I have to admit April Fools Day came and went like any other first day of the month here at NGA’s Melbourne office. It was surprising because we do have a group of pranksters, mostly hidden in ‘the cave’ (the end part of our office where the developers dwell) that ordinarily don’t need that much encouragement to pull a prank on an innocent co-worker. Then again maybe it is too much of an official day, everyone has their wits about them and the prankster automatically loses their edge? Regardless, how people act at work says a lot about environment and work culture.
I recently read an article about ‘5 ways to inspire a value rich culture’. What struck me is that you can’t force a culture on people, but you can create an environment.
An environment is your surroundings. Furniture, decor, light (or lack of it) and people. All organisations have the formal, corporate version of culture, but it really comes back to what your daily working environment is like.
So what has April Fools Day got to do with workplace, culture and environment? On any given day at NGA you may find a fake spider on your chair (as a self confessed arachnophobiac this is far worse than it sounds) or be the target of a serious mission that would make the prank patrol proud.
One particularly impressive prank was orchestrated by the development team to fool the NGA product team. The tech guys took the time to recreate our most popular eRecruit software into a “special version for the visually impaired”, right down to the matrix inspired dashboard of fluoro green and black. The product team diligently wrote a detailed release note singing the praises of equal opportunity and was one click away from broadcasting to our entire customer base before the development team came clean. Thank goodness.
Working to a tight schedule and looming deadlines as we all do, can become quite stressful. Being able to laugh at yourself (or someone else) is important in our environment. It forces you to take a moment, step back and see the bigger picture, a good reminder for all of us.
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