10 Craziest Things Tech Companies Do To Make Employees More Creative

Tech companies are always high on competition and want to bring out quality products that can win consumers’ hearts. While this sounds all fine, the employees who materialize the product may drain out of their creativity due to hectic schedule. To counter the creativity fatigue in employees, many companies come up with ideas, sometimes the craziest ones. Here is compilation of 10 such ideas by Business Insider.


#10 Sagmeister & Walsh gives everyone a whole year off every seven years

Crazy it may sound, Sagmeister & Walsh, a NYC based design firm that creates identities, commercials, websites, apps, films, books and objects for clients, audiences and for other purposes, gives a year off in every 7 years to let its employees rejuvenate and refresh their creative outlook.




#9 Google's famous "20 percent time"

The search giant’s “20 percent time” is quite famous. It gives engineers about 20 percent of time from their daily jobs to work on creative projects. And any products that result out of this time gets the tag of "20 percent project," as Google calls them, one of which is a dollar symbol in Gmail that lets you attach money.





 


#8 Google offers mind-enriching @Google Talks

Another thing Google does to increase creativity is by inviting all kind of most famous personalities to its campus.  The list of invitees could contain celebrities like Lady Gaga and Tina Fey to artists, authors, performers, activists and politicians.  The goal of these talks is to "keep our brains learning, growing and thinking," the company says. You can find @Google Talks on YouTube.

#7 HubSpot lets any employee sit in with another team for a while

HubSpot, the company that provides software for businesses to coordinate their online marketing efforts, is famous for a great company culture. Like Google, it brings in speakers to excite motivation and creativity. But one unique thing it does is to let employees join another team for a while to learn about that part of the business. So that engineers can learn more about marketing for instance, or vice versa.

#6 Microsoft uses Bill Gates' office for inspiration

The world’s largest company does it by its own way. The company has converted Bill Gates' old office into a place called "The Garage" filled with every imaginable techno-toy. Employees can go there to tinker on fun tech projects. Sometimes, whole product teams get a "Garage week" where they head to the space to innovate 

#5 Microsoft also holds science fairs

Another effort by Microsoft to boost creativity is by holding “Science Fairs,” twice a year. They use these fairs to show off the kind of projects they are working on in their spare time, often at the Microsoft Garage. The winner gets to set off a homemade volcano named Mount St. Awesome at the event which is attended by everybody associated with the company, from founders to project managers.

 

#4 IBM holds enormous "jams"

IBM holds "jams," which are massive brainstorming events focused on a specific topic. The most famous jam is probably the one that took place in 2006 called the "Innovation Jam" - the largest IBM online brainstorming session ever held. In this event the company brought together more than 150,000 people from 104 countries and 67 companies and they came up with 10 new ideas that IBM invested $100 million into developing, including things like smart healthcare payment systems and a 3D Internet. 

#3 Eventbrite uses dim lights to recharge employees

It is an online ticketing service that allows event organizers to plan, set up ticket sales and promote events of any size and publicize them across Facebook, Twitter and other social-networking tools directly from the site's interface.

The company uses dim lights to recharge employees in accordance with the recent research that says, ‘dim lighting boosts creativity’. Its office includes a Zen Room, with low-lights and no noise. It's a place where employees can meditate, think or nap on the comfy couches.

#2 Yammer conducts hack days in costume

It is a freemium enterprise social network service company, now part of Microsoft.

Though lots of tech companies have "hack days," where developers gather to create new products or features, often working all night writing the code to bring their ideas to life, Yammer does this one better. The hack day lasts full 24-hours and employees dress up in wild costumes. The whole company joins in on the fun.



 

#1 GitHub crowns a monthly King or Queen of Developers

GitHub is a web-based hosting service for software development projects that use the Git revision control system. Each month, the company crowns a King or Queen of Developers and that person runs the help desk for its customers.