Creating a Great Place to Work
At the height of “the bubble,” a decade defined by a burning hot economy and the founding of many Internet companies, lots of firms were losing their top performers to dot.com upstarts. Almost overnight, they found themselves scrambling to find ways to retain their people. Start-ups were offering large signing bonuses to lure people away from big companies who, in turn, found themselves with hundreds of vacancies and an unemployment rate at the lowest level in over 30 years. For a short time, retention bonuses were all the rage, but it was quickly clear that using money to retain people created many more problems than it solved.
As companies turned to retention surveys and benchmarking for insights, they revealed that money was not the deciding factor in why most top performers stayed. People stayed because they felt they worked at a “great place.” So what were the best companies doing to create workplaces that people consider ”great”?
Two key enablers came up over and over in best practice studies:
- No “one size fits all” human resource management mentality
- Unconstrained recognition at all levels
Great places to work encourage managers to respond to what people want on a personal level. They encourage and train managers to ask and uncover what is important to each person in the organization. They know that what’s important to a sales person (for example, top brand, commission risk/reward, personal independence) differs greatly from a technical person (for example, access to leading edge tools, technologies, creative people, skills enhancement, challenging work, pay stability) and that each person in the organization wants and defines a “great place to work” on a personal level. They understand that competitive pay and benefit plans are never enough to create company loyalty and trust. That can only be done on a personal level. And they know that recruiting and training new workers is far more disruptive and expensive than empowering managers to understand and respond to the needs of individuals. So they take the time to do it well.
Great places to work go to extraordinary lengths to frequently recognize and reward employee and team efforts – both successes and great failures! They don’t rely on big company programs (which are often “quota based” and politically suspect) but they encourage every manager to be innovative and liberal with recognition efforts at every opportunity. They encourage the creation of recognition programs that are meaningful and valued by local organizations and which establish common bonds between people and performance norms. Some of the best recognition programs result in awards of nominal value. Research shows that it’s meaningful, public recognition that people value and appreciate the most. It’s literally amazing what people will do to be recognized!
What drives you to stay? What kinds of things are most important to you? Let us know!
