Culture

The office sweep is the most important system you run

No onboarding programme has ever done for a team what a $5 sweep does in the week before the Grand Final.

Comstel ICT · September 2026

Every office has them. The sweep. The tipping comp nobody remembers starting. The one person who prints the ladder and sticky-tapes it to the kitchen wall. The running argument about whether it was a mark.

They’re daft, and they’re a good part of the reason people like coming in.

The traditions, ranked scientifically

1. The sweepPeak workplace democracy. The newest starter draws the favourite, the person who has followed the game for forty years draws nobody’s tip, and everyone finds this enormously funny.
2. The kitchen ladderPrinted on Monday, out of date by Friday, defended fiercely by whoever printed it.
3. Casual Friday, extendedTeam colours on the Friday. Somebody always overcommits and arrives in the full kit.
4. The pie debateEvery workplace contains exactly one person with strong and largely unwelcome opinions about the correct footy pie.
5. The long-weekend mathsVictorians get the Friday off and mention it. Repeatedly. To everyone.

The practical bit

The 2026 AFL Grand Final is Saturday 26 September at the MCG. Victoria has a public holiday on Friday 25 September, so if you have staff, suppliers or customers there, they aren’t working that day. Worth knowing before you schedule anything that depends on them.

NSW school holidays run Monday 28 September to Friday 9 October, which means offices stay quieter for a fortnight afterwards.

Before the long weekend, though

Three things worth five minutes each: set the after-hours message with a return date, ring your own main number to check where calls actually divert, and confirm last night’s backup completed. That last one especially — a failure on the Friday of a long weekend runs unnoticed until the following Wednesday.