

Stop Worrying and Learn to Love Making your Employees’ Lives Awesome - czue
http://www.dimagi.com/dimagi-in-brazil-or-why-you-should-stop-worrying-and-learn-to-love-making-your-employees-lives-awesome/

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jtheory
I liked this idea, but it's also very obvious that this must be quite a young
company, with an employee base that's also mostly quite young.

After all, the window of time between when you enter the workplace and when
you start having the kinds of ties that prevent you from dropping everything
and going somewhere with your company for a month isn't -- for most people --
a very large slice of their working career.

I personally would love to go to Brazil for a month, but going with my co-
workers instead of my wife and young daughter would be unthinkable.

This isn't a criticism, though. As the company grows & matures, and the
employees do as well -- since they're interested in keeping employees "for the
long haul", the collective ages of the bulk of the employees would advance
largely in synch -- then the creative ideas should simply take different
forms.

I do think they should consider carefully who is forced to sit out, though --
and avoid doing things where it's always the same people who can't come. This
is company money being used to reward employees. If it only rewards some of
them, due to factors quite probably out of the employees' control, that's
simply unfair. Maybe offer the option for employees who can't participate to
simply get an equivalent bonus?

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czue
We are a young company. In the previous blogs we talk a bit about the factors
that made doing the experiment possible including that one.

One clarification on your last point: the company didn't actually fund any of
this (except for travel insurance for everyone). All the employees who chose
to go paid their own way. This was what made it virtually 0 cost for us, and
one of the reasons why some chose to stay behind. Families and significant
others were another reason.

