By slworking2 on Flickr

In a traditional company, employees roll into the office at 9 am, bleary-eyed and holding a cup of coffee, ready (or not) for another 8+ hour day.  This is the way it has always been, so why change things now?

Because the status quo in the workplace is changing.  The 9-5 workday is antiquated, inefficient, and needs to be re-examined.

A case study: 37signals, the makers of Basecamp and a slew of other cloud-based tools, instituted a 4-day work week a couple years back with the philosophy that with three-day weekends, people come back more refreshed on Monday and actually work harder and more efficiently during the four-day work week.  They found that about the same amount of work gets done in four days versus five days.

Here is my plea:

• Don’t mandate the hours that your employees work. Instead, tell them what meetings they need to be at in person and let them choose their own hours.  They will get their work done more efficiently if they work at the time that is best for them.
• Don’t measure employees’ performance by how many hours they work. Instead, measure their effectiveness by how much work they get done.
• Don’t micromanage your employees. Instead, hire people that are driven and don’t need constant supervision.
• Don’t expect your employees to work for 8 hours straight, unless you are going to provide them illegally with Ritalin and caffeine pills.

As Seth Godin has said, we might as well say goodbye to the office as it is archetypically defined.  You can embrace the changes and figure out how they affect your workplace or you can fight the changes and probably piss off your employees.

Changing the 9-5 work schedule might not work for all companies, but my hope is that companies stop blindly accepting workplace norms just because that’s the way things have been done.  Change starts with a simple conversation, so start a dialogue in your office!

The summer is coming to an end which means that many young professionals are wrapping up their summer internships or lining up a position for themselves for the fall.  I had an extremely rewarding experience this summer working for PBS.  I mean, who doesn’t love getting their picture taken with Josh Groban… during a workday!

Internships are all about creating lasting relationships with people in an industry that you are interested in.  Whether your internship consisted of (or will consist of) making photocopies versus giving input on the user-friendliness of a website redesign (thankfully, I had the latter), social media can help you make the most out of your experience.

Create and maintain connections with colleagues on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is a social network for professionals, plain and simple.  No “Birthday Calendars” and no fancy bells and whistles, just a clean, powerful personal business network.  With over 13 million unique monthly visitors, (and growing fast), you want to have a presence on LinkedIn.

As I said in my post on online reputation, 75% of hiring managers use LinkedIn to research job candidates before making an offer.  (1) Spend 20-30 minutes and create a real profile, taking your time to fill in all the fields.  Having a bare-bones profile with just your name (like so many that I’ve seen) says “I don’t care enough about my professional connections to actually spend time to let you know about me.”  That is not the message you want to send.

Internships are about creating connections that will help you find “The Best Jobs”. (2) Use LinkedIn’s “Build Your Network” box to find past colleagues and classmates.  You’ll surprise yourself with all the professional connections you didn’t know you had.

Start following colleagues on Twitter.

Twitter: who uses that, right?  Wrong.  While Twitter might not have found its way into your friend circle or personal networks, Twitter is a powerful tool for personally connecting with individuals in your industry.  (1) Start by creating an account and following your co-workers.  If they know you, they will likely follow you back.  Keep in mind that unlike LinkedIn, you don’t necessarily have to have met someone personally to follow them.  Make sure to follow the 5 Things on Twitter You Shouldn’t Do.

So you have a bunch of colleagues following you, now what?  (2) Decide what you want to tweet about.  For example, say you are interested in sports marketing.  (3) Set up a Google Alerts for “sports marketing”, “nike advertising” and “adidas ad campaign” (just examples), (4) start following sports marketing blogs, and (5) then tweet any interesting articles or links that you find.  You will begin to connect with other professionals in your field, creating helpful relationships that you can use when it comes time to search for a job.

Start a blog.

Blogging requires dedication, perseverance, and a genuine interest in a specific topic.  If you have those qualities, then starting a blog is a good step towards establishing yourself as a valuable resource in your field of interest.  (That’s what I’m trying to do!) Here are a few resources:

My number one piece of advice is to just try it.  I was convinced that I wouldn’t enjoy having a blog until I started writing about what my PBS internship was teaching me about social media.  If you find that you aren’t passionate about what you chose to write about, write about something else.  Use your blog to find out what you are truly passionate about.