Tuesday
September 21, 2010
Filed under: Tip of the Day
 It goes without saying that happy employees help create successful companies. Here are three ways to create a motivational, inspirational and winning workplace – all cost-effective strategies that can be implemented today.
- Get charitable. Each fall, Dave Regan, vice president of sales for The Vernon Company (asi/351700), says the company raises about $20,000 for charity. Doing so, he insists, does much to solidify the company’s culture by pulling together staff for a common cause. In the course of raising funds they often end up engaging in group activities (albeit unorthodox ones), such as shopping-cart races. Last year the company built a home for Habitat for Humanity. “When you work with these people year in and year out and then you get together with them on a Saturday building a home for the underprivileged – you spend eight-hour days hammering and putting together a roof – you find out a lot about your coworkers and things they didn’t know about you,” Regan says. “We had 30 people last year, and 40 people signed up this year out of 150 employees.”
- Put on jeans. Pulling off a culture-builder on the cheap is easy. Doing it for nothing is a little harder. But Regan has found a way. In fact, one of his most successful tools “doesn’t cost us a penny,” he says. The company allows every employee to wear jeans all week long if they hit their weekly sales goals. It sounds trivial, but Regan says that since the company implemented the reward, productivity has shot up 25% on Fridays alone. “On Fridays about every hour we’ll announce, ‘This is what we’ve got to do’ to meet company goals for the week,” Regan says. “It is absolutely amazing what some of these people will do to wear jeans. They do what they have to do, including volunteering to stay late on Friday or come in on Saturday mornings to get it done,” since orders have to be processed to count toward the incentive.
- Mandate time off. At Counselor Top 40 distributor iPROMOTEu (asi/232119), workers get a day off on their birthday. Not to worry if your birthday falls on a weekend – you’ll get the Friday before off. “The idea is for an employee to sleep late, to do whatever it is you want to do, and while everyone else around you is working, you can feel special that you’re not working,” says Ross Silverstein, the company’s president. “The reason you’re not working is because it’s your birthday and the company gave you the day off.”
Another Counselor Top 40 distributor, eCompanyStore Inc. (asi/185782), does something similar by conducting a drawing for additional vacation days, two to three times a year, says Heather Heebner, the company vice president of human resources. A vacation-day raffle takes place if the company has a successful fundraising event, for example. Heebner says such practices go a long way toward creating an energetic and positive work environment – and helping to place eCompanyStore on the Counselor Best Places to Work list.
From Education Adviser, vol. 31.
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