This week I wanted to shed some light on a few of the strategies our team uses to establish a happy and healthy working environment. After all, our tagline is ‘Healthy Practice. Healthy Patients’, so I thought it would seem somewhat hypocritical if we didn’t highlight a few of the ways we strive to provide a healthy working environment ourselves. Hopefully this will spark some ideas that you can incorporate into your own clinic.
1. Paid Gym Memberships
To help encourage HotDoc employees keep fit and healthy the company pays up to $50 a month to all those spending this amount or more on gym memberships. All team members need to do is show a receipt for a recent transaction and the additional amount is added to their fortnightly payslip.
2. Anonymous Feedback
On a weekly basis each HotDoc employee receives an email from Officevibe. The email includes a link to a short survey that focuses on a different aspect of the company each time. For instance, culture, communication, autonomy etc. All answers remain anonymous so employees can be honest without being named.
3. Work From Home Days
Many of the team members at HotDoc are also encouraged to have one or two work from home days a week. For some, like myself, this is an opportunity for team members to put all distractions aside and engage in side projects that they believe will advance the company.
This practice for unlocking enterprise-wide creativity has resulted in many of the ideas, which have helped HotDoc remain focused and innovative. Others use the opportunity to ditch the commute to work on such days so they can spend more time with their families.
4. Mini Golf
To break up the day, those who dare can pick up a club and play putt putt. Although, be warned, as soon as the club is in your hands, a lot of eyes turn to you. The current record stands at 41 hole-in-ones in a row held by our partnerships manager, Gabe (pictured below).
5. Flu Clinics
Once a year Dr Sally Lapin from Armadale Family Clinic comes into the HotDoc office to run a flu clinic for all HotDoc staff who want to be inoculated. As well as helping to prevent general bouts of cold and flu, the clinics are a more convenient way for everyone in the office to get their shots in time.
6. Weekend Trips
HotDoc managers also run weekend trips a couple of times each year as a way of getting the team together to thrash out ideas and celebrate wins. Last year our app development team headed to Phillip Island (south of Melbourne) to flesh out a new product for HotDoc clinics and our sales team enjoyed a long weekend in New Zealand after a record month of onboarding.
7. (A Lot of) Plants
To keep the HotDoc office feeling fresh and inviting we’ve added a truckload of plants, which sit upon people’s desks. At last count there were well over 100 large pots spread about. This is personally my favourite thing about the office aesthetic.
8. Fruit Delivery
On Mondays and Wednesdays a box of fresh fruit is delivered to the HotDoc offices from Your Grocer. As well as providing staff with a healthy snack this is a nice way to support local businesses.
9. A Real Coffee Machine
While having coffee inhouse isn’t that special, having a decent coffee machine that grinds fresh beans does make the mornings that much better. The beans are purchased from a local cafe, The Queensberry Pour House, which has an 8.9/10 rating on BeanHunter. And, while at times we fall into the trap of taking such a luxury for granted, it only takes the hysteria that encapsulates the office when we run out of beans once a month or so to remind everyone just how good we have it.
10. Staff-Led Workshops
Around once a month a team member from HotDoc will put a series of slides up on the projector and run a workshop on something they’ve learned. These workshops have no particular framework or guidelines. They’re simply a way to get together and share ideas. We’ve had workshops on chess (pictured below), coding, sign-language, North Korea… you name it.
11. Yoga
If you show up to HotDoc at midday on a Wednesday, you could mistake the office for some contemporary bohemian leisure centre. This is because each Wednesday a yoga teacher shows up and spends an hour taking anyone interested through a yoga class. Let’s just say you’d find it hard pressed to rattle anyones cage on a Wednesday afternoon.
