Strengthening Your
Cultural Fortress
I’ve
often wondered what goes into creating a company that people are happy to work
for — a company that lands, for example, at the top of aForbes list
of best places to work. To gain some insight, I scheduled an interview with
Paul Giobbi, the co-founder and CEO of Zumasys, a company that provides
cloud-based infrastructure services. Giobbi’s company has appeared on Inc. magazine’s
list of America’s fastest-growing companies six times, and has
recently been named one of the best places to work by theOrange County Register, the Orange County Business Journal, and Computerworld. Impressive recognition, especially
considering that the company had been struggling with an average of 16 percent
employee turnover per year only five years ago.
When
I arrived at Zumasys’s building for my interview with Giobbi, I found a
could-be-anywhere light-industrial business center with a nice, but generic,
technology company lobby (clean and quiet, with a stocked kitchen and employee
lounge visible for all to see). I wandered around the lobby trying to discover
clues as to why this company is one of the best places to work in Southern
California. I was briefly interrupted by a lobby-lingering employee offering me
the opportunity drink tea from a straw that strains the tea leaves. Nice, I
thought, but is this what makes magazines and newspapers heap accolades on this
place?
A
few minutes later, I was personally greeted by Giobbi. On the way to his
office, he proudly showed off the Avocado Award (imagine half of a fake avocado
mounted on a wood block) hanging in the hall — apparently, he had won first
place at the company’s guacamole-making contest. At that point, I started to
get it: the corporate culture seemed to be quirky, humble, funny, and friendly.
And as I settled in for the interview, it became clear that something special
was going on at Zumasys.
Given
the commodity nature of IT infrastructure, Giobbi told me, “The only way to win
is with inspired and motivated employees delivering superior customer service.”
With superior business results in mind, he has spearheaded a quest over the
past five years to “create a culture to serve as a fortress around the company
by making it such a great place to work that nobody would want to leave.” With
voluntary turnover now less than 2 percent per year, it’s clear that the
Zumasys culture quest has been a success.
For
the first two years of its turnaround, Zumasys executives focused on hiring
people who were self-aware and passionate, and trusted them with free reign to
work as they saw fit by setting clear expectations. The company then
strengthened its culture by amping up its benefits package and introducing an
open-book policy on its financials. At Zumasys, in addition to the typical
corporate benefits, every employee gets three to four weeks of vacation,
complementary access to the company’s two-bedroom Vegas loft, and the
opportunity to qualify for a tenure-based international travel program that,
each year, gives four to six employees a week off with pay and a $4,000 stipend
to travel to the destination of their choice. The open-book financials are used
as the foundation for a measurement-based reward program, with all employees
eligible to participate, capped off annually with a trip for award winners.
It
was a good start. These changes engendered additional goodwill by underscoring
the company’s commitment to employees, but they didn’t have much impact on
lowering turnover. Something was still missing. Committed to exploring and
experimenting, Giobbi attended a conference where Bert Jacobs, founder
of Life Is Good, encouraged attendees to use their companies as a platform for
social change. Reflecting on Jacobs’s message, Giobbi realized that what was
missing from his company wasmeaning. People want more than fun, perks,
or the bottom line — everyone strives to live, and work, for a greater purpose.
Upon returning home, Giobbi pledged to donate 1 percent of the company's
annual revenue to
nonprofit organizations nominated and selected by his employees. He called the
program “Happyness Is a Choice.”
He
believes that this single decision “has been more impactful than all of our
other decisions combined.” But the change didn’t happen overnight. For the
first couple of years after the program was established, it was hard to get
employees’ attention, and a good chunk of the money remained unallocated.
(“Faceless non-profits don’t feel good,” Giobbi said.) He found that the key to
gaining traction was to involve employees personally. To do so, Zumasys
implemented two changes. First, it partnered with the nonprofit
accelerator OneOC to serve up carefully selected, company-wide
volunteer opportunities for its employees. Second, and much more powerful, was
the company’s decision to allocate 10 percent of that 1 percent of revenue to
“people in need in our network,” including relatives, friends, neighbors, and coworkers
who were facing hard times.
Giobbi
recalled a story involving Robert, a Zumasys sales rep, and Eric, an employee
of one of the company’s customers. Robert learned that Eric, who has a spouse
with multiple sclerosis, needed additional sponsorship for his participation in
an upcoming Walk MS event. Robert
arranged for Zumasys to donate, added some money of his own, and jumped on a
plane to join Eric on the walk. Eric’s follow-up email to Robert illustrates
the power of program:
“My
wife was overwhelmed with emotions when she found out that you traveled all the
way from Vegas to join our walk. She had asked if you had a family member or
someone you knew personally that was suffering with MS. I simply told her that
you do now. I want to personally thank you for taking the time to be with us
and acknowledging our cause. The actions you take every day and the generosity
you show to your community are a shining example of what we all strive to be as
human beings. We are all blessed to have what we have but to share that with
people you don’t even know firsthand is truly a miracle at work.”
According
to Giobbi, “This is a textbook example of what we want to accomplish. Most
people can’t get beyond thinking about themselves to do something for somebody
else, but after this and many other similar stories, our employees are
aggressively submitting donation requests and fervently committed to the
volunteer events.”
And
it’s not just employees. Increasingly, Zumasys’s customers are getting involved
with Happyness Is a Choice; every chance he gets, Giobbi invites them to
provide their input, telling them, “It’s your 1 percent. Let us know how you
want us to direct it.” To encourage broader employee — and customer —
participation, Zumasys is increasing the “in-network” allocation from 10 to 20
percent of the 1 percent of revenue in the coming year.
Over
time, Giobbi plans to continue experimenting with programs that strengthen his
cultural fortress. One idea, in support of Zumasys’s 15th anniversary, involves
an RV filled with employees and customers that will travel around the country
and host volunteer events. He is convinced that celebrating and serving
together will create meaningful connections and lifelong relationships.
Of
course, the success of Zumasys’s programs is dependent on the leadership behind
them. Ann Rhoades, a company-culture expert and author of the book Built on Values: Creating an Enviable
Culture That Outperforms the Competition says, “If there is a secret shared by
companies that create customer-centric cultures, it is that their leaders
profoundly understand that people really are their biggest assets — and they
act on that idea every day. Organizations that truly value people often don’t
use it as an advertising slogan. They just do it.”
For
Giobbi, the payoff from culture goes beyond the bottom line. Even if conscious
capitalism wasn’t good for business (though expert research shows that clearly it is),
he believes that each of us should have at least one amazing work experience
with a company, and he is committed to “giving Zumasys employees the ride of
their lives.”
Susan Cramm
http://www.strategy-business.com/blog/Strengthening-Your-Cultural-Fortress?gko=37752
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