Hamstaa!

We recently had two new businesses move into the offices next door. Looking through the doors highlighted to me how important the first impression of an office is to the energy you bring when you walk in the door.

One of the offices is very evidently a call-center. It’s clad in shades of grey and blue with small cubicles. It seems to suck the energy out of you just looking at it.

The other (pictured) seems to draw you in. In fact, upon entering, I had not idea what they did¹, but you felt that it would be an interesting place to work.

It may seem obvious, but it’s important to consider the impact your office environment has on potential employee’s as well as the current ones.

When recruiting, if a candidate walks in the door thinking, “wow, I want to work here”, or compares favorably your office/team with their current office and team part of the hiring process just got simpler.

For your own staff, having a place that they want to work in, along with an outstanding team to work with brings it’s own rewards. Higher productivity, less down-time due to illness and greater retention to name just a few. These rewards have value not easily measured but a lot higher than what it can cost to make a great environment.

1 – My wife’s first guess from the photo was travel, but it turns out they are a tattoo artist.↩

Ephox is 10 years old and to celebrate we flew everyone in from our US and UK offices to where it all began … Brisbane.

The celebrations kicked off with a party on Thursday followed by a weekend away at the Hyatt Coolum for employee’s and their partners.

While the weekend away did provide an opportunity to talk shop, it was the personal conversations that I feel pay the biggest dividend.

At Ephox we make great use of digital communication tools like Skype, e-mail and instant messenger to keep in touch. There is something however about talking to someone face-to-face, that allows you to connect on a different level. It’s the conversations over breakfast, the corporate dinner, pre-dinner drinks and while playing tourist that allow you to connect with our colleagues in a way that electronic means just can’t achieve.

In this relaxed environment, you find yourself talking about previous experiences and roles as well as sharing a joke or two. Add to that the ability to meet and talk with your colleagues partner and you begin to build a more complete picture of the person.

So what does this mean for us now we are all back home? The personal connections made enhance our business relationships and communication. The insight gained allows us to filter digital communications through their respective personalities, enriching the experience. In addition, the “back-story” of each person will allow us to better utilise their previous experiences/skills.

Despite the GFC (global financial crisis) Ephox is continuing to grow. We were recently honored with a FastPrivate 2009 award for increasing revenues by almost 230% in the last year.

This means the R&D team in Brisbane, Australia is expanding. We are currently looking for outstanding Java developers who are graduating soon to join the team.

We’ve got an amazing team building a great product in Java using Agile practices.

If you think you have what it takes and want an opportunity to really kick-start your career then check out our ad on Seek.