How does your company get the best staff...

It is a new year today! When it is a new year I always think about how the year will look when I write the figures. Like when you see a painting with the name and the year under. I think 2008 will look great when I write it on some of my paintings. If I get the time to do any.

When I find articles about the company Google I tend to read them. I think that is an interesting company. I think they understand what many companies don´t today. At least here in sweden. I think quality and good staff comes from above. If the owner takes care of the employees, the employees will see their working hours as more than an job. I read that Google serves all kinds of food for free. They have a daycare within the company so that parents can go and get their kids and eat together. It is easy staying a while after working hours since the daycare keeps open whenever you need to leave the kids. Apart from all the benefits and fun these people have working at this company they also have a different approach to business. I read this in the latest article “TALK” I got when I was flying with Malmo Aviation a few months ago. When they decide if they want to release a new product they don´t ask how much money it will bring. They ask themselves how many users it can get. This is pretty unusual and the reason is that the company is run by technicians and not by s sales department like most other companies. Like they said: “If there is enough users, there will be money coming in the future”. Another fun thing I read is that the employees can use 20 % of their working week to develop a project of their own liking. They can work with an idea they have been thinking about and it can be anything as long as it’s a possible future product of Google. When you feel ready, a board will take a decision if you will get promoted with money and staff to realize your baby. It is not strange that this company comes up with so many great ideas.

I have a friend who applied for a job at this company. I think it would be fun just to hear about all these great things they are doing. I hope she gets to the interview and also that they realize that she is a great girl.

Have you heard about someone who ordered a bottle of wine and sent it out after tasting it? We used to joke about people doing that cause I’ve never thought one bottle of red wine were that different from another, and we never ordered anything but the wine of the house. After finding this Amarone Alpha Zeta wine, I have been talking myself warm about this experience of finding a special Amarone wine that I think is the greatest I’ve ever tasted. I don´t know if I am the reason but the this wine was impossible to find in any liquor store in our town a few days before Christmas. Perhaps a few others than me have discovered this excellent wine. When we visited our favourite restaurant last week Fred ended the order with; “Bring one bottle of Amarone in as well”. When they came to the table the bottle was another Amarone than the one they used to have. We got a bit dissapointed. Fred tasted, I tasted and we really looked disappointed. It was nothing wrong with this wine but the taste was very different from the one we had tasted a couple of weeks ago. The waitress told us that they were out of the old one and this was the replacement. It was a bit embarassing but we had to send the bottle out. The waitress recommended another one, but there is nothing like this. It has such a nice raisin taste.

Let´s hope 2008 will be the best year ever!
Anna