A Pet Projects Program Can Make Good Use of 'Extra' Time

By Jennifer Blanchard, HRTools

When it comes to the average eight-hour work day, most employees will tell you there’s usually a lull in their day that they spend surfing the Internet, checking their e-mail or making phone calls to check on the family.

Employers can make good use of their employees’ "extra" time by creating a Pet Projects Program at their company.

A Pet—or Personal—Projects Program would consist of allowing employees to spend up to 20 percent of their time at the office on personal projects they are really passionate about. These projects could be anything from creating a new product to updating an old process to any other innovative idea.

A few companies that have a program like this implemented at their organization are Genentech, 3M and Google.

In fact, some companies even require their employees to spend a percentage of their time on personal projects.

Google requires their engineers to spend 20 percent of their time working on projects unrelated to their primary job duties. On the Google employment Web site about life as an engineer, it says, "Google engineers all have ‘20 percent time’ in which they’re free to pursue projects they’re passionate about."

Stacy Sullivan, Google’s head of human resources, said in the Workforce Management article, "On the Clock But Off on Their Own: Pet-project Programs Set To Gain Wider Acceptance," that "The policy emerged a few years ago and has its roots in the company’s desire to foster innovation." And it applies to all employees.

3M, a company that makes everything from duct tape to veterinary X-ray film, has the "15 percent rule," which encourages its researchers to spend 15 percent of their time on independent projects. This rule has been in place since the 1920s.

According to 3M’s Web site, the company has an "unstoppable commitment to innovation, creating new technologies and products." From this commitment came the invention Post-It Notes, back in 1977, which was a personal project of one of its researchers.

Foster Innovation

Due to the huge workplace shift that’s about to happen, with the Baby Boomers retiring and Generations X and Y taking over, innovation is one important way organizations can position themselves for continued success in the future.

Interested in fostering innovation at your company? Here’s a 3-step program for giving it a go. In its developing stages, you will probably want to use a test group to see if this is a program that you can implement throughout your company. A test group can include any number of employees but is usually easiest with 10 or less.

Get the Conversation Started

Invite your employees to a brainstorm session and ask them these two questions:

What are some ideas you’ve come up with for projects you’d like to undertake?
If you were given time during your work week to pursue this project, would you want to?

Then see the responses you get. You may find that your employees are bursting at the seams with ideas. Have a conversation about each idea and ask how the employee would execute it. By discussing these ideas you can find out if this type of program would work at your company (and if there are any good ideas at all, they are probably worth at least exploring them).

If your employees don’t have any ideas on the spot (which is unlikely) ask them to take a couple days to marinate, and then reconvene. By getting the conversation started your people will now have this program in the back of their minds as they go about their week and ideas will start popping up here and there.

Manage the Program

This program will work best if you assign each employee a manager to report to. This could be their daily manager or it could be one specific person who will manage the entire program.

The manager and the employee should draw up a loose outline of the project and its estimated timeframe.

After their project is planned, the manager would check in with them on a regular basis to see how they’re progressing.

Joyce Gioia, a consultant and author of Impending Crisis: Too Many Jobs, Too Few People, said in the article, "On the Clock," that accountability is critical for a program like this otherwise it could deteriorate into a big waste of time.

Set the Ball in Motion

Send your employees off to work on their projects, making sure to set check-in dates.

As you start seeing this test group completing projects, you will have a better grasp on whether or not this type of program would work at your company.

The day-to-day work week can sometimes become dull and uninspiring, so by having a fun, inspiring personal project to work on, employees can reenergize themselves to keep working on their daily tasks.

Try implementing a program like this at your company—even for a couple months—to see the kind of response you get from it. You may be completely surprised (and have some great new company projects to brag about!).

Though often very difficult for employers to swallow—employees already complete personal tasks on company time, approved or not. A recent survey from Salary.com found that the average worker frets away about two hours per day, not including lunch.

So since it’s happening anyhow, your company might as well benefit from it.

Rate this content: