MINDSCAPE is a vibrant company that stresses quality of life as much as it does profitability. We pride ourselves on innovative business practices that make our team members more efficient, more effective and happier. But a lot of companies SAY that. So here a few of the many ways that MINDSCAPE does things differently.
Four Day Weekends
Our staff is skill-focused, with individuals responsible for design, programming, business development, customer service, and management. We hire the best people we can find, and we reward them not just financially, but with flexibility and quality of life. Most staff work from home once or twice each week. We schedule our staff so that team members work four ten-hour days and have a Friday or Monday off. Moreover, this schedule is staggered so that team members have a four-day weekend, twice a month. Our work is highly specialized and requires an intense focus. These four day weekends give our team members the ability to recharge their engines and come back refreshed and ready to work. It also gives them time to escape the cold in the winter and maintain their tan, should they so choose. :)
Work from Home
We’re an Internet company. Our finished product contains lines of code (lots and lots of code) that sits on servers all over the world. We can do our work from our living room sofa as easily as we can from a cubicle. So most of our designers and programmers work from home one day each week. This not only makes it even easier to focus, it makes it easier to meet the cable guy, or arrange delivery of that flat screen television.
Company Retreat
On an annual basis, we make a point to get away from the day-to-day operations of the company. As a group, we spend some time thinking about what went well this year and what we want to do in the year ahead. We go someplace fun, like Windsor, Ontario or Anna Marie Island, Florida. We talk about work, but not all the time. We also go shopping. We dine out. We walk on the beach. We even have the occasional cold beer and good cigar.
Email Mastery
With our work requiring so much focus and attention to detail, interruptions can kill efficiency. We have created a company policy of turning off our email notifications and limiting email check-ups to twice daily. We check email at 11:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. each day. This gives our team members large blocks of uninterrupted time to focus on the work they are completing for clients. Each of our email boxes are set up with an auto-response message which informs senders of this policy and also lets them know that if there is an emergency, they can always feel free to give us a call and we’ll address it immediately. To ensure that our clients' needs are met, and helping them understand that we truly care, we added a full-time customer service position to field phone calls and customer service emails daily between 8:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m.
More to Come
Our exec team is always looking for ways that we can stay innovative. We’re always looking for creative ways to provide a work environment where people are excited not only about the work they do, but also enjoy the company that employs them.
