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Is Snapchat the new smoke break?

2,293 Views | 12 Replies | Last: 6 yr ago by Ulrich
Keeper of The Spirits
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AG
Our Chairman recently tweeted an article asking this question? I found it to be a insightful question. I don't smoke or snap but I do TexAgs
Pahdz
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Snapping takes less than a minute. Smokers seem to take 10+.

I had both a young girl who snapped a ton and a 50 something male who smoked like a chimney. I got much more production out of the mid 20's female
Keeper of The Spirits
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AG
Yeah I agree with that. I think back to a time before instant message and email when more people smoked and then business was done on smoke breaks, backchannelling and such
94chem
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I work with 100+ people and I don't personally know any of them who use Snapchat or Twitter. I'd ask your big boss why so many baby boomers feel like their primary job is to figure out what the cool kids are doing?
Keeper of The Spirits
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AG
I'd say it's probably because we have 100,000 US employees whose average age is 28. Our business relies model on attracting and retaining young talent for at least 5 years.

With an organization as big as ours there will always be generational differences and challenges. Some of our older managers have a hard time understanding the snapping and "unproductive" use technology so we often engage in discussions based on questions like the one posed. This helps to identify commonality among diverse groups, which helps us build trust among team members from very different backgrounds.
94chem
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I see. You work at The Circle (it's cute, you should see it). I understand you better, but I also think there are large swaths of the younger population that don't give a darn about this stuff. There's a lot of off the grid talent out there.
Keeper of The Spirits
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AG
I am not sure I caught the Circle reference so you may need to explain that one to me. The point of the question is to create dialog. When I came into the workforce the question could have been "Is Facebook the new smoke break?" Quite honestly the tech platforms come and go so quickly, SnapChat is already being displaced.

I agree with your comments that some swaths of talent don't use them however market research suggests that up to 86% of people aged 18-24 use Snapchat atleast once a day. We also recruit so many people every year finding enough someones off the grid costs too much in time or money,

That being I like the question, because I remember when in my early days thinking "man the people that smoke work a full hour a day less than I do" and now I think a lot of people who don't snap or whatever feel the same about their counterparts who do.

We do our best to look at peoples priorities and make sure they are evaluated fairly. Larry's kids ballet recital is treated not different than Meghan's dinner with her husband or John's happy hour with his college bros. All are treated of equal in the importance when we cover for our team members. That change in thinking came from engaging is questions like this, where we realized when Larry said "my kid has a thing" that was taking priority over everyone else's priorities.
strohag
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AG
I've got news for you. The majority of your employees probably screw off an hour a day whether it be smoking, facebook, snap chat, browsing the web, water cooler or coffee BS'ing time with other employees, long breaks on the toilet, etc.
Keeper of The Spirits
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AG
No doubt they screw off, that's the point of the question everyone does in some way or another. The point is to illustrate that commonality among different generations. We preach a practice of do whatever the hell you want, whenever you want from wherever you want as long as you hit deadlines. That doesn't work for some old school managers.
Some managers want their people in the office when they say and how they say, but that doesn't work for us as an org., so we use these types of questions to setup these discussions
Ulrich
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I'm struggling to phrase this in a way that doesn't sound d**chey which probably means that i shouldn't post. Here goes!

The only new information on this thread is that a large company still has people that haven't figured out that social media is the new BSing at the water cooler. Scroll through your LinkedIn feed for 90 seconds and you'll probably see this point in at least two list-based blog posts by third rate headhunters trying to establish a rep as thought leaders in the hunt for millennial talent.
IrishTxAggie
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AG
Lol at only an hour.
Ag CPA
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AG
TexAgs was my smoke break in my early years and I was going through two packs a day.

Kicked the habit in my early 30s but I still sneak one every now and then.
Keeper of The Spirits
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AG
I didn't find you response ******y at all, so I'd say you succeeded. My follow up question to you, is in your organization have you figured out how get people to understand and accept that concept? I'd say for the vast majority of people we are there, but we do have group of pretty successful people who don't get it. My broader question would be what are your strategies in your organization that you use to integrate generationally diverse talent into a cohesive team?

@Agcpa it took me giving up all "non productive" internet time at work for lent one year to realize how much time I was spending. I'd venture to say it was 2 hours a day atleast. I no longer needed to wonder why I was having to work until 8pm every night to hit my hours target. It was at that point I started to implement systems in my own work habits to make myself more productive and became very interested in ways of increasing my productivity as a whole. My goal is to plan 95% of my day to the minute including screw off time, and leave 5% for firefighting if will.
Ulrich
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Keeper of The Spirits said:

I didn't find you response ******y at all, so I'd say you succeeded. My follow up question to you, is in your organization have you figured out how get people to understand and accept that concept? I'd say for the vast majority of people we are there, but we do have group of pretty successful people who don't get it. My broader question would be what are your strategies in your organization that you use to integrate generationally diverse talent into a cohesive team?

At my company (thousands of employees, so not small) no one really cares if you're on your phone or use the internet on your work computer. As long as you're getting your work done no one cares too much about whether you take breaks or what you do on them, although smoking is banned on campus.

Regarding your last question, I'm sure HR is very productively conducting hundreds of jargon-filled meetings on the subject, but they haven't bothered us so far. We show up and work hard and that sort of thing takes care of itself.
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