks I’ve discussed company culture and the power it has to positively build upon your company. Previously I focused on employee morale, constructed through the simplicity of paper awards and Pop Rocks candy. Coming up, we’ll hold White Space Day.

Introduced to White Space Day at a conference years ago, I was intrigued by the concept. It’s difficult to coordinate a weekend (or longer) retreat through an entire company around deadlines and home life. Yet, creative people—like the talented ones we employ at Shakespeare Squared—need a chance to decompress and let the creative juices flow, free of formatting and deadlines and constraints. The happy medium came in the form of White Space Day.

White Space Day is a time for employees to reflect individually outside the office. From walks in the park to museum visits, employees are encouraged to use the time away from the office to think about themselves, their goals and how they’re being achieved. Vulnerable to the unplugged nature of day, employees are discouraged to run errands or participate in normal activities. Instead, employees use the time to be alone and to relish in personal reflection. We hold no requirements about White Space Day—no written reports about what they did or what they learned—instead, through the sheer openness of white space, we ask our employees to do whatever they want. At the next staff meeting following White Space Day, we open the floor for people to share what they did or learned.

While it sounds like a vacation, our employees take this day very seriously. From insightful journaling to life-changing career switches, we’ve seen it all as employees come back rejuvenated and more passionate about their ventures. At Shakespeare Squared we’re the detail-oriented type, those constantly attached to our work and waiting to help in any which way we can. Needless to say, the unusual freedom took some getting used to.

After a couple years though, our employees have learned to detach and have helped our new staff do the same. We now hold White Space Day twice a year, and every time is an exciting, invigorating and introspective journey.

Check back next week to learn about a few of our more casual company culture builders!

Alfred P. Sloan Award 2009

Posted on July 22, 2009 at 10:55 AM

I swear—it couldn’t have happened better if I had planned it: right as I’m in the middle of writing a series on company culture and how much it helps my company, I am pleased to announce that Shakespeare Squared has just been named the 2009 winner of the Alfred P. Sloan Award for Business Excellence in Workplace Flexibility—for the second year in a row!

Recognized for our successful workplace environment and employee benefits, we are thrilled to see our company culture efforts go noticed and awarded.

Like I’ve touched upon in my past posts (and will touch upon in upcoming posts), the slipping economy is no excuse for a lacking effort at creating and preserving company culture. In fact, with cost efficient and effective strategies, improving your company culture may be just the thing to help ease the tension that the economy has created. Even in these tough times, we have tried hard to retain our company culture through creative benefits—and it has surely paid off!

Take some time to read through some of the aspects that make up our award-winning company culture in previous posts, and stay tuned next week—when I really tell you about one of our most unusual company culture items.

Company Culture: “You Rock” Awards

Posted on July 15, 2009 at 09:56 AM

Like I discussed in last week’s introduction to company culture, one of the most important ways to keep your company afloat during these troubling economic times is to maintain the internal strength of your employees. Without motivated employees, it can be easy to lose your company focus, and as a result, your product can suffer. You might be thinking, Our finances are already tight, and you want us to spend more on unnecessary benefits?

This is a good time to remember, benefits aren’t unnecessary. They are integral in keeping morale high and your staff motivated. That’s necessary for a great company, a great company environment and a great product. I have found certain big benefits don’t have to mean big money.  We’ve found here at Shakespeare Squared, it’s the littlest efforts that go the longest of ways.

I have never been one to believe in monetary benefits alone. How would I compete with large publishers here in Chicago on salary? As we hire in, we are looking for people who understand the benefit of working in a creative small business. Within that creativity, we begin to find ways to honor our employees.

Each week in our staff meetings, our Human Resources Director hands out “You Rock” awards. As staff-nominated awards, employees receive a certificate award with an attached Pop Rocks candy, rewarding them for their company efforts. From going above and beyond during projects to helping out around the office in unexpected ways, our You Rock awards are the perfect way to show support and appreciation for our staff—from one employee to another. These awards are nominated by employee’s peers in the company. In fact, we remind people that giving kudos is the best way to say “thank you” for helping out in various ways.

Though the award isn’t the biggest of all prizes, You Rock awards become more about company morale and how we make our employees feel.. With a candy benefit, our You Rocks are an easy and affordable way to boost employee morale and make the company aware of special individual efforts that may sometimes go unnoticed. It’s a great tangible reminder for our employees that their efforts are appreciated and noticed, beyond verbal kudos that can sometimes be forgotten. It also gives our employees a chance to share their praise of one another to the entire company about something a manager may not even know about.

The results of these awards are unmistakable. Walking around our office, you can see cubicles decorated with You Rock awards, as our employees are proud to bear their company appreciation. One of our clients even liked the idea so much that they currently implement the You Rock awards at their workplace. The benefits truly do exceed the costs. Now it’s your turn—show your employees how much they rock!

Check back next week for one of our most unusual company culture builders.

Company Culture

Posted on July 8, 2009 at 12:46 PM

With the economy looming over our heads, it seems that more than ever businesses need to facilitate a healthy company culture to create a successful workplace. Even before this economic fiasco began, we at Shakespeare Squared kept our company culture as a primary concern. I felt, having worked in many companies, that a vibrant culture was a top priority. If I didn’t like where I worked, why was I running this business?  And it now seems that it just may have helped to stabilize us during these rocky economic months.

In fact, you may never know walking through the halls of Shakespeare Squared that we’re in a recession. From the children running through the halls to the shareable break room that seems to grow food, we make sure to keep our spirits high and put our employees’ happiness high up on our priority list—right behind your quality content, of course.

Studies show it’s important to remember that the quality of your product depends solely on the quality of your employees. Many managers and business owners see this as a waste of time, but from my experience, I’d say it’s pretty clear that the quality of your employees has a lot to do with the culture you generate within your company. I can vouch for it firsthand that happy employees lead to quality work, which in the end gives us happy customers. Though the happy employee part goes overlooked too many a time, I’ve found from my own experiences that this is exactly where you need to start.

In a time when all businesses are looking to cut costs, fostering a great company culture doesn’t rely solely on expensive monetary benefits. In the coming weeks I look forward to giving you an inside look as to how Shakespeare Squared integrates an employee-focused company culture, which helps give our clients what they deserve. With a team spirit in mind, we continue to exceed client expectations by making sure our culture of care represents itself in the work we do. Check back next week for one of my company’s favorite culture-building items that only costs the price of a piece of candy!

Curing The Summer Blues

Posted on July 1, 2009 at 08:13 AM

The past couple of weeks have been a whirlwind at my house. Summer is truly upon us here in Chicago—and with it has come the heat and the anxious “Mom, I’m bored!

One of my favorite things about summer is the opportunity for so many mini hands-on learning experiences with my three kids. Summer tends to be a time when I can take the time to count with them and have them help me divide up snacks (“If we have fifteen baby carrot sticks, how many do each of you get to munch on?”) and sort produce when we get home from the grocery store (“Let’s put the fruits in this bowl and the veggies in another.”). The best thing you can do for your kids this summer is to keep their minds active.

Take a walk with your kids, and let them take turns with a digital camera—invite them to take pictures of the prettiest leaf they can find, or the cloud that looks the most like an animal. Have them take silly pictures of each other. Giving them a chance to see summer from another view (or lens) can be a great memory-maker.

Another great memory-making opportunity is visiting a farm that lets you pick your own fruit (check out www.pickyourown.org to find a farm close to you). This gives kids some insight into how fruit grows, which fruits are ripe to pick, and reminds them that the grocery store doesn’t make everything in it. This can be an easy learning experience for kids, and one that’s fairly inexpensive—plus your kids may be more apt to try some new fruits they’ve picked themselves!

What are some of your favorite summer learning opportunities? Share them below, so we can share them with our kids!

Tick Tock Technology

Posted on June 24, 2009 at 03:51 PM

Do you know what time it is? It is time to see educational publishers move toward technology and how they embrace it. With NECC happening next week, I’m excited to see what new technology trends will emerge for the classroom.

Many publishers, big and small, have understood the need for digital content.  Considering the situation of the country right now, it makes sense now more than ever to hop on the technology train.

I think we’ll see smaller groups making the leap to digital publishing more quickly. Smaller publishing groups, and outside groups such as Google and Apple, will make the change, perhaps pushing their larger publishing counterparts into it. At Shakespeare Squared, we’ve proposed digital materials and supplements many times as an alternative to our clients who wanted a bid for print materials. Larger publishers tread slowly making sure digital rights and contracts cover the ambiguous “sharing” that can occur digitally.

The shift to technology will also be difficult on the receiving end as well. Teachers may have a difficult time implementing all of the new technology bought by their districts. But if they don’t, they will be left behind. Their kids already know technology—they are the digital natives.

But which technology should we focus on first? One of the biggest technologies that is underutilized right now are interactive whiteboards. Teachers and classrooms are receiving these because of grants and other awards, but teachers aren’t trained properly in using them. Most teachers, if they use them at all, use them just like an electronic projector while the bountiful interactive opportunities sit idle. There is so much potential contained within an interactive whiteboard—how do we teach teachers to use them to the fullest? Once publishers realize the need for interactive whiteboard lessons and content, everyone will be better served. We have trained our teams here at S2 in the major platforms and work with clients to create agnostic content (in which you can serve into any platform a district has adopted). If you are in on the interactive whiteboard content game, what are you providing?

Guest Blogger on AEP

Posted on June 22, 2009 at 01:57 PM

As part of the 2009 Summit, AEP held an international CEO Roundtable, allowing executives from around the world to discuss the impact of “free” content on educational publishing.

I attended as a guest and blogged for AEP regarding the what I thought were the most important take-aways from the presentations:

The International CEO roundtable proved to be the perfect springboard for a variety of discussions regarding content and how we choose to deliver it to the general public. The topics covered ranged from how to create an infrastructure to distribute content, to the scope of the market regarding technology, to how this will affect the US on the state level.

I really enjoyed the session. There were many intelligent people talking about the future of content in real terms. My biggest take-aways were the following:

1. One of the biggest concerns is how do we get people to pay for content when free content is out there? ....

Read the rest here.