IS THIS THE END OF AFTERWORK DRINKS?
The long-held customs of casual Fridays and after-work drinks are evolving as big businesses embrace a more modern approach to engender a sense of belonging.
There are few events in corporate life more excruciating than the employee farewell at which the person who has driven the departed through the redundancy process also hosts their leaving drinks and makes a speech emphasising their positive points.
It’s an act recognised by everyone present as a piece of blatant hypocrisy, but it has to be done because the farewell is a tradition, and companies must have traditions.
The very simple reason for this, according to US human resources consultant Rita Craig, using relatively simple corporate speak, is that shared customs foster a sense of belonging and “when employees feel like they are part of something, they contribute more than just positive energy. Their energy ripples throughout the entire framework of an organisation and ultimately contributes to bottom-line profitability.”
As that summary implies, sometimes it’s hard to tell whether “employee engagement” is about keeping employees happy or keeping the chief financial officer happy.
Awkward farewells might become a thing of the past.
“I’ve often thought that it might be better to have a celebratory function when people arrive rather than when they leave,” says Mike Hutcheson, former advertising whiz, now adjunct professor at Auckland University of Technology.
“It might depend on the circumstances under which they leave. Often someone’s colleagues and coworkers will want to have a farewell but the organisation is very happy for them to go.”
In order to avoid embarrassment all round in such cases it used to be Hutcheson’s practice to quietly tell the leaving party that they wouldn’t be getting a leaving party and instead slip them a voucher to take a few of their close workmates to lunch by way of a farewell.
When Bernadine Oliver-Kerby left TVNZ last year after 25 years of employment, the newsreader didn’t get a farewell event.
Her position was disestablished in 2015 and she’d spent the next 12 months on a temporary contract filling in as a newsreader on the 6pm bulletin.
“TVNZ certainly haven’t let me know there’s anything on. Maybe I didn’t get the memo,” she jokingly told the Herald at the time.
“If there’s something for me, I’m not there . . . I haven’t been invited.”
Company traditions are changing to reflect the world outside the company. Friday-night drinks are becoming less frequent under pressure from wellness advocates. Dress-down Friday? How would you tell on Planet Permanently Casual?
Theresa Gattung, co-founder of My Foodbag, believes traditions are important, but only after other priorities have been met.
“Traditions aren’t as important as treating people fairly, paying them fairly, having gender pay equity,” says Gattung.
“Feeling your work values what you do, understanding how what you do fits the objective of the organisation and feeling your progress will be fairly rewarded, evaluated without reference to gender, race or background — that’s fundamental. Without that you can have all the trimmings you like and you won’t have an engaged group of people.”
Chris Quin is North Island chief executive at Foodstuffs, the company behind the New World and Pak’nSave brands. Foodstuffs has a large and diverse employee population and a plethora of company traditions designed to bring them together. Some of these have evolved to acknowledge currently changing workplace demographics.
“There’s more diversity in the workplace,” says Quin. “So we’ll have events for Ramadan, Matariki, Christmas, Easter. We have morning teas from time to time where people bring a plate from their country.”
The after-work drink is more likely to be just that — one drink — than the sessions of days gone by.
“That old world of beers and chips isn’t how it happens,” says Quin.
“We’re not afraid to celebrate and will go off-site to do that. But everyone has one or two and it’s done. Particularly for leaders now, there’s so much that can go wrong that it’s something you do with friends, not with us. Safety and wellbeing play a role in what you can do, especially in a large organisation like ours where we can have 900 people on the site.”
Drinks are just too hard, says Gattung, who doesn’t partake herself, “especially if you live in Auckland, and you’re commuting and you have a busy life”.
Some traditions are less tangible, more symbolic, possibly differing according to what kind of work someone does. Hard-bitten sales reps, theorises Hutcheson, love the tradition of ringing a bell when sales targets are met. It’s exactly as Pavlovian as it sounds.
“A lot of sales people are approval seekers and they’re in an industry where recognition comes through money rather than some concrete output,” explains Hutcheson. “Sales people love that kind of recognition because they’re not making anything. They’re not like a builder with something to show for their work.”
It’s also good, say the bosses, for companies to originate — or at least be creative when stealing — their traditions, so that they reflect their company’s nature and reinforce that elusive team spirit.
Gattung credits My Food Bag cofounder Cecilia Robinson with creating the Friday afternoon love box at her company.
“Around three in the afternoon, everyone stops work, comes together, tells a few stories, there’s food and drink, you spin the wheel and prizes are awarded.
“During the week, people put things in the love box they want to thank other staff for, and they are read out. It’s always been a nice tradition and one that everyone took part in.”
T“Traditions aren’t as important as treating people fairly, paying them fairly, having gender pay equity.” Theresa Gattung
hat breaking down of barriers between management and everyone else lies behind a lot of traditions.
“I write a note every Friday to the whole business,” says Quin, “and end it with what I’m doing that weekend — watching supercars or riding a mountain bike. Not because I think people care, but because it gives them something to talk to me about when I walk past. I know what it felt like when you were starting out and the
big bosses walked around. It opens up a bit of humanity.”
As do Quin’s regular “town halls”. “I go to the warehouses with the supply chain leadership team members and do a 20-minute update. But I go at their time — 6pm or midnight or whenever their shift is. Then we put on some food, and it might be morning tea at midnight because of the shift. But I notice the best conversations happen sitting down over kai.” Communication is critical — even if it’s compulsory.
“At HKM Advertising,” says Hutcheson, “We had a ‘pens down’ tradition every Friday afternoon. You stopped work for a meeting where you could say anything you liked. One thing we were hot on was no back chat or gossip. If you had something to say you had to air it in public and the rule was ‘Is it nice? Is it necessary? Is it true?’ And it had to be two of the three. Those meetings defused a lot of things.”
This wouldn’t be a contemporary trends story without wellness rearing its mindful head. Wellness drives much of Foodstuffs’ corporate culture.
“We have a boot camp and crossfit two or three times a week,” says Quin, who believes that kind of hierarchy breaking communal activity means people can “talk about things at the human level but also feel safe and motivated to raise business things”.
Expect these trends to continue. And expect to see innovative new traditions being formed and fostered.
Clearly, if there’s one thing we can say for sure about traditions, it’s that they are changing all the time.