All work and no play would make ZeroTurnaround — a Java productivity tools maker — a dull company, but that’s not a problem for its Hub-based sales, marketing and human resources teams.
Walk into the company’s Boylston Street office at
10 a.m. and it’s “power hour” time — a standing-only period for ZeroTurnaround’s nearly three dozen local workers. As music fills the C-shaped, 5,500-square-foot space, employees feed off that energy as they start cranking out global phone calls.
“Our personalities are actually projected through our products and our users see that,” said marketing director Jeremy Lopez. “So if we give them the environment such as this to work in, it makes it that much better for that to be projected through to our products.”
Triangle clangs, gong bangs and horn blasts signal different milestones — sales and arranged client meetings included — as the playlist changes to “Sussudio” by Phil Collins or “Danger Zone” by Kenny Loggins. An office wall coated with names and figures carries a slogan, “Great products + Happy customers = Happy company,” as officials stress that no accomplishment is too small to savor here.
“Even if you do 10,000 sales a month, that’s not a lot in terms of cheering, so if you actually break it up and do it by the milestone, there’s a lot more celebrating of the smaller successes, which is a motivating factor,” Lopez said. “I don’t care who you are, when you hear somebody clapping for you, it makes you smile.”
ZeroTurnaround seems poised to rival Google in terms of employee perks. The company’s Hub office boasts a pingpong table, a PlayStation3 console and Nerf guns, which all offer workers a quick break from pushing the company’s suite of JRebel and
LiveRebel Java products.
Founded in Estonia in 2009, ZeroTurnaround has 3,000 clients ranging from Fortune 100 companies to small consultants, said Alex Laats, president and chief operating officer. He added that the company expands its sales figures, on average, by 180 percent year-over-year, and is expected to grow its total employee headcount from about 80 to 120 by the end of 2013.
“We have thousands of leads we’re working on at any given time, so when you’re working on thousands of leads, there’s always the next one to work on so you can never get too down on one and never too up on one,” Laats, 47, told the Herald. “Our guys are here to help our customers as opposed to try to sell our customers.”
Though ZeroTurnaround’s software development happens in Estonia, Hub workers still can watch, via video portal, employees there playing foosball. In prior years, the company has even treated employees to “working vacations” on the Greek island of Crete.
Should workers need privacy from the nonstop music, they can conduct business in closed-door “breakout” rooms or a “war room” conference area.
“Overall, I’d rather have people be energized and having fun and an occasional, ‘Oh, I couldn’t hear,’ than having a dead quiet atmosphere where it’s like, ‘Oh man, I just made my hundredth call and no one’s picked up today,’ ” said sales director Ethan Schechter. “That, to me, was always the worst part about sales when I was starting out.”
The office fun could escalate once ZeroTurnaround moves its Hub operations to an 11,000-square-foot office at 399 Boylston St. at the end of May, Laats added.
“With that open space, I have no idea what’s going to happen,” he said. “For all we know, we could have pro wrestling going on there.”
(Boston Herald)
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