We spend a lot of time talking about our culture at Everon. We have created a service culture, one where service skills and customer feedback are rewarded ahead of tech skills.
We have spent five years “getting the right people on the bus and the wrong people off the bus” which committing to is not as easy as one might think on the surface. We have been very successful over the years creating a place where everyone likes coming to work the majority of days – we all have the occasional I would rather not be at work moment. So why in the last handful of months (we opened our second operations office in Colorado about 8 months ago) has our culture become one of discontent for some employees?
This is a question I have found myself asking and I believe it was best captured by one of our senior employees that I was talking to: “when things are perceived as fair they become more than that to people, they become good.”
On the surface this did not seem like a particularly important insight, having studied psychology I was familiar with the concept, but it got me to thinking that for the first time in our five year run at Everon things were out of balance.
In our case it was the perception that the Colorado folks did not work as hard as the Boston folks. Now I can tell you that this is not true in anyway especially since I spend most my time in this office, but we were able to figure out where the perception was stemming from by talking to our people and listening to what they had to say. It is always amazing to me what one can learn when they enter a situation with an open mind and from this situation we realize that there are a few things out of wack and we need to make some adjustment to make sure we don’t have people jumping from the bus.
So why am I sharing this experience you may be asking and that is a great question. Partially because it is what’s on my mind today as a wrap up and get ready to hit the sack and partially because we all spend a great deal of time thinking about our people and our culture as we grow our businesses. For those of use focused on a culture of excellence it is important to remember that “fair is good” in the eyes of our employees.
There is almost nothing Mike or I would not do for our people but if we are not constantly listening and keeping thing fair in their eyes we will eventually lose good people and that is something we don’t want to happen if we can avoid it.
JC
