This story should probably be categorized as an anecdote – When Corporate Culture Shows Up on YouTube. The title alone is intriguing. Here is the tease:

Still, when the card-services division held a conference over the summer, organizers asked employees Ethan Chandler and Jim DeBois to write a song for the event. Basing it on U2’s smoldering ballad, “One,” the B of A employees rewrote the lyrics of the Irish rock band’s song and renamed it “One Bank.”

We here at The Hire Sense make it our duty to keep you informed of such items so here is the actual video via YouTube. I cringed all the way through it – think of it as bankers gone really wrong (with awful lyrics). I can’t imagine sitting in the audience at this training session without losing it.

One more example from the entertaining article:

When Steve Santagati worked at a TV company, he watched one colleague paste sticky notes with lyrics onto the microphone stand. The man also began gyrating and, mostly bald, he ran his fingers through his nonhair. “We’re hoping and praying they’re kidding,” says Mr. Santagati of collegial crooners, “and then there’s that moment when you realize they really think they’re like this — a sexy rock star.”

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More from the work-life front of management: Flexibility with holiday schedules can boost worker loyalty. Absolutely true. I know, many people will comment about the abusers of such flexibility. You know, if they are abusers, they are currently applying their trade to some other area of your business. Best not to punish the upright workers due to the deceivers.

Here is a good reminder for managers any time of the year:

First, an owner needs to have the attitude that a worker’s personal life matters, even if the staff is small and there’s plenty of work to be done.

So true of the younger generations no matter what the season.

“If you have that employee sitting there from 3 to 4:30 knowing the play is on and you didn’t allow them to go there, they’re going to be anti-productive,” he said. “But if you let them go, they’ll feel much better about working for the company, and they’ll probably make up more than that hour and a half that they missed.”

And one last point that may get lost as people move up into more powerful roles within the company:

“All these ideas are a function of everything that I really hated when I was working for other people, especially in the corporate arena,” Bisson said. She said she could recall all the holiday tasks she couldn’t get done when she was an employee, and said her goal is to help reduce employee stress.

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In what can only be called a sign of the times, “Cyber Monday” has arrived today. If you are not aware of its meaning, it is the first Monday after Thanksgiving. Apparently, today is a significant online retail day as many people look for bargains in cyberspace as they head back to work.

In light of Cyber Monday, I offer up a real distraction for techno geeks like myself – Popular Science’s What’s New for gadgets this Christmas season. I ended up on their site after reading a short article from the Pioneer Press website.

Warning: This site can be a real time waster.

Now that you have been warned, click through to image #6 and you will see a USB turntable for your old vinyl LPs so you can digitize them for your MP3 player. Talk about “classic contemporary.”

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