9 Steps Towards Creating A Great Workplace

FORTNE MAGAZINE recently published its annual ranking of the 100 best companies to work for in America. The best-known part of the article is that luxurious list of benefits these companies lavish on their employees—generous stock options, child care, even at-desk manicures. But creating a great workplace isn’t all a matter of perks, says Robert Levering of the Great Place to Work Institute in San Francisco, which compiles the Fortune list. Rather, a great workplace is one where people are engaged in their jobs, where there’s mutual respect between employees and management, and where people feel that they’re treated fairly. Benefits are important, he adds, but they’re a reflection of the underlying culture, not the cause of it.

What’s more, the best workplaces get as much as they give. Consulting firm Kepner-Tregoe, in Princeton, N.J., recently completed an in-depth study of several “retention leaders”—companies with low employee turnover rates. The study found that these firms balanced high performance standards with a near-obsessive regard for their employees’well-being.

And the real news about creating a great workplace is this: as a manager, you don’t need to stand on the sidelines waiting for big, centralized, company- wide programs. The Gallup Organization, also based in Princeton, interviewed about one million workers (including 80,000 managers) over the last 25 years, asking them about all aspects of their work life. It found that
even in the best companies, retention, productivity, and worker satisfaction all vary greatly from unit to unit. “People may join a company because of its brand identity,” explains Gallup senior VP Marcus Buckingham, “but how long they stay depends to a great extent on the quality of their manager.” (The Gallup study will be published as First, Break All the Rules, in May.)

To some managers, this isn’t surprising. “I’ve talked with many employees who stay in a work situation because they like their supervisor so much,” notes David Pulatie, a senior VP at Motorola. “When people see their manager going out of the way for them, that’s an enormous attraction.”

How can you start creating a great workplace right here, right now, in your unit? Here are nine tips from the experts:
1
Help people see the purpose of what they do. According to Kepner- Tregoe CEO Quinn Spitzer, people stay at jobs that are intellectually stimulating or personally rewarding. Unfortunately, many jobs seem to have neither attribute. “That’s why Dilbert is so popular,” says Spitzer. “He strikes a resonant chord about the fundamental drudgery of work.” But even repetitive jobs can be infused with meaning if employees understand how what they do drives the company’s objectives and contributes to business success. “Take someone who packages and sterilizes medical products,” says Tom Rochon, a VP of human resources with Ethicon Endo Surgery, in Cincinnati. “We help them understand the importance [to the company] of putting products to market in a certain amount of time and with a certain quality.”

If your people do many different things—writing reports, talking to customers, attending meetings, and so on—ask them to rank these tasks by how important they think each one is to the organization. What you hear may surprise you. “I talked with an employee in one of the ‘best’ companies,” recalls Spitzer. “She said she would be willing to commit to anything as long as she didn’t have to go to another meeting. She saw these meetings as a callous disregard for her time.” If you hear such responses and you think people are wrong in their perceptions —if those meetings really are important—help them understand why and how all those “unimportant” tasks matter.
2
Expect a lot. Challenge people not only to meet their goals but to exceed them, advises Keric DeChant, VP of strategic sales development at Stryker Corp., a Kalamazoo, Mich., maker of medical equipment. When DeChant was midwest sales manager, he made it clear to his sales reps that he expected them to perform as a team even though they were paid straight commission— and to hit group goals, not just their own. One rep, he recalls, met his yearly sales target by October and could have coasted for the rest of the year. Instead he raised his team’s numbers by continuing to sell, and in fact had his biggest month in December. “I never had to ask my reps for numbers,” says DeChant.

“They just knew my expectations of them, and they eventually had the sameexpectations of themselves and of the team.”
3
But don’t dictate the “how.”
Nature tells us that the best route from A to B isn’t always a straight line, it’s the path of least resistance. So while good companies set high standards,
they’re flexible about how they let people meet those standards. One salesperson might sell through relationship building, another through sheer technical competence, a third by calling more prospects. If they’re all top sellers, does it matter how they got there? “If you standardize the end,” says Gallup’s Buckingham, “you don’t have to standardize the means.”
4
Be really available.Levering found that managers’availability was a crucial variable in the companies he surveyed for Fortune. “Most of us are distrustful in work situations because there’s such a huge power imbalance,” he notes.

“That makes it extremely important to make management accessible.” If you want to know how accessible you are, says Kepner-Tregoe’s Spitzer, look at last year’s appointment calendar. Try to identify how much time you spent talking to employees about their agendas. “If you’re not spending 10% at it,” he says, “you don’t have a satisfied work force.”

Availability may require a physical move. Bruce McLenitham, who manages Steelcase North America’s chair
plant in Grand Rapids, Mich., was the first plant manager in the company to move his office to the factory floor. Why? “I’m the factory manager, not the office manager,” he quips. “You go where your customer is—and I look at every employee as a customer.” The move enhanced both morale and productivity, he says, and other plant managers have since followed suit. McLenitham also makes a point of getting to know people on a personal level. “I know everyone’s name,” he says. “I know their kids’ names and their dogs’ names. I have an mployee who plays hockey. The day after his games I make an effort to ask him how it went.”
5
Break the golden rule. You may hate micromanagement, but some of your people may want to be checked in with every day. And just because you like to make decisions doesn’t mean everyone does. “If you put someone like that in a role where they have to make decisions, you’re creating lots of stress,” says McLenitham. Instead, give the job to someone who thrives on decision making. Tasks can be tailored to the individual as well. “A couple of people might like paperwork. Some prefer working on computers—let them do the graphs.” Treat people not as you would like to be treated, but as they would like to be treated.
6
Get the word out—in 24 hours
or less. Bob Nelson was a department manager at Blanchard Training and Development in San Diego, with 16 people in his department. “I made a commitment that within 24 hours of any management meeting, I would meet with my department and discuss the implications of the meeting for their jobs.” The result? “They felt treated like colleagues,” says Nelson. “Another manager said, ‘Your people are so pumped up about what you’re doing—how do you do it?’”
7
Make sure people have what
they need to do their jobs. The Gallup study found that, next to knowing what was expected of them, what made employees most productive was being given the materials and equipment they needed for their jobs (see box, below). The implications? “If an employee needs a software upgrade to do her job effectively,” says Nelson, “then go to bat with the company to help her get it.”
8
Say thanks. Great workplaces put a lot of time and energy into making people feel special. That’s the real value of perks like in-house manicures. But appreciation doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. Rochon’s company, for
example, encourages supervisors to recognize employees (and employees to recognize each other) for a job well done. If a team spends a weekend wrapping up a project, each person might get a video coupon, $5 for the cafeteria, or a pizza. “The key is speed,” he says. “The reward has to be given on the spot.” And though the rewards are small, they go a long way. “A lot of people tell us, ‘You don’t know how much it meant.’”
9
Have fun! McLenitham throws a picnic when his plant meets its safety numbers. The managers do the cooking. On employees’ birthdays, supervisors give the employee a sheet telling them what happened on that day in history. “It’s not much, but it helps build a relationship.”

Sometimes, poking a little fun is the best way to make a serious point. McLenitham, for instance, does a “man on the street” video once a month. “We had trouble having people fill out scrap forms. So I had someone film me on a machine making parts. I got a bad part, got angry, and threw it in the trash. A coordinator came up and said, ‘Hey,you can’t throw that away without filling out the scrap form.’ So I stomped into the plant manager’s office screaming and yelling. A guy doing an impression of me told me how filling out the forms will give us data to reduce defects.” It must have been a great video. McLenitham says that the plant’s scrap reporting has been excellent since he made it

How Good Is Your Workplace?
Job satisfaction is notoriously hard to measure—but a Gallup study of one million workers found that satisfaction depends on how employees answer just 12 questions, listed below in order of importance. To assess your workplace, ask people for their responses:
1. Do I know what is expected of me at work?
2. Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right?
3. At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?
4. In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for good work?
5. Does my supervisor or someone else at work seem to care about me as a person?
6. Is there someone at work who encourages my development?
7. At work, do my opinions seem to count?
8. Does the mission of my company make me feel like my work is important?
9. Are my coworkers committed to doing quality work?
10. Do I have a best friend at work?
11. In the last six months, have I talked with someone about my progress?
12. At work, have I had opportunities to learn and grow?
HARVARD MAN AGEMENT UPDATE MARCH 1999

If you want to learn more…
“One More Time: How Do You MotivateEmployees?” by Frederick Hertzberg (Harvard Business Review, September–October 1987, Tel. 800-988-0886 or 617-496-1449)

Avoiding the Brain Drain: What CompaniesAre Doing to Lock in Their Talent (November1998, Kepner-Tregoe, Inc., Tel. 212-317-0710)

1001 Ways to Energize Employees by Bob Nelson (1997, Workman Publishing, 214 pp., $10.95, Tel. 800-722-7202)


“The 100 Best Companies to Work for inAmerica,” by Shelly Branch (Fortune, January 11, 1999, Tel. 800-274-6800)

First, Break All the Rules: What the World’sGreatest Managers Do Differently by MarcusBuckingham and Curt Coffman (to be published in May 1999 by Simon & Schuster

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