You can bring your soul to work.
So say some Orange County businesspeople. Even in the dog-eat-dog world of inveterate job-hopping. Even when financial performance reigns supreme. Even in Orange County.
At Susan Roden Designs in Costa Mesa, employees are greeted with warm bear hugs. They share in communal lunches and hold regular affirmation sessions too. At Merit Property Management, employees keep a journal and meditate on a “reflection of the month”,all on the job. And at Paine & Associates, everyone gets the same 7% annual raise and an equal share of a 15% slice of pre-tax profits.
President David Paine shuns performance-based pay, saying it is subjective and sends a message that people need money to be motivated. Further, he said, performance raises tend to be unfair to women because men are typically more aggressive about negotiating pay raises for themselves.
Overtime is discouraged at Paine & Associates, too, in order to keep balance in workers’ lives.
“If you’re truly humanistic, you can do better than ever,” said Paine, who runs the largest independent public relations firm based in Orange County, with 50 employees.
Humanistic. It’s not a word heard often to describe a workplace. It’s not easy to define either. In essence, it means to genuinely care for employees not as workers but as human beings.
Though somewhat ethereal, it is actually taught and practiced in workplaces in OC and elsewhere. There are gurus such as Indiana-based Robert Greenleaf, who created the Center for Servant-Leadership (defined: you serve those you are leading). Books too, like “Leading with Soul,” “A Spiritual Audit of Corporate America” and “Awakening Corporate Soul” that teach how to have a more caring workplace.
Right here at home, the Organizational Leadership master’s program at Chapman University with 700 enrolled students teaches business leaders,gasp,that business has a purpose loftier than making a profit.
A thought like that could cause immediate expulsion from Harvard Business School.
And you aren’t likely to find such a touchy-feely approach at top OC companies such as Irvine-based chip designer Broadcom Corp. There, workers get all the free sodas they can drink and meals, too. But the driving incentive, like at other top tech companies, is the financial, a la stock options and big salaries.
Hard to Find
Mark Maier, professor and chair of the Chapman program, stresses this humanistic philosophy isn’t widely practiced.
“I had to search very hard to find them” Maier said about searching for a panel of OC businesspeople for a January workshop called “Leading with Soul.”
Nonetheless, it’s what some of the best companies are doing, he said.
There are examples like Texas construction firm TDIndustries and Tom’s of Maine, a company that sells all-natural products. TDIndustries is listed at careertech.com as a “fun company.” Some of the noted highlights of working at the plumbing and air conditioning contracting firm include “no corporate politics” and employees, known as “partners,” own 75% of the stock. Its No. 1 company value is “concern for and belief in individual human beings.”
Paine believes one of the keys to fostering a humanistic workplace is abolishing salary scales which he did seven years ago.
Offering performance-based salaries “implies that people are essentially lazy,” he said.
And in these days when help is hard to find, let alone good help, offering more benefits isn’t the answer either, he said. It’s not really a competitive advantage because all the companies are doing it, he said. Although Paine & Associates has some pretty perky perks, such as casual dress five days a week and up to four months paid sabbatical, Paine makes the philosophical distinction between offering perks to reward and offering perks because it’s “the right thing to do.”
“The hard thing to do is to differentiate between humanism and benefits,” he said.
Better Morale
Paine credits his workplace values with decreasing overtime and retaining staff as well as boosting profits. He said turnover has been under 10% for the last 10 years in a field that typically turns over 30% or more annually. Paine points to the company’s March profit of 20% on minimal overtime as proof that a compassionate workplace works.
Here’s another idea.
Merit Property Management recently added a journal program. The journal, a spiral-bound notebook, is owned by every employee for the purposes of reflecting on both their business and personal lives. “We are concerned with the whole being and the balance in their lives,” said Melinda Masson, founder and CEO of Merit Property Management. By creating a caring environment, people stay longer because they feel part of a family, Masson said.
Masson, who keeps a journal at home, said she never thought to connect it to the workplace. It was Janine McDonald’s idea. She’s a graduate of Chapman’s program and vice president of property management and training at Merit. The point of the journal is to build camaraderie, explore values and to have fun, McDonald said.
Employees are prompted through e-mail or the company’s computer network to reflect in their journals on a quote or a question. One time the staff was asked to pick their top-10 values, then narrow it down to two. Then they were asked: “Are you living these values?”
But writing in a journal may not be for everyone and that’s OK, she said. Journals are private documents owned by the employee and aren’t collected.
To some, reflecting and keeping a journal at work may seem weird, even outright nonsense.
Masson recognizes that from the outside, her company’s ideas may seem strange.
“Externally, publicly, you always open yourself up for criticism,” she said. Internally, it’s really building a community at work, she said.
Not for Everyone
Many might also get turned off by a boss who bear hugs. But for Susan Roden, there is no other way of running a business.
“I always had this dream of a business that had love involved and focused on character and development,” said Roden, a former vice president for a pharmaceutical marketing company.
Roden’s business is unique in that her jewelry is made by teenage girls from Orangewood, a transitional home for abused and neglected children. She teaches all “her girls” to make jewelry. She also offers weekly personal, business skills and spiritual growth workshops, such as listening, customer service, how to cook, how to drive and finding an apartment.
“We’re teaching one of our girls to read and write,she’s 23,” Roden said.
Employees share in communal lunches around the office suite’s round wooden kitchen table and twice a month, affirmation sessions are held. “We sit in a circle,” Roden explains. “Then say something we like about the person on both sides of us.” Upon hearing the compliment, the person must say “thank you.”
For two years she has paid them wages of $6.50 to $15 an hour from her own pocket. Recently the business grew a nonprofit arm, Made of Grace, in order to continue the company’s mission, Roden said.
Granted, Roden’s business is small, creative and lends itself to a humanistic approach, but Paine is confident it can be taught and applied to organizations of any size. The problem right now is people don’t know how to do it, he said.
And it’s something you can’t fake, said Chapman’s Maier. It can’t be phony because employees will know it’s fake, he said. n
