Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

How Over-the-Top Will You Go to Boost Employee Morale?

For some business owners, good culture is everything, and they will pay top dollar for it.  Mitch Goldstone is one of those business owners. Goldstone, who is president and CEO of California-based photo scanning service ScanMyPhotos.com, has no qualms about going way over-the-top for his annual employee retreat in Las Vegas. The price tag is a whopping $65,000.

Goldstone’s grand design includes meeting his 17 employees at the airport with chauffeured Rolls Royce Ghost limousines.  At the MGM Grand’s swanky Skylofts, employees receive nonstop attention from personal 24-hour butlers and mingle with celebrities.  They eat at five-star restaurants, score front row seats to Cirque du Soleil and third row seats to Elton John, and cap it all off with a helicopter tour of the Grand Canyon.

Employees as First Priority 

Creating a culture of appreciation is one thing, but is this much appreciation really necessary?  Goldstone thinks so.  “Successful entrepreneurs understand that it is all about the employees; they are the fuel that powers a company's success.  Employees have to be put first, even ahead of customers, so you can’t be cheap and send everyone to a local restaurant.  No level of extravagance is too much to reward loyalty,” he said.

Apparently, it works.  Goldstone claims that his organization has zero turnover and that ScanMyPhotos.com recently marked its 21^st year in business.  The Vegas retreat cleverly ties into the company’s mission, too.  “Our business is to preserve millions of precious photo memories, and along the way, we want to create new ones for ourselves that we’ll remember forever,” said Goldstone.

Bonus Benefits

Employee morale aside, Goldstone and his advisors recognize the public relations value inherent in pulling off the most spectacular employee retreat anyone’s heard of.  All over the web, blogs are buzzing about ScanMyPhotos.com and prospective customers are flocking to the website.  In all likelihood, these new customers will pay for the revenue lost when Goldstone suspended operations for the retreat.

I suppose my question is: What kind of message does this send to companies looking to improve their cultures and create more desirable places to work?  Is culture about putting your employees in an elevator with A-listers, or is it about sending them handwritten birthday cards and ensuring they can pay the hospital bill if they get in a car accident?  Is it about letting them live like gluttons for a weekend, or it is about making retirement contributions that will help feed them until they’re 90?

Goldstone is the first to admit that Vegas isn’t everything.  ScanMyPhotos.com employees also receive benefits including free lunch and 100 percent health coverage.  And perhaps what says the most about ScanMyPhotos.com’s culture is the fact that the employees are willing to spend all of this time together and seem to genuinely have a blast.  I mean, hey, I’ve worked in cultures that couldn’t even make Vegas fun.

Here’s something else to consider: It sounds like the ScanMyPhotos.com culture has been a pretty nice one all along.  But if your work environment is unsupportive or even hostile and morale is really suffering, a gesture like this may well seem empty and contrived and has the potential to turn off employees even more.  If you really want to improve things, it’s simple: Listen and make gradual changes based on the feedback you receive.

For his part, Goldstone is now under pressure to keep the party going.  “The Vegas retreat was the experience of a lifetime…until next year.”

This post was originally published at the AMEX Open Forum.  Have you checked out my Culture Beat column yet?

 

How to Make Your Brand Unforgettable

Bulbstorm is a marketing startup based in Phoenix with 25 employees that offers a social engagement platform that allows users to create interactive Web experiences. The company’s employees are always looking for creative ways to get people to engage online, ideally for six-plus minutes at a time.

Bulbstorm also likes to engage people offline, and that’s where the three-piece orange suit and alligator shoes come in. Its employees wear this memorable getup to every conference and sales meeting they attend. What started as an inside joke in a company with the official corporate color of orange has become a critical element of the Bulbstorm culture.

“The orange coats stand out in public settings,” proudly claims Matt Simpson, Bulbstorm’s director of marketing. “They show that we’re completely open-minded, that we’re nerdy and daring. Also, we’re proud of where we work. Instead of being guns for hire, we’re building a company, and that differentiates us from other marketing and development firms drawing from the same talent pool.”

The Value of Uniformity

Having a visible company brand helps from a recruiting standpoint, certainly, but it also reminds Bulbstorm employees of their solidarity.  The orange outfits make employees feel like they belong to something special and superior, a concept that resonated with Simpson as he read Jim Collins’s book Built to Last.  “We know that we’re all in this together, and this impacts the quality of our work,” Simpson says.  “We’re more creative because we listen to everyone’s ideas, and we’re more reliable because we truly care for one another.”

But is Bulbstorm going to be able to sustain its outlandish brand as it grows?  Well, that’s the plan.  Although the company has experienced its growing pains, most of the original team members have personal ownership in the culture and have diligently passed it down to new employees.  Bulbstorm’s leaders also feel strongly about staying “orange” because dress is a tangible way to show the world who they are.  “For a fast-growing company with a steady influx of fresh hires, it’s vital that culture manifests itself in a very concrete way,” notes Simpson.

Start With the Adjective Test

The first step to creating an unforgettable brand is to come up with two or three adjectives that describe your culture, and then examine all of the points at which you interface with your customer to make sure your adjectives come across clearly.

For example, one of my friends has a wedding planning business with 10 consultants.  The team describes its culture as “sophisticated, social and cool under pressure.”  Sure enough, the company’s website resembles that of an elegant, world-class hotel and, at the lightly accented and uncluttered office, the receptionist greets each prospective client with a martini.  On the job, consultants wear black cocktail dresses and chat easily with guests.

Like its sister culture, brand is ever-evolving and should always be top of mind.  To that end, talk with your employees often to get fresh ideas for how you can communicate your brand in a way that is memorable and also constantly reinforces your vision and direction.  When you hit upon something that works, strive for power and consistency by considering ways you can expand on it in your virtual and real worlds.

This post was originally published at the AMEX Open Forum.  Have you checked out my Culture Beat column yet?

 

Good Culture Is In, Inflated Salaries Are Out

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I see it every day.  Employees at all levels—especially women—are stepping away from positions that will pay them the highest salary, and moving into ones that provide them a better quality of life.

A friend of mine, Lucy, was a talented fifth-year associate at a Top 5 law firm in Manhattan.  She made so much money that her husband didn’t have to work, ever. But just as her partner was getting ready to buy a new set of golf clubs, Lucy quit.  She went to work as internal legal counsel for a company that manufactures environmentally-friendly home products.  Lucy makes $100k less in this new position, but her office is sunny and collaborative and her colleagues respect her personal time. She loves it.

A caring culture is tops

Lucy’s story is in line with the findings of a recent Monster/Unum study of job seekers, which determined that, over everything else, 87 percent of employees want a company "that truly cares about the well-being of its employees."  By contrast, only 66 percent of respondents rated a high base salary as very important.

Another 2011 Unum survey with Harvard Business Review Analytic Services solicited human resource executives’ opinions on this issue, with similar results. This research found that corporate culture is critical to driving engagement, recruitment and retention of a quality workforce.

A company’s values and focus on employee fulfillment are apparently the most important factors in attracting and engaging quality employees, and being a company that cares about the well-being of its staff was twice as likely to be viewed as very important in attracting and retaining staff as providing a high base salary.

Money doesn’t buy satisfaction

You may be skeptical of these results. After all, with retirement funds still dwindling as a result of an economy that has been in the dumps for several years, why wouldn’t employees want all of the money they could get? Harvard University psychologist Daniel Gilbert provides some clues in his book Stumbling on Happiness, suggesting that money increases happiness only when it lifts people out of objective poverty and into the middle class. Once you’re in the middle class and your basic needs are met, income increases don’t positively impact your level of happiness or quality of life.

This idea has been supported by global surveys that ask people how satisfied they are with their lives on a scale from 1 to 7 (1 being "not at all satisfied with my life" and 7 being "completely satisfied with my life"). Among American multimillionaires, the average happiness score is 5.8. Want to know who else had a score of 5.8? The cattle-herding Masai tribe in Kenya, which has no electricity or running water. Interesting.

It will cost some money

Since readers of this column obviously care about creating and sustaining a great workplace culture, this is good news. It’s even better for those who are small business owners, as while your salaries may be lower, it’s also easier for you to develop the meaningful one-on-one employee relationships that lead to a positive culture.

What everyone should remember, though, is that great culture is about more than having donuts for breakfast and being nice to and supportive of one another. To be really competitive in the culture department, Unum says you have to pony up for things like health, lifestyle and retirement benefits. While this won’t always be 100 percent doable, hopefully research like Unum’s will prompt you to consider culture-boosting perks more seriously than before.

This post was originally published at the AMEX Open Forum. Have you checked out my Culture Beat column yet?

 

Life at the Googleplex

I’ve always been an admirer of Sergey Brin, a Russian Jew like myself who landed in Maryland.  Just a few years older than me, Sergey co-founded one of the largest technology companies in the world: Google.  But what started as a garage project is now a multi-billion dollar global organization employing nearly 20,000, and it has been interesting to see how Google’s culture has evolved.

Google corporate headquarters, known as the Googleplex, is the center of the Google universe.  It’s located on an enormous campus in Mountain View, Calif.—or Silicon Valley—to which employees from the San Francisco Bay area are bussed daily via a free, Wi-Fi enabled and environmentally-friendly shuttle.

Google Feeds Its Brains

The Googleplex takes employee benefits to a whole new level.  For one thing, there’s the food. Google provides its employees with three gourmet, all-you-can-eat meals a day, in various cafes around campus. At one, Pintxo 47, employees can select from tapas-style entrees including steak tartare, rabbit confit and Porcini mushrooms. Googlers sit at whatever table has an opening and enjoy lunch as a time to meet new people and discuss their projects with members of other teams.

Work Made Easy

After lunch, going back to the office is a pleasant experience. There are very few closed doors, as Google favors shared cube areas and huddle rooms. If your laptop is acting up, there’s a Tech Stop on every floor that will fix it on the spot.  Management has decreed that 20 percent of employee time can be spent on a personal project. You can bring your dog to work and ride a bicycle or scooter to a meeting in another campus building.

Recreation Abounds

When you’re not working, there’s no real reason to leave. At the Googleplex, you can work out, swim, play pool and volleyball, get a massage, go to the doctor or get your hair cut.  You can drop your children at daycare or get assistance with financial planning, adoption or nonprofit initiatives. There are employee interest groups for everything, including meditation and salsa dancing, and—to peak your intellectual curiosity—Google sponsors lectures from visiting authors, professors, scientists and politicians.

A Startup Vibe?

On its website, Google says that it maintains a small company feel.  Every employee is a hands-on contributor, and everyone wears several hats. No one hesitates to pose questions directly to Larry or Sergey in weekly all-hands meetings. Google claims to be aggressively inclusive in its hiring, and it publicly favors ability over experience.

As Chief Culture Officer Stacy Savides Sullivan told CNET a few years back:  “Google-y is defined as somebody who is fairly flexible, adaptable and not focusing on titles and hierarchy, and just gets stuff done.”

It’s easy to see how the Google culture might be ideal for a twenty-something employee, because the environment is very similar to a college campus. So concurs an ex-Googler who now works at Microsoft:  “These kids don’t have a life yet so they spend all of their time at work. Google provides everything they need, even clothes (clean tee-shirts are placed in bins for people to grab)!”

The downside of Google is its lack of career development and progression. Like a startup, the organization is very flat, and it’s not common to be promoted from an individual contributor to a manager. A good review might result in a salary increase and a higher title, but responsibilities don’t necessarily change. However, as long as you know what you’re getting into, the Googleplex perks are hard to pass up.

This post was originally published at the AMEX Open Forum.  Have you checked out my Culture Beat column yet?

4 Ways Small Businesses Can Build a Great Culture

Most of the small business owners I know have never thought about their culture, or anything else that reminds them of working for the man. For some, the concept of an organizational culture sounds like something you have to have 1,000 cogs in the wheel to worry about, and they don’t have time, anyhow.

One of my entrepreneur-minded friends laughed out loud when I told him about this post.  “You’ve got to be kidding,” he said. “As if I don’t have enough to do with management, accounting, production, inventory, hiring and scheduling—now you’re suggesting I think about my culture?”

The thing is, if you’re a successful small-business owner, you probably have a strong culture already and won’t have to start from scratch. You can improve things exponentially with some minor tweaks to your approach.

As for that approach, small-business culture can’t be dictated via policy a la Fortune 500 company.  If you write down what you want your culture to be and try an official implementation exercise with your employees, they will look at you like you have three heads. In a small business, culture is encompassed by what you do on an everyday basis, not what you say once. So, here are four ideas to incorporate into your routine.

Be Consistent With Hiring

Every time you make a new hire, you should have a checklist of your ideal employee’s attributes in front of you. Although you may need a person with specific skills or experience, you should also consider whether he or she will contribute positively to your culture. For instance, if you have eight staff members who all possess can-do attitudes, a high-level of energy and a bent toward innovation, together they will create a rewarding culture.

Don’t Be Their Friend

At the end of the day, the owner or manager of a company is the boss and should behave as such. Stick to your policies on professional appearance and conduct, and don’t blur the lines when socializing. A collegial atmosphere is one thing, but work does not always have to be fun for employees; that’s why it’s called work. Close as you may be to your employees, you must still hold them accountable for independently managing their responsibilities and delivering great results.

Embrace a Team Mentality

Be receptive to your employees’ suggestions and consult them when preparing to make big decisions. Incentivize them to drive the business’s growth and reward them for developing niche areas of expertise. Keep the team on the same page with weekly get-togethers in which you communicate your big picture vision. Also, praise employees who are able to successfully resolve conflicts and who work harmoniously with one another.

Encourage Mutual Respect

Demonstrate for your employees the way you would like them to treat customers and each other by being courteous and considerate during stressful periods. Similarly, show that disrespectful comments or behavior will not be tolerated in your workplace. The best way to lead a team to a productive culture is by example!

This piece first appeared on the AMEX Open Forum.  Have you checked out my Culture Beat column yet?

"The System" Has a Face

In the business world, the nonprofit world, academia, you name it, there is something known as “the system.” The system is a set of rules for how things must be done, and how people must conduct themselves. “The system” is associated with bureaucracy, and we who must work within its confines often find ourselves frustrated and angry. Depending on how personally invested we are, we may go out of our way to change it so that everyone can be more efficient, more productive, and more profitable.

Railing against “the system” also seems to be a safe way of complaining.  As long as we’re directing our ire in a general, faceless direction, no one is going to get their feelings hurt, right?  Sounds logical, except we have to remember that for every system that’s in place, there is a group of people who came up with it, and who work very hard to maintain it.  For example, your company’s human resources department likely slaved away for months coming up with that new performance management system.  They reviewed dozens of potential solutions, ultimately chose the one they thought was best, and then spent the better part of the year planning the rollout. 

When the process for your annual review goes awry, you won’t blame your boss – at least not directly.  Instead, you’ll send e-mails and tell anyone who will listen how much the new performance management system sucks. And your actions won’t endear you to the folks in HR. You might not be attacking them personally, but because that performance management is their baby, it feels like it.

If you want to keep your reputation intact, it’s wise to treat “the system” as a person you have to answer to.

Nobody Cares About Titles - Or Do They?

Corporate hierarchies are out. Organizations are flatter than ever. Entrepreneurialism is the new best practice. The newest college grads are railing against the establishment, saying they don’t want to “pay their dues” in order to climb the corporate ladder rung by rung, and that they want to do meaningful work right away. And the business world is listening to them. It seems as if the entry-level grunt is a thing of the past.

Given these changes, the tendency is to think that titles, even when you’re working within the context of a large organization, don’t really matter so much anymore. I myself believed this, until a few years ago when I received a promotion to vice president. I had been doing the work associated with this role for quite a while, so when I started using the new title, it was really more of a formality.

But subtly, little things around the office began to change. I noticed that more people actually answered the phone when I called, instead of letting me go straight into voicemail. Executives would communicate with me themselves instead of sending their assistants to find me. I started getting to sit in on planning meetings no one had considered inviting me to before. And when I’d walk into my colleagues’ cube area, someone would jokingly say, “okay, everyone, back to work, the boss is here.”

It then occurred to me that a title like vice president still carries a great deal of weight. Despite what we might like to think, people have a certain perception of us, and treat us a certain way, based on our level. No matter how much we know and contribute, to some extent our value and importance will always be tied to our rank – a rank which is sometimes well-deserved, and sometimes not so well-deserved. In much of today’s business world, a higher title means not only more money and a bigger office, but the ability and influence to get your job done more efficiently, and with less agida.

So next time you’re thinking of blowing off your performance review because you can’t see the point in advancing to the next level, maybe try looking a bit harder. The point is there.

5 Ways to Become More Disciplined

Self-discipline is the internal drive to make things happen.  Some might argue that it is a trait that you either have or you don’t, but I believe that anyone can increase their self-discipline with a little effort.  Here are some suggestions to implement during your work day.

Create a Daily Schedule

One key to self-discipline is to adhere to a strict daily schedule.  Set aside a block of time to accomplish each task, and when that period is up, move on.  If it’s not time to check e-mail or surf the Internet, don’t do it.

Turn One Task into Many

Sometimes, a task can seem so big that it’s overwhelming, and because you don’t even know how or where to start, you become paralyzed.  Therefore, you will need to take a complicated endeavor and break it down into short, manageable tasks. Once you’ve finished one component, you’ll gain momentum and enthusiasm.  Start small.

Do Tasks You Enjoy

Self-discipline comes more effortlessly when you’re genuinely enjoying what you’re doing.  While there will inevitably be parts of any job that you don’t like as much, try to find a way to outsource tasks that you find very unpleasant so that they don’t wreak havoc with your motivation.

Don’t Insist on Perfection

You should also realize that perfection will hinder your efforts to be more disciplined.  If you decide not to take action until conditions are 100percent ideal, or one part of a project is 100percent completed, you’ll never get anywhere.  Instead, it’s most important to keep moving, even if it means doing a job that’s just good enough, or returning later to a problematic issue.

Reward Yourself

No matter how pressed for time you are, don’t forget to reward yourself when you finish each task.  Instead of immediately moving on to the next activity, plan to spend an hour doing something rejuvenating, like getting a massage or playing your favorite video game. Self-discipline will be easier to sustain if you can anticipate something fun at the end of long working hours.

This post was originally published on Intuit's Quickbase blog.