Writing for (y)EU » Evita

Does a great office make you happier?

Evita — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 16:01:01 +0000

If you are following our blog, you will know that we consider ourselves to be a cool unit. And even though during last year most of the unit has changed and is still changing this year, the coolness factor has not disappeared (as Steve duly noted in his blog), I might even dare to say that it keeps growing. In a different way, but it is growing. One thing that I feel is lagging behind though, are our offices.

Whilst some might consider this a childish behavior, having fun at your work space does increase great collaboration, creativity and productivity.

Yesterday, when thinking/browsing about the topic, I stumbled upon a study done 2 years ago, which said that if you let your employees to have a control over how their office layout would look, that can increase their happiness by up to 32%. And as we all know it – a happy employee is more productive and more motivated employee. In our modern times with the amount of time we spend in the office, those 32% mean a lot…

What is our situation?

We are more or less 40 people in the unit at any given time. All together we are sharing 23 offices on 2 different floors. We have 1 almost always booked meeting room that we wanted to equip in a modern way and did it with our own resources (as the common policy did not allow for non-standard equipment) and a common small “kitchen” where you can boil some water or make a coffee or wash your dishes but which is not a place where you can gather and have a longer chat.

Our standard offices have grey doors, bright artifical light, windows that can’t be opened and little or no possibility for us to modify our office. Ironically enough, even though the building we are in is almost entirely occupied by DG Communication, we do not have Wifi coverage, nor do we have up to date technological soft- or hardware.

We do bring our own touches to the offices though (and, according to the study mentioned above, the fact that we are allowed to do so makes us 17% happier a.k.a. productive). Some of us bring plants, others make artistic coverage of walls, we have maps, pictures, photos, to do lists, Parliament’s and Commission's organization chats, useful contacts – you name it, probably, someone will have it on their wall. Yet, I can't stop but asking myself: wouldn’t any successful organization want to increase the productivity up to those 32%?

What would my perfect office look like

Now, I am not saying, that we all should have offices like Google, Facebook or Twitter but the fact that these companies are doing so great on a large scale thanks to their motivated employees does make you think, doesn’t it?

In WebComm we've been daydreaming about a more progressive office layout for a while now. Obviously, there are many opinions depending on our personalities, nationalities, gender, relationship status as well as other important personal factors. To me the more I looked at the examples of correctly designed open space offices, the more it made sense to me – people being able to move around easily, see each other, collaborate easily, have an area for relaxation, concentration and even fun! I know it might sound a bit idealistic but I truly believe that it could make us happier on daily basis which in return would make us even more productive.

If it would be in my hands to find an office for our future growth, probably the ad would look like this:

FOR RENT

Spacious 1 story office building with a roof terrace, located in a green area, filled with plenty of daylight. It offers possibility for open space offices of your choice with 2 separate meeting/brain-storming rooms, 10 private offices that can also be used for small meetings (2-4 people), kitchen/cafeteria area (fully equipped), library, game room and lounge for welcoming your customers and partners. Space is organized in a way that you can flexibly rearrange it according to your team's needs.

Building is equipped with high-speed wifi coverage, state of the art technological support (reservation of meeting rooms via tablets, interactive platforms for co-working areas, online platforms for following and developing various projects) as well as helpline service is provided to answer your questions. You will be able to get to the city center in 20 minutes, as well as there is an easy access to the main roads to exit the city. Underground parking is provided for your car, scooter or bike. Children’s day care is located in a nearby building

Ideal for a team of dynamic and creative people.

p.s.

Couple of years ago, our bosses put in a request to make a study of a possibility to make an open plan office space for us. It was not followed up until last year, when we were contacted and informed that we were chosen to make a study case of our interest. I don’t know if that is going to turn out in a tangible result but I am, for sure, keeping my fingers crossed.

Here are some other cool offices to check out

Skype
Lego
Pixar
Tumblr

Is there life after a stage?

Evita — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 15:59:54 +0000

I have never been a trainee. Like many of us I “had” to do a stage when I was at university, but, as at that time I was already working, my working place also became my “stage” place. Not that it is a bad thing.. It was just that way things were. However I feel that I have never experienced the life that I see our trainees have – entering a totally different world, for most of them – in a totally different country, and enjoying it fully. Making new friends from all over the world and introducing everyone to their world.

What I wanted to know was how they saw this experience. And what were the next steps for them, what were the next adventures that they had embarked upon. That is why one day I sent out an email to all the trainees that we’ve had since I’ve worked in WebComm and received quite a few answers.

Here come their stories, all of which tell me that if you have a chance to do a stage outside your country, you should go for it. It makes you see the world from a different perspective.

Lelde

After getting married couple of months ago, she is continuing her path in private business. Her traineeship was a way of deciding whether she would like to work in a governmental institution or take the road of the private sector. She chose the latter and has not regretted that (that is not to say that she didn’t like being with us, of course… :)

For her the traineeship had the beauty of relationships: the people she had her traineeship together with and also the WebCommers, the moments shared were full of laughter, conversations, creativity and hard work. She said that even now the first thought she has in the mind when she thinks of us, is that WebComm has organized a surprise goodbye breakfast in a nearby coffee shop.

(ed. here’s a great post Lelde co-wrote about being a trainee in the Parliament published on the day she left.)

Roberta

She is Italian. She has red hair. And she can get into places when even experienced journalists could not and get that interview that nobody else got…Now she lives in Australia and is a freelance journalist. Just after the traineeship she got married (the proposal was done during her traineeship. Just like with Lelde, actually) and her husband was moving to Australia, so she moved together with him.

She wrote that: “the internship was very important to me and it allowed me to see how the EP works. In another life – without any Australian planning – I would have tried with all my efforts to stay there, maybe working for some politician as Brussels is a sort of heaven for journalists. You don’t have to move around following people or stories, because they are the ones coming to Brussels by themselves.”

Ivana

She is Slovak and gave us all (or at least some of us) nicknames (some of them are still stuck, by the way). After she left Brussels she got a job in Slovak Marketing Agency working on sports events, organizing them and taking care of VIP people such as: Anna Kournikova, Thomas Muster, Michael Stich and others and aiming to climb the career stairs in this area.

The traineeship has helped her to realize how important the social environment at work is, how important it is to have equality, respect and other crucial working values.

She is not saying that she’ll stay in Bratislava for ever. She is instead open to all kind of future possibilities.

Chiara

Half Dutch speaking Belgian, half Italian, fluent in at least 4 languages, Chiara is now living in Burundi and working for the Belgian Development Agency (BTC), as a junior assistant in Bujumbura. This was a choice made even before the traineeship in the Parliament, so the two have nothing to do to each other.

However, she said that “she has realised in what a luxury situation she was working in the WebComm. All the coordination, fluid cooperation among colleagues and leading capacities of a boss(es) are non-existant in Bujumbura. That makes working life quite difficult, and my patience sometimes exploding.

I try to cheer up myself by thinking “it’s all part of a learning process”. However, I don’t always succeed. In short, please treasure your unit and keep it dynamic and enthusiastic like I found it!”

Dan

When Dan was leaving us, our editorial coordinator Thibault was sure that we don’t have to worry about him. And he was absolutely right. Dan had got tired of being “just” a journalist – 12 years have been enough for him. So, he invented a new occupation for himself which was hiding under a name “Media Strategic Consultant” (he is full of ideas, indeed) which in practice meant that he offered fresh ideas on how to catch media attention (being a journalist helps a bit, I guess…)

He had no plans to go back to Brussels and yet one day he was offered to do so. Now Dan is back with us in WebComm (a fact that he loves) but only now his title is “social media producer”. Fancy, right? He says that the title alone in the social media world has put him on a level where he is getting invited to all kind of groups, forums and places where the conversation takes place. But above that he is happy to be a part of the WebComm again.

(ed. Interested in Dan’s back story? We loved this post he wrote during his traineeship)

Rafaela

As the first thing Rafaela mentioned that she remembered how persistent she had to be to get the traineeship- her application was not accepted twice and only the 3rd time had the lucky charm. Rafaela was in the WebComm in the period when the 2009 European Parliament’s elections took place and she feels happy that she was there when the EP started using the social media platforms as she is a strong believer in “informing the citizens about their rights and opportunities in order to increase the level of conscientious participation in civil society”.

Rafaela says that: “Translating complex EU policy jargon into a form that the “common citizen” understands brought altruistic rewards. But after this experience it was clear to me that I wanted to stay in Brussels! Portugal is nice, I know… once you “taste” this “European-multicultural-life-and-work-style-atmosphere” it is difficult to ever turn back … So, here I am… still in Brussels and working for a political communications consultancy as a Senior Consultant in Media Relations. My career is already reaping the rewards for the experience that I had.”

Lyuben

Self-Presentation Tweet: Lyubo Tyulekov, an ex WebComm trainee, last year law student.

After the end of the traineeship he went back to the academic life in the Netherlands – “back to school, back to reality”, as a friend of his likes to say. Lyuben says that “the time spent in the Parliament… gave me the chance to meet a lot of new and interesting people, work in an international environment, but most importantly – get more familiar with the decision making process at a European level from inside, something every European law student (like me) would get pleasure from.”

“In a “self-presentation” blog that I published more than a year ago I wrote that it was a matter of honour and privilege for me to be part of … the Parliament and a cool, fresh unit like Web Communication. Now, almost one and a half year later, I completely stay by my words!”

Workplace culture of our unit

Evita — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 07:56:22 +0000

One of our motos from the course was "See evey day as a new day, full of challenges and possibilities." Photo by GioPhotos @Flickr

Work culture is something that exists in every unit, firm, company, government institution or any other place of work. It is part of what the essence of that institution is. Or what a unit is. It works as something that can motivate people to work better or something that can turn your daily work routine into a nightmare. Last week I was attending a second part of a training where, amongst other things, we were learning what is important to the colleagues in WebCommunications Unit and trying to put that all together in one bigger picture.

Whilst the teacher was great and worked with us through a lot of comparisons (read Babara’s story on monkeys and bananas from our first training day) for me it was also a possibility to spend a day with my colleagues outside our regular 4 walls. OK, we were in another 4 walls, but those were new ones – and the change of environment gave us a boost for a new perspective (a thing that we later on talk as being one of the cornerstones in a dynamic work culture).

Work culture. Now and in the future

This course was based on interactivity amongst colleagues, brainstorming and thinking outside the box. We covered quite a few topics: “How should we ensure EP’s web-presence in 22 languages”, “How to manage editorial coordination and feedback better” and “What should our work culture look like”. The latter one is something that really got people discussing (at least that is what it seemed to me).

First of all, I would want to state that we are the “coolest unit” in the European Parliament (or one of the coolest ones, for sure). In the unit we are around 38 people (depending on the number of maternity leaves, parental leaves, number of trainees etc) from 22 countries. Of course, it sounds cool, but it also gives a level of complexity to the unit where we have to learn to balance our cultural differences and come to a common understanding of how we work together. This was our view (and also a reason why I think that we are the coolest unit :))) of our future work culture that is strongly based in our existing culture.

See every day as a new day, with new challenges and opportunities
Go outside the office and build a network.
Be your own quality controller. Before shipping out your work, evaluate if it is on a level that your colleagues could easily work with it
Be curious. Follow the news in the EU political arena, be constantly informed
Get the best out of every situation. If you have new obstacles, see them as a challenge rather than as an excuse

Don’t

Do a shitty job
Complain for the sake of complaining
Abuse the system
Take criticism personally. Constructive criticism helps you to become better

Seems like something that you’ve heard already? Sure! But to do our job better, we have to have these days when we all come together as a team and look at the bigger picture from a bigger angle – actually from all our different 38 angles – and talk freely about them.

One man CAN make a difference

Evita — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 12:16:33 +0000

The Twitter sentiment tracker during Marko Rakar's speech

Last week I was one of the lucky ones that was attending Personal Democracy forum in Barcelona. And I am calling myself lucky not only because the location of the event (University of Barcelona) and because I was together with a great group of colleagues, but because of the experiences that were shared during this conference.

One particular speaker and his story made a lasting impression on me: leading political blogger from Croatia: Marko Rakar. He has been named “data guerrilla” and “data transparency revolutionary” (as well as many other names, I ‘m sure) and his story was about how one man can make a difference in fighting corruption and fraud.

Croatia = more voters than citizens

He started his presentation with numbers that were telling enough – Croatia is the only country in the world where you’ll find more voters than citizens, he said. And while it provoked a lot of laughter, the reality is as it is: corrupted. In many cases, there are more voters because people in neighbouring Bosnia or Serbia are taking advantage of loose procedures in border towns in order to gain social benefits, also local authorities encourage the practice because it gives them an ample pool of extra votes to keep themselves in power.

Marko Rakar’s ideas worth spreading

1) Educating people is the easiest way to double your money and get return on your investment.
2)Stimulating creative thinking is critical in order to succeed in rapidly shrinking an even faster changing world.
3) Rule of law, transparency of governance is a foundation for a prosperous society.
4) There are no boxes (or borders) large enough to contain great ideas.

In order to fight this situation, one day he spread the word in the online community: “if I would have the Croatias’ voters list, I could make a map and see where the fraud is”. And as Rakar is very well known political blogger in Croatia and has established his place in the online community, his voice was heard. In a few days he received DVDs with all the voters in Croatia. From that he made a database that put together names with addresses.

What he found out was that, according to the voters’ list, in a small countryside village in Croatia there was a “skyscraper” where a lot of people were registered with the same address. Or that there were many people that were registered in the house whose number was 0. After exposing all these inadequacies, now the problem has been solved, Rakard said, but there were still other things to attend to.

Fake war veterans

Other project that has Rakar’s name associated with it and why Rakar even got arrested (OK, it was only for 8 hours but that is still much more than any of us have experienced in our life) was a list of Balkan war veterans published online that showed that a lot of people (including prominent national figures) have lied about their participation in Balkan war in order to receive the veteran benefits (e.g. premium health care and duty-free car imports).

Staying true to yourself

Rakar’s presentation was uplifting. It was passionate and it was taking you on a journey. Conference organisers even measured (I wonder how that was done…) that during this presentation there was huge spikes in dominance (how in control people felt) and arousal (how awake/lively people felt).

For a part of the conference participants corruption and fraud is known from their own experience (Eastern Europe during Soviet Union times and just after gaining independence had a lot of cases in this field) for others it was just a story, but for sure, for everyone it was a reminder that if you believe in your goal and stay true to yourself, you can achieve all you believe in and make change happen.

More from Marko Rakar ‘s life

Interview with Marko Rakar

Rakar’s blog (in Croatian)

How did our experiment work?

Evita — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:01:42 +0000

By Evita & Anete. Before the elections we had the opportunity to carry out a project that was a repetition of an experiment made 50 years ago. We already wrote about the recipe of this experiment and now it is time to summarize the results.

7 YaBs completed their mission

Overall we can say that it has been a blissful time – stressful, but very interesting.

• 7 secret agents out of 27 reached their destination and will become real agents as promised: Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Maltese, Spanish, Bulgarian and Estonian. 2 countries of Iberian Peninsula, 5 “new” Member States. Is there any connection?

• Some celebrities complained about not being informed beforehand officially. Sorry, there are some things you don’t inform about. Did they inform us that they would become famous before they did it? For this reason or another, the Italian, Latvian, Greek, German and Luxembourgish secret agents got stuck one step before reaching celebrities.

• 2 secret agents got lost from the very beginning. Mystical things happened to Danish and Cypriot YaBs as we were never able to obtain even the smallest piece of information about their adventures. We just hope they’re still alive.

• Swedish secret agent made a virtual completion of the mission – Erik met his celebrity through the TV screen. Typically Swedish – reminds us of the jolly book of Astrid Lindgren about the best friend ever Karlsson-on-the-Roof who believed there was a man sitting in the TV box.

Mystical things happened to Danish and Cypriot YaBs as we were never able to obtain even the smallest piece of information about their adventures. We just hope they’re still alive.

• Remaining 13 secret agents travelled around from hand to hand, but at some point they got stuck. Why? Lack of motivation and interest? Fear of looking silly? Fear of being involved in political matters? Not knowing what to do exactly? Procrastination? The reasons could be more than many. Some movement followed after slight pushing from our side although we didn´t want to intervene during the mission. But still… Well, would somebody like to write a PhD on this?

• The first one to leave was the Italian YaB, the first one to arrive: Polish. Does it say something about the mentality or work culture?

• We received many funny and imaginative photos picturing the YaBs in diverse environments and situations — meeting mimes and military men at the Brandenburger Tor, bathing in the sea, having lunch or a drink, partying, having a medical check etc.

• Facebook page for Travelling YaBs now has 554 fans, out of them 61% are woman. In the web we found an article that says that 98% of women love James Bond. Of those 98%, 95.7% of them have had erotic dreams involving at least one of the Bonds. Is it something similar here or are the mother feelings stronger in this case because they are so small and cute?

• The Polish, Latvian, Danish, Greek, Italian and Portuguese media covered the missions. Strange enough: the most of the journalists involved were also women.

Conclusion: only 7 YaBs arrived but… sometimes the road is the destination. We hope you enjoyed.

Our recipe for proving that the world is smaller than you think

Evita — Tue, 05 May 2009 21:03:17 +0000

Yes, this year for me is definitely going to be a year of European Elections. But not only because of the fact itself but more because of the work we are doing for it. For the first time in my life I have an opportunity to be in a team that is working on communicating Election campaign. And not only in a conventional way. There are things that are being done differently. We are trying to think out of the box.

Pimping the secret agents (or YaBs)

As our work does not leave our minds as soon as we are leave the building, one evening I was talking to our Latvian editor Anete and she told me about an idea that had crossed her mind. She wanted to prove that the world (in our case we’ll stick with Europe) is smaller than we think and we are all connected in one way or another. Today her idea has grown into an experiment that we are opening this week.

Here is the recipe (in case of repetition modify amounts and/or steps accordingly):

1. Take 27 figurines and give them to your team colleagues who afterwards turn them into YaBs (yellow and blue, you know).

2. Assign them their nationality.
Each of ours comes from a different EU Member State.

3. As our YaBs want to become secret agents, give each of them a mission to accomplish.
Their mission is to arrive in the YaB’s respective countries (that’s why we have assigned nationalities) before the European Elections and reach a celebrity in this country (who maybe would like to go and vote together with YaB).

4. Give each of the secret agents their real name and their own code name.

All their code, name and nationality.

5. Choose the starting date of the mission.
The YaBs will start their on 9th of May in the European Parliament’s Open Day (we will be handing them out at Web Communication stand on the 3rd floor in the European Parliament)

Naked YaBs

6. Make some rules to make it more fun.
6.1. Each YaB should travel from one person to another, and should be passed from hand to hand until it reaches its final destination.

6.2. It has to have a picture taken in front of one of the famous objects/places in the country. Preferably together with the person he/she is travelling with

6.3. The whole trip has to be recorded by sending in the YaB’s (and his guardian at that moment) location and proof of it, like photos and videos to the email address WebComm@europarl.europa.eu or uploading it on Facebook page.

7. Make a buzz about it

Fully dressed (hum, body-painted) YaBs

8. Wait for the results

And this is how you create your own experiment!

P.S. Idea is based on the Six degrees of Separation theory which states that, if a person is one step away from each person they know and two steps away from each person who is known by one of the people they know, then everyone is at most six steps away from any other person on Earth.

9. The YaBs project in a nutshell

We will release 27 YaBs on Saturday 9 May in the EP buildings at Brussels during the Open day. You want to be one of the first link in the chain? Drop us an e-mail at WebComm@europarl.europa.eu now!
Each YaB has a target and a destination. Your role is to give it by hand to another link in the chain so each YaB can reach its target and its destination before 4 June 2009.
All YaB travel’s steps must be illustrated with photos of the YaB and names or nicknames of their guardian (and as many photos of you and the YaB as you wish). You can follow the Yabs travel on their Facebook page.
It’s all about fun, degrees of separation and solidarity! Help a YaB, carry a YaB, give a Yab!

10. P.P.S. Thanks, Nadina, for inspiration!