August 6, 2008 1:47 PM PDT
One reason to like working at Novell
One of the things that I loved about working at Novell was how family friendly it is. The company takes "Daughter/Son to Work" days seriously, which is probably the reason for this card that all visitors are required to fill out.
Novell must have lots of underage visitors
(Credit: Matt Asay)What was the last time you saw that at any other company? Never? Exactly.
Of course, given the savvy operator that Ron Hovsepian is, it could be that he's just trying to get quality labor for less. Who better to build next-generation software than the next generation? :-)
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
To his credit, Ron was making steps to rebalance that - with his three sides to the relationship - staff; company; shareholder and the drive to make them all equally important. Pity that it didn't filter down to the intermediate management :-(
It became so common that one co-worker kept a basket of toys under their desk for the kids. More companies should ask themselves: Would I rather have my employees bring their kids to work with them or take the time off? Because they were more willing to work with me during "office" time, I was more willing to invest time after hours and on weekends. It was win-win for both of us.