Serving the Teesside Business Community | 91
The Business Buzz
With award-winning
writer Harry Pearson
It techs all sorts
Showboat - A US firm offers staff
free use of the company yachts.
B
ack when I was growing up on
Teesside, tech was something posh
people used to hold the carpet down.
All that has changed.
These days there are upwards of 300
tech companies in the region, ranging from
tiny spare bedroom start-ups to global
players such as Cubic, Animmersion, Sock
Monkey and Visualsoft.
The latter have created a bit of a stir
locally by installing slides, a pool table and a
wall of living moss in their Stockton HQ.
When I started out on my working life, if
you wanted to play in the office you waited
till the boss had gone for lunch and then
rigged up a cricket field using wastepaper
bins for wickets, rulers for bats and a ball
made out of rubber bands (now I think
about it, maybe I should suggest that as a
new format to the English Cricket Board – it
couldn’t be worse than The 100). In the past
few years, however, the sight of a table
football and ping pong bats in an office is no
longer the stuff of crazy dreams.
Maybe it all started with Apple co-founder
Steve Jobs who had a futon installed under
his desk so he could take an afternoon nap.
What was wrong with a mound of shredded
paper in the stock cupboard? It worked for
my Uncle Bob during his days at the Burton
shirt factory. Or, at least, it did until an
overhead water pipe burst during his post-
lunch kip and he woke up encased in paper
mache.
Certainly, the notion of creating a
relaxed, fun environment for the workforce
seems to have started across the Atlantic.
Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy
have onsite tanning beds (insert your own
“The notion of creating a
relaxed, fun environment
for the workforce seems
to have started across
the Atlantic.”
“Obviously hoping to recruit Geordies” joke
here), while the offices of super hipster
New York tech firm Chartbeat feature a
puppytorium where workers can relax
by playing with dogs from a local rescue
centre.
JM Family Enterprises, a Florida
automotive firm, meanwhile, offer
employees free use of the company yachts,
which are conveniently located at the office
marina.
The most extreme example of the trend
is to be found in Pittsburgh (more or less
the USA’s answer to Middlesbrough), where
George Davidson, the owner of ideas
incubator Inventionland, sits during working
hours surveying his workplace from a
treehouse office.
“I never want to get stale or bored
looking at a computer screen,” Davidson
has said.
And how could he be, with a pirate ship,
a giant robot, a cupcake the size of a small
house and three running waterfalls amongst
other things that fill his company office?
Zappos’s HQ in Las Vegas isn’t quite
as extraordinary as Inventionland, merely
featuring ball pools, billiard tables, massage
chairs and a giant aquarium, but Zappos
are innovators when it comes to organising
wacky workers’ theme days, such as Tank
Puppy love - workers at New York’s
Chartbeat relax with dogs.
Top Tuesday - though I’d like to point out
that a tank top isn’t just for Tuesday, it’s for
life.
However, nobody across the pond
can quite match the efforts of Tyneside-
based Onebestway, who took the idea of
Dress Down Friday one stage further by
apparently introducing an Office Nudist Day,
which according to a spokesman quoted in
the Daily Telegraph was designed to “Strip
away inhibitions and encourage employees
to talk to each other more openly.”
That, at least, would be one take on it,
though since Onebestway is a marketing
company and their “no clothes day” got
them worldwide publicity, the cynical
amongst you might sniff a clever PR
exercise. Worth thinking about anyway.
I’m currently typing this wearing a tinfoil
leotard in honour of my newly introduced
Flash Gordon Friday, if any media outlets
want to get in touch.