Clausen: Key traits of great Rochester workplaces
- Employees of Rochester's Top Workplaces said the best companies focus on six key traits.
Just six key things.
Employees of Rochester's Top Workplaces said over and over again in this year's survey of the area's top employers by WorkplaceDynamics that the best companies make employees feel connected, create a strong sense of direction, provide professional development and workplace flexibility while employing managers who truly care about worker concerns.
Also, those companies have senior leadership teams that understand what's happening at their companies while compensating workers fairly.
Surprising, perhaps, is how insignificant pay and benefits are to local workers on how they rate their workplaces.
Only about half of the nearly 9,600 respondents said pay was an important factor in how they rate their workplaces. Roughly one-quarter said their benefit packages were important.
Nearly 70 percent said that feeling genuinely appreciated was the single most important factor when evaluating their workplaces.
Other important factors? Believing that the company is going in the right direction (68 percent), feeling like they are a part of something meaningful (66 percent), having confidence in the leader of the company (64 percent) and feeling that the company enables its workers to operate at their full potential (64 percent).
We talked to several companies on this year's list to see how they address these issues, and others, at their workplaces.
► MORE COVERAGE: Rochester's Top Workplaces
Connection
Genesee Regional Bank currently has branch offices in Greece and Pittsford and is in the process of moving its headquarters from Linden Oaks to 1850 S. Winton Road in Brighton by the end of April.
The bank has about 100 employees, with the new space allowing room for about 40 more. Each new employee can expect to get tours of each office and meet with president and chief executive officer Phil Pecora as part of the orientation process. Everyone is invited to two off-site meetings a year where senior leadership also updates the staff on corporate goals.
"I don't think it is very often that an employee can start at a new company and within three weeks walk down the hall and have the president greeting them by name," said Audrey Fletcher, a human resources manager at the bank. "We really take it a step further and that involves our leadership team."
Workers also have been invited to happy hours, family fun days, a chili cook-off and other events. Workers are also given paid time off to donate time to various charitable groups during the workday.
"We are obviously in the customer service business, but that extends to our internal customers … our employees," Fletcher said. "Our senior management team, they really champion things like team building, not just inside the workplace but with things outside the workplace too."
She also said the organization embraces change — like the move of its corporate headquarters — together.
"We don't leave out employees in the dark," she said. "Our employees appreciate that and have a tremendous amount of trust in our leadership, which is essential in our retention efforts."
Alignment
Having workers who believe in the direction of a company, and have confidence in its leadership, is the result of a top-down strategy at ConServe, a Perinton-based debt collection agency. It's also the likely result of adding roughly 280 workers in the last year, with plans to hire another 150 in the upcoming year.
"To align things, we have to ensure that (workers) know that they are making a difference," said ConServe President Mark Davitt. "They are not in the situation of wondering, 'Am I doing well? Am I not doing well?' That spirit of openness and feedback has to be there. People have to see the benefit of what they are doing from their work. It is not a surprise. They know when they are going to score a touchdown.
Every month, ConServe shares complimentary notes from customers with its teams while also talking about how it helped resolved financial issues for clients. The company worked with roughly 177,000 customers in 2014.
"I don't do this," Davitt said. "While I might be a figurehead — I might be a spokesperson — it is really the culture of the organization. It's recognizing the values of each person and giving them the opportunity to develop."
New employees can expect to receive a clear understanding of the organization during orientation, with the help of mentors and through daily team huddles to discuss the issues of the day.
"The real message, the day-to-day stuff, comes from your managers and the front line," Davitt added. "(Workers) have to understand how they are making a difference, in order to have that sense of fulfillment, understand the roles that they play in the organization and the impact, and to see the impact and contribution they are making to the organization."
Work
Trade shows are one way firms can get seen by new clients, but they can also mean a lot of travel for the folks over at Mirror Show Management, a Webster-based trade show and events marketing services agency with roughly 80 employees helping to provide services at events around the world.
Employees can travel during the day, at night and work on the weekends. It can lead to a hectic work-life fit.
"Each quarter we analyze how much travel time people have and they receive (paid time off) in exchange for their travel," said Tammy Wilkes, vice president of human resources. "It is not hour for hour, but I think it's for each night an employee is away from home they receive a couple hours of (paid time off). It helps a ton if you are just running late because of the weather or whatever."
The company also provides new employees 18 days of paid time off. "We try to give out what we feel is a hefty amount of (paid time off) where people can manage their lives," Wilkes said.
Providing workers the flexibility to balance their work and personal life was important to the respondents of the Top Workplaces survey.
Also, having a job that met or exceeded a workers' expectations when they first started and receiving formal training were two other important factors to employees when it came to how they felt about their work.
Roughly 200 processes have been documented at Mirror Show Management to help employees understand various tasks. The objective of each process is outlined, along with responsibilities, the equipment or tools that are needed and the steps that go into completing each task.
"It took us almost a year to document all the processes," Wilkes said. "Employees have to demo mastery in every area. It's a formal program (called) Learn Great. We are now just about to embark on cross-training in other departments."
Execution
With 13,000 global employees focused in sales, payroll services, information technology and other areas it might be hard for workers at Paychex Inc. to work at a company that really wants to feel like a small firm for its clients.
"With a company our size and structured the way we are ... it can be easy for people to work in silos," said Laurie Zaucha, the company's vice president of human resources. "We've been working hard on our culture the last four years and really fostering stronger partnerships, cooperation and relationships between the different functions at Paychex. It has become especially evident in our sales and service organizations, where those groups are working well together.
"And I'll tell you, it starts at the top and our executive team."
Top executives, she said, frequently answer questions that come from employees on such social networks as Yammer and Chatter, and from a special "Ask John" email. Executives also discuss key corporate values in monthly videos posted for workers.
"We really try to make sure we are approachable and employees feel comfortable communicating with us," Zaucha said. "You got to try to reach people where they are and how they want to be communicated with, in as many ways that we can to stay connected to employees."
It's with the thought that new ideas and improved processes can come from anywhere.
Florida-based implementation specialist Morgan Abraham went out on his own to create a new system for loading large volumes of client data that significantly cut the time needed to upload data. The new process was shared throughout the company in newsletters and other recognition.
But it points to any other key element of execution, according to the Top Workplaces survey, and that is how employees feel that their ideas are encouraged. At Paychex, one of their corporate values is innovation. The company also has an online toolkit that helps employees share those ideas, Zaucha said.
"Innovation is all about thinking creatively about what we do, about fostering new ideas, challenging the status quo (and) learning new approaches," she said. "I think it has really helped employees feel comfortable in coming up with new ideas and ways of doing things."
Managers
Those responding to the Top Workplaces' survey said their managers do a lot of things well, but most importantly they care, are helpful and encourage workers to learn and grow.
Gates-based Hammer Packaging said its managers need to encompass all of that if the company is going to keep pace in the competitive and ever-evolving packaging industry. Managers spend as many as seven days each year in training paid by the company to learn new business processes and organizational management skills.
"Our employees are really the most important asset that we have," said President and CEO Jim Hammer. "It is not just baloney. It is a fact of life. Any concern that they have, we try to take care of it. We try to de-emphasize politics in the environment; politics, rumors, all that good stuff. It takes away from productivity."
The company also invests in itself, spending as much as 10 percent of its previous year's sales on new and evolving technology, and the training needed to use such equipment as a new Kodak Prosper press and the Heidelberg press that's planned to come online next month. Recently, the company met with educators from Monroe Community College to develop a new boot camp to train workers in different areas of the company.
Also, the company shares its strategic plan with employees throughout the year, updating workers on sales goals and operational profits.
"It took a little bit of evolution on the whole thing," Hammer said. "The thing is, you got to the point where you have empowered people. You have to give them the knowledge. If they don't have the knowledge, they can't perform the way that you expect them to."
Pay and benefits
Finger Lakes Technologies Group Inc. knows that to attract top talent it must offer a total package that's more than a competitive salary.
"We believe that the benefit package kind of shows our commitment to our employees," said Judy Katafiaz, director of employee relations and communications. "It's more about lifestyle today. The bulk of our employees are (Millennials). … You really kind of have to create a culture that plays to their sort of needs. These younger people really want to balance life and work and so we are totally about that."
New workers receive three weeks of paid time off, leave time that can be used for nearly any reason, along with nine paid holidays. They also receive medical and dental insurance that extends to spouses or partners and can get fully reimbursed for paid training, certifications and other job-related education.
There is also a $250 clothing allowance during the first year of employment and $150 thereafter to purchase jackets, shirts, hoodies and other company branded items. Workers can also hand gift cards to anyone in the company.
"Believe it or not that little $10 gift certificate really boosts people spirits for the day," Katafiaz said.
But what really helped the company was a challenge to employees to help the company save $1 million on its bottom line.
"They didn't even have to do that math," Katafiaz said. "You know, just, 'I think we would save money if we did X, Y and Z.' Our financial analyst took the ideas that made sense, did the math and the analytics behind it, and if it saved us operating expenses that counted towards the bucket. It was really a great incentive and with the outcome from that program, even more important, was that we produced a lot of operating efficiencies that we still use to this day."
Those who came up with the best ideas earned an additional $5,000 during the program. Others received $100. The program helped reduce operating expenses by roughly $790,000, she said.
"It is something that we said we would consider doing again in a couple years, but it is pretty hard to save $1 million every year," she said. "It was well worth the money."