How much? How much does the person you just hired to develop your new brochure love their job? How much does the client who just hired you to develop their website love their job?
It’s actually a really important question to ask. We try to find employees who love what they do, and clients who are passionate about their business. We find that it makes our life overall more enjoyable, and makes us more enjoyable to work with.
Here are a few of the things we’ve been concentrating on to keep the passion in our work.
- We work as hard to audition our new clients as they work to audition us. We’ve turned down quite a bit of work because it wasn’t a situation we thought we could thrive in. It opens up more time for us to dedicate to the clients we love, and the work that is more rewarding.
- We’ve been trying to fill a developer position for almost a year now. We’ve spent lots of money in the job hunt, and lots of money giving test projects to people. It’s really important to us that the person is a great fit. We’d rather be small than work with people that don’t match with our goals. A bad fitting employee is a drain on the whole company.
- We do things to keep our workload manageable, and exciting. Keeping surplus hours in our schedule to let us do quick turnaround work for our clients in need allows us to play the occasional hero, -as well as keep our workflow lively, and interesting.
- We work hard on our schedule so that we can work to logical stopping places on projects as much as possible. Starting and stopping projects too often leads to exhaustion, and loss of motivation.
- We do as much prep work as possible before starting a project. By gathering, and organizing first, – the actual work part of the project becomes much more enjoyable, and successful.
- We try to take breaks, talk about other subjects, share links, and books, and music. The more diverse the interests of our company are, the better we can provide broad-minded solutions for our clients.
- We try to make time for creative side projects. Our application development side Paste has turned into a great source of pride for us, as well as a way for us to experiment and be our own client. Our first application Jumpchart started as a way for us to do our job better, and has grown into a way for thousands of people around the world to plan websites.
- We try to say thanks to each other, and to our clients. Relationships take management, and our coworkers and clients are the most important thing we have.