Practices

Let staff live and work anywhere

To hire and retain the best people, Airbnb designed a way for staff to live and work from anywhere. The success of this design is based on five key features:

1. Work from home or the office. Employees whose core job responsibilities don't require being in the office can work where they are most productive.
2. Move anywhere in the country you work in, and your compensation won't change. Airbnb designated a single pay tier for each country. Anyone's salary that was set using a lower location-based pay tier, received an increase. 
3. Travel and work around the world. Employees can live and work in over 170 countries for up to 90 days a year in each location. Permanent addresses for tax and payroll purposes are still required.
4. Meet up regularly for team gatherings, off-sites, and social events. Instead of spending a set number of days each week in the office together, all employees are expected to come together every quarter for about a week at a time.
5. Work in a highly coordinated way. Airbnb uses a single company calendar centered around its two major annual product releases. All events, collaboration sessions, and off-site visits are planned around this calendar, even for staff that don't directly work on those projects.

Collaborate when redefining your core values

In 2016, after surveying employees, Airbnb realized that the six core values that they devised in 2012 weren't being "used enough." Employees felt there were too many and that some were either too obscure or not a true representation of the Airbnb culture. Over the next year, Douglas Atkin, Airbnb's Global Head of Community, would help the company redefine their values by following these steps:

1. Define the ideal characteristics of core values. Douglas and his team asked employees at every level, location, department, and tenure to define what they felt were the ideal characteristics of a company's core values. This helped to determine what was needed to make the new values useful.
2. Compare the ideal characteristics against your current values. Douglas then asked employees to compare Airbnb's current values to the ideal characteristics by putting either an X or a checkmark next to each characteristic. This helped diagnose what was wrong with the current values.
3. Interview the Founders to define Meaningful Moments. To prevent them from defining aspirational values rather than ones grounded in what makes the company great today, Douglas asked the Founders to list all of the Meaningful Moments in Airbnb's history. He then asked them to extract the value that led to those Moments and reduce that list to the most important three or four.
4. Interview staff to understand where their personal values align with the company's. Over 300 employees were asked to draw a Venn diagram with two circles. Above one circle, each person wrote 'Me,' and above the other, 'Airbnb.' Staff was then asked "to list the personal values that drove their own behaviors and decisions, splitting them into those that they thought they shared with Airbnb and those that didn't." They then wrote down what they perceived to be Airbnb's values that they didn't share with the company in the 'Airbnb'-only part of the circle.
5. Combine the data. Douglas and his team went on to list every single value mentioned by staff and rank-ordered them by the number of mentions. The team then organized them into the most obvious groupings with the number of mentions listed alongside.
6. Define your values based on shared truths. Douglas discovered that the top three areas identified by employees and the Founders matched with three of their current values. They also found that two of the existing core values weren't 'core' but 'aspirational' and removed them. In the end, four of the original six values were kept and defining 'Behaviors' were added based on the feedback to make each value more clear and actionable.

Airbnb Staff Venn Diagram Example

How to live your Purpose #5: You need Core Values. They’re the ‘How’ of achieving your ‘Why’.

Airbnb's Rank Ordering of Values

How to live your Purpose #5: You need Core Values. They’re the ‘How’ of achieving your ‘Why’.

Bring together the entire team annually

Each year, Airbnb brings together their entire international staff for one week in San Francisco. This four-day event, called One Airbnb, is a way to create a sense of unity for employees and make them feel like they belong.

• Day 1: Plan for the future and reflect on the past. The Founders share the successes from the past year and outline the strategy for the year to come.
• Day 2: Focus on the culture. Using the results of the company-wide survey, teams of 15 staff brainstorm on how to improve the company culture. Each team summarizes their ideas into the length of a tweet and proposes three actions to improve the culture. That evening, local staff host visiting staff at their home or a restaurant for a night of food and fun.
• Day 3: Learn new skills. In the morning, staff choose from over 40 foundational courses to attend, with topics ranging from public speaking to project management. In the afternoon, staff host workshops sharing their non-work-related hobbies and skills. At night is a company-wide dinner that turns into a karaoke party.
• Day 4: Share your work, volunteer, and celebrate each other. People from every part of the company set up a booth to share their work and answer any questions. They then break up into smaller groups and volunteer somewhere in the city. That evening is an award ceremony where top-performing staff are recognized for their achievements.

Start meetings with memos, not PowerPoints

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos removed PowerPoint presentations from meetings in 2004 because "you can hide a lot of sloppy thinking behind bullet points." Instead, presenters prepare a six-page memo for meetings. Memos, unlike PowerPoints, force authors to take the time to truly understand the scope of their ideas.

Often, a memo can take two weeks to create as it is written and rewritten, shared with colleagues for feedback, set aside for a couple of days, and then edited again.

To ensure people read the memo, the first thirty minutes of the meeting are dedicated to reading it in silence. Attendees write comments and ideas in the margins while the author anxiously waits. Once the memo has been read, an "elevated discussion" begins where ideas can wander and grow toward the best solution, even if that means going longer than expected.

Make work the benefit

At Apple, you will most likely work harder and longer than you have ever worked in your life but will love every minute. Apple's philosophy on benefits is that: If you give people work that matters and a chance to make a dent in the universe than high salaries and perks aren't needed. In fact, at Apple:

• Salaries are competitive with the market, no better.
• The company gym and cafeteria are not free.
• There are no creative workshops, games, team building activities, or sleep pods.
• Working with nonprofits and having extracurricular activities are even discouraged as these are considered distractions.

While medical, dental, education reimbursement up to $2,500, and stock opportunities are provided, these costs are offset by low recruiting and training costs. Having a 90% retention rate, compared to the industry average of 20–30%, has its own benefits.

Survey employees to improve the customer experience

Apple Store employees are surveyed every three to four months to see how the store experience can be improved and if they would recommend the store a great place to work. This program is called the Net Promoter for People (NPP).

Employees review the results together at their pre-shift huddles and determine which issues are most important to that store's success. Over the coming weeks new solutions are tested out and successful ones are rolled out to other stores. Each solution is then evaluated in the next NPP surveys.

Put your credo in the hands of every employee

All Apple employees are given a pocket-sized credo card and are encouraged to carry it around with them. It acts as a daily reminder of what Apple stands for and what they are trying to accomplish. The front only has two words: enriching lives.

Read the full credo.

Make your welcome letter inspirational

In just a few short sentences, Apple's welcome letter lets new employees know that the work they will do is special. Their future at Apple is not about a title, a paycheck, or a daily routine but instead about unleashing their passion, creativity, and fearlessness.

Apple's welcome letter

There’s work and there’s your life’s work.

The kind of work that has your fingerprints all over it. The kind of work that you’d never compromise on. That you’d sacrifice a weekend for. You can do that kind of work at Apple. People don’t come here to play it safe. They come here to swim in the deep end.

They want their work to add up to something.

Something big. Something that couldn’t happen anywhere else.

Welcome to Apple.

Pay unfairly

Google knows from experience that two people doing the same work can make drastic differences in impact. For this reason, compensation is determined by impact—not tenure or title. This results in higher performing employees receiving much larger bonuses than less impactful employees.

However, to avoid a culture of jealousy and resentment, Google ensures that impact is measureable and employees have a clear understanding of ways they can improve. In order to do this, managers:

• Set clear objectives with measurable results for each job role
• Provide regular check-ins to give staff an understanding of where they are in their progress
• Have staff fill out self-assessments each year
• Have peers provide 360-degree feedback on the employee's strengths, weaknesses, and contributions to specific projects

Managers then hand over this data to a committee to make the final decision on compensation. By using committees, Google has found that this helps to avoid bias and also removes any frustration being targeted directly at the manager by underperforming employees.

Allow staff to use 20% of their time to explore new ideas

A non-formalized and unenforced policy at Google is to give engineers the freedom to spend 20% of their time on ideas that aren't core to their jobs but are still related to Google's work. This policy has resulted in the creation of popular products like Gmail, Google Now, and AdSense. And even though not all projects end up launching, Google believes this is the "best educational program a company can have."

Create weekly status reports

At the end of every week, Google employees take 10 minutes to jot down their accomplishments and challenges of the week and what they plan to achieve the following week. These 'snippets' are then uploaded to Google's intranet for everyone to see. As a result of these updates:

• Staff are able take time to reflect on their accomplishments which has shown to increase happiness and reduce burnout
• Managers can identify challenges before they get out of hand
• Staff are equipped with evidence of their impact come review time when they want to ask for a raise or promotion
• Transparency is increased as all co-workers are aware of their peer's work
• Time is saved by removing long 'status update' meetings from everyone's calendar

Give experience awards, not cash awards

It is well known and accepted by Google staff that top performers receive much higher compensation than average employees. Any jealousy is reduced because salaries are a private matter and not shared. However, Google's large end-of-year cash awards given to top performers are very public.

After receiving criticism from staff, Google ran experiments to see if employees would be happier with experiential awards instead. Google created a control group of staff who were given cash, and experimental groups who were given trips, team parties, and other gifts of the same value as the cash awards.

When surveyed, staff found experiential awards to be "28% more fun, 28% more memorable, and 15% more thoughtful." Five months later Google surveyed winners again only to find that the happiness of cash recipients dropped by 25%, while the experimental groups were even happier about the experiential award than when they received it. Google has given out experiential awards since.

Nudge employees to make better decisions

Google constantly looks for ways to improve the quality of their employees' lives through small and simple interventions throughout the day called nudges. Nudges are designed to change behavior in a positive and predictable way by influencing choice—not dictating it. Through nudges, Google has been able to:

• Increase the amount employees contribute to their 401k. Anyone who has not contributed or is not on track to max out their 401(k) contributions receives an email noting their year-to-date contributions.
• Reduce the consumption of unhealthy foods. Healthier foods are placed in open counters and at eye level. Less healthy snacks are placed on lower shelves or in opaque containers.
• Increase portion control for meals. Smaller plate options were introduced in the café accompanied by informational cards and posters referencing data on how people who ate off smaller plates on average consumed fewer calories, but felt equally full.
• Improve security. After many failed email attempts to stop staff from holding doors open for others without checking ID badges, Google placed a silly cartoon sticker of a half man, half aligator on every door reading: Anyone can be a tailgator. Its absurdity became an ice breaker and helped make it okay for people to check IDs.

Send a reminder to managers on how to onboard new hires effectively

On the Sunday before a new hire starts, managers at Google receive a just-in-time email outlining the five most important steps to take with their Nooglers:

1. Have a role-and-responsibilities discussion that answers these questions:
   • What are the goals and measurable results that your Noogler will need to achieve in their first quarter?
   • How does your Noogler's role connect with Google's business goals? The team's goals?
   • When will your Noogler's first performance management conversation be, and how will their rating be determined?
2. Match your Noogler with a peer buddy.
3. Help your Noogler build a social network.
4. Set up onboarding check-ins once a month for your Noogler's first six months.
5. Encourage open dialogue.

The email is specifically sent at this time and kept short and simple, so that it is easier to remember and is more likely to be executed on correctly. Managers who did take action on these five steps had their new hire become fully effective 25% faster than their peers.

Survey staff on more than engagement

Google believes that engagement surveys alone "don’t tell you precisely where to invest your finite people dollars and time." Instead, Google's annual employee survey, Googlegeist, asks employees 100 questions around three key categories:

• Innovation: Is Google's culture focused on taking enormous, visionary bets and does their strategy value the improvement of products?
• Execution: How do employees feel about the quality of Google products?
• Retention: Are employees engaged and do they feel valued?

Questions are scored on a five-point scale with some free-response follow-up questions. Employees choose whether their responses are completely anonymous or confidential, where only general information is collected.

All data is shared with the entire company within one month of the survey, and every manager with more than three respondents receives an indvidualized report. Individualized reports of vice presidents, that had over 100 respondents, are shared with the entire company.

Encourage curiosity, focus, and bravery with Missions

To encourage staff to try new things and reduce their fear of failure, LEGO implements a strategy called Missions. Missions are challenges given to staff that focus on LEGO's leadership attributes: Curiosity, focus, and bravery.

Each division and store has its own way of handing out missions—some are handed out before shifts, while others are picked out of a hat. Missions can take as little as an hour or up to two weeks to accomplish, but once completed, team members gather to reflect on their successes and failures and discuss what they have learned.

View Missions examples.

Avoid perks, they don't work

While perks can feel like a great sugar rush at first, they soon lead to a crash with mixed feelings of self-entitlement and greed. So don't bother looking for lavish offices, beautiful gyms, or sleep pods at Netflix, you won't find them. If you really want to retain your high performers, Netflix's advice is to just:

• Let them do the work they were hired to do.
• Treat them like adults by providing them with freedom and responsibility.
• Surround them with other high performers that they can collaborate with and learn from.

“If someone wants to walk out your door and go to another company because it serves better craft beer, you should just say to that person, “Have fun! Oh, and let’s do happy hour at your place soon.”—Patty McCord, former Chief Talent Officer at Netflix

Pay top of market

Why hire 10 average engineers, when you can hire one "rock-star" who will make a bigger impact than all of the others combined. To hire and retain top talent, Netflix doesn't use a rigid compensation system with salary bands or merit increase budgets. Instead they:

• Pay top of market, in all cash. If you want stock, you can trade in some of your salary for discounted options.
• Adjust salaries only if the market changes. Some salaries may stay flat for years while others grow dramatically in a short time.
• Don't offer year-end bonuses, equity, refreshers, or other forms of compensation. Your salary is your salary.
• Fire adequate performers to afford top talent.
• Encourage staff to interview regularly to know how much they are worth.
• Make salaries public in the company to help employees know if they are fairly compensated.

Remove travel and expense policies

Netflix replaced all of their policies with five words: Act in Netflix's best interest.

Employees buy what they need (for supplies or travel), take a photo of the receipt, and submit it directly for reimbursement. But if they don't think they can justify the expense, they skip the purchase, check with their boss, or buy something cheaper.

Managers set context for what is considered good judgment and can check receipts on the backend. The finance department also audits 10% of receipts annually. If someone is caught abusing the system, they are immediately fired. Managers then openly speak about the abuse to the entire company, so that everyone understands the consequences of poor judgment.

And yes, some some expenses may increase with this freedom (travel expenses rose about 10%) but to Netflix, it doesn't outweigh the added benefits of increased trust, speed, flexilibilty, and reduced overhead.

Stop performance improvement plans (PIPs) and instead give adequate performance a generous severance

Netflix feels that PIPs are not only cruel, because they're really all about proving incompetence, but they are also expensive:

• You pay underperformers for several months.
• You spend a lot of time and resources documenting the process.
• The time spent training only gets adequate performance up to speed for what you need now, not six months from now.

To keep a high talent density, Netflix instead focuses its culture on proactively letting people go. Why keep a good employee when you need a great one? Adequate performance instead receives at least four months of severance, that is, only after they sign an agreement not to sue.

And if you're wondering, involuntary turnover rate is 8% (only 2% higher than the US average).

Don't have a bonus system tied to goals

Instead Netflix pays their employees top of market. This is what drives innovation for them, not bonuses. Here's why:

• Bonuses don't incentivize
  If your employees are true high performers, an annual bonus won't make them work harder or smarter.
• Bonuses reduce flexibility
  No one can predict the future and Netflix needs to be able to adapt quickly. So why tie an employee's salary to a goal that might become obsolete in a year? As a result, Netflix employees will speak up when a goal is sending the company in the wrong direction, rather than remain silent just to keep their bonuses.
• Bonuses reduce creativity
  People are most creative when they have a big enough salary to remove stress, not when they don't know if they'll get paid extra. The proof is in this study.
• Bonuses don't give you a hiring advantage
  Where would you rather work: A company that offers you $200,000 salary plus a 15 percent bonus or just offers you $230,000?

Don't offer signing bonuses

Signing bonuses sound great to employees in their first year—but come year two, their standard 3% raise will feel more like a pay reduction when it doesn't even match their year one salary with signing bonus. Instead Netflix chooses to just pay top of market and leave it at that.

Remove vacation policies

No approvals, no tracking, no limitations. Just a motto, 'Take Some!', and clear context set by individual managers, like:

• Never make it harder for others to achieve their goals;
• Only one team member out at a time; or
• Give at least three months' notice for one month out of the office.

To make sure it doesn't become a 'No Vacation' policy, executives and management lead by example. They take big vacations and talk about them a lot, even going so far as sending and sharing postcards.

And the result? People take roughly the same number of vacation days as they did when there was a policy, between 12 to 19.

Adapt your culture regionally

As Netflix expanded globally, regional offices struggled with Netflix's culture of candor, efficiency, and speed. To help build trust over the cultural differences, Netflix worked to create a culture map that compared different national cultures to one another on a set of behavioral scales.

Netflix would then adapt the way they introduced and implemented their own business culture in these areas in order to build the emotional bonds that are critical to building trust. In less candid countries, Netflix made sure that feedback opportunities were on meeting agendas. In more direct cultures, they made talking about cultural differences a priority so that feedback could be understood as intended.

Netflix's Culture Map

Netflix developed this culture map based on Erin Meyer's book The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business. Listen to Erin Meyer speak about culture maps on the Entrepreneur Talks by STATION.

Map Your Team’s Cultural Differences

Don't compromise your culture during tough times

“Culture matters. And you know when it matters most? When you stick to it in the great times and the challenging times."—Dean Carter, Patagonia's Chief Human Resources Officer at Talent Connect 2019

Even through difficult recessions, Patagonia refuses to cut back on quality, sustainability practices, healthcare, onsite childcare, training, or development. If they do face challenges, Patagonia's policy is to:

• First cut the fat by freezing hiring, reducing unnecessary travel, and generally trimming expenses.
• Eliminate bonuses and reduce salaries of all top-level managers and owners if problems escalate.
• Then shorten the workweek and reduce pay.
• Lastly, and only as a last resort, lay people off.

Have your Chief Human Resources Officer conduct exit interviews

With only a 4% turnover rate and nearly 100% of new mom's returning to work, it's not surprising that Dean Carter, Chief Human Resources Officer, calls Patagonia Hotel California. But he doesn't take these stats for granted.

When someone does choose to leave, he personally gives each exit interview to symbolize what each employee means to the company. The first question he asks is not "Why you are leaving?" but "Why did you join?" The most heartbreaking exit interviews to him are the ones where he's told that the experience they signed up for was not the experience they received.

Provide benefits that encourage community activism

With a workforce committed to saving the planet, Patagonia provides opportunities for their employees to take an active role in protecting the environment. 

• After their first year of employment, employees are allowed to take two months off with pay, to volunteer with environmental activist groups anywhere in the world.
• Patagonia offices are closed on days when there are environmental rallies or protests in the area so employees can participate.
• If an employee or spouse is arrested while peacefully protesting for the environment, Patagonia will pay for both of their bails.

Reshape your work week to align with your employees' lifestyles

If you want your company's culture to support your employees' lifestyles, adjustments to your work schedule will need to be made. Patagonia introduced a 9/80 work schedule giving employees a three-day weekend every other week to allow for longer weekend getaways to climb, hike, and explore. This schedule also gives them time to go to the doctor as well.

Blur the line between work and family

With an onsite childcare facility, Patagonia's employees are able to eat with their children at lunch, put them down for naps, and even bring their newborns to meetings. But the idea to blend work and family time together didn't happen all at once. It began in 1983 when Founder Yvon Chouinard's wife brought a trailer truck to the office to allow a mother to breastfeed her colicky baby. From there, family benefits have grown to include:

• A subsidized onsite childcare center for children up to nine years old. This educational facility has certified teachers, bilingual programs and, of course, rock climbing and surf lessons.
• 16 weeks of fully paid maternity leave and 12 weeks of fully paid paternity leave
• A budget for nursing moms to bring their babies and nannies along on business trips

Patagonia estimates that they recoup 91% of the annual $1 million childcare budget through federal tax credits, productivity, and employee retention. There is also equity in pay and in leadership across the company, with women making up 50% of the workforce and roughly 50% of upper-management.

As an added bonus, the presence of children keeps the company atmosphere more familial than corporate. "Even for the people who don't have kids, you bring your best self to work around children."

Provide benefits that reinforce your values and personality

While Patagonia's benefits are generous, they are also strategically designed to attract serious athletes and environmentalists. They offer:

• Comprehensive health insurance, even to part-time employees, so that if they get hurt while climbing or surfing they can properly heal themselves
• An organic cafeteria that serves healthy, organic, and mostly vegetarian food
• Showers on site for after their afternoon surf
• Free yoga classes, scooters, surfboards, and skateboards for on- and off-site fun

They even give the best parking spots to those with the most fuel-efficient cars, not to managers.

Define your Gold Standards

To achieve service excellence, you first need to make sure that every employee has a clear understanding of what service excellence means to you. The Ritz-Carlton did this by codifying their service philosophy into what they refer to as their Gold Standards. These include the brand's:

• Motto: The motto the foundation of how employees should see themselves, their coworkers, and guests.
• Credo: Part mission, part brand promise, the credo defines the atmosphere you want to create and the experience you seek to provide.
• Steps of Service: These service steps outline the pillars that your guest experience is founded on.
• Service Values: These values empower employees to take ownership of their roles by providing guidelines, not rules, of what is expected of them.
• Employee Promise: This promise defines how you will protect and care for your employees.
• The 6th Diamond: Based on the idea of the five diamond rating system, the 6th Diamond is what sets you apart from everyone else.

Constantly evolve your Gold Standards

If something is detracting from the guest experience, The Ritz-Carlton improves upon it...even if that means changing their Gold Standards.

Before 2006, The Ritz-Carlton lived by the 20 Basics of Service. These guidelines were meant to create a consistent guest experience but became more of a script than an empowerment tool. Employees began using suggested phrases like 'My Pleasure' in the wrong context and felt compelled to escort guests to where they were going even when they were asked not to.

With significant input from the Ladies and Gentlemen of The Ritz-Carlton, the 20 Basics became today's 12 Service Values. By starting each value with the word 'I,' they offered staff 'ways of being' as opposed to 'ways of doing' which has resulted in more personalized guest experiences.

Even today, The Ritz-Carlton continually polls their employees to gauge the relevance and helpfulness of their Gold Standards.

Provide physical reminders of what your culture stands for

On every employee's first day, The Ritz-Carlton provides each new hire with their own Credo Card. This tri-fold card, which fits easily into any pocket and is considered part of The Ritz-Carlton uniform, includes the company's Gold Standards. The card is continually referred to on a daily basis for coaching purposes and is available to any guest upon request. And if you ask, staff will even sign it for you too.

Always start your day with a lineup

Through calm or crises, one meeting that remains constant at The Ritz-Carlton is the daily lineup. This 20 minute meeting, which is held by all teams from cleaning crews to executives, was introduced to inspire and unify staff while also emphasizing the importance of the company's Gold Standards.

How it works:

• A Commitment to Quality sheet is sent out to all Ritz-Carlton staff that focuses on one of the 12 service values.
• The team lead shares a WOW story that focuses on that day's service value.
• The staff share personal stories of how they have delivered on that day's service value.
• The team shares details regarding any guest preferences and problems.
• Anniversaries and milestones of employees across the entire hotel are recognized.
• Fun facts about the company and hotel performance metrics are shared.
• The meeting concludes with someone reciting an inspirational quote or song lyric. 

Collect, share, and reward WOW stories

Each year The Ritz-Carlton sets a standard of how many WOW stories each hotel is expected to submit. The stories are then sent to the internal communications team, who review them and choose a select few to be included in the Commitment to Quality daily lineup sheet that is shared with the entire company. Any Lady or Gentleman who has their WOW story spotlighted in the sheet receives $100.

Create ways for employees to reward and recognize each other

First Class Recognition Cards are simple note cards that can be filled out by any employee to thank their colleagues for helping them out. Although they can be shared at any time, some staff members wait for the hotel-wide Friday lineup to celebrate their fellow employee in front of everyone.

Five Star Staff Awards occur at each hotel quarterly. Employees nominate their colleagues based on how well they are living up to the brand's Gold Standards. The leadership team then chooses five winners, who will:

• Have a luncheon thrown for them in their honor
• Receive acknowledgment at the hotel's lineup
• Receive a Five Star winner pin
• Become ambassadors for the hotel who will share their stories with new hires at orientation

At the end of the year, five quarterly winners, are then selected as annual Five Star recipients who receive approximately $1,000, a round-trip airfare for two, and a week's stay at a Ritz-Carlton property.

Give every employee $2,000 to use to anticipate the needs of your guests

Every employee at The Ritz-Carlton, from the general manager to the newest busboy, can spend up to $2,000 per day on each guest. This empowers employees to take full ownership of the customer experience and quickly resolve any immediate need.

The $2,000 is a symbol of trust that the company has in their employees and while it is often used to treat guests to drinks, cigars, or meals, sometimes it is used for much grander gestures, like:

• Buying four metal detectors to find a lost wedding ring in the sand (which they found)
• Building a makeshift ramp onto a rocky beach so that a wheelchair bound couple can have an unforgettable anniversary picnic
• Mobilizing a helicopter to fly over a gridlocked city to get flowers and a band to a wedding on time.

For The Ritz-Carlton, telling a guest 'No' is never an option and having an employee wait for approval to take action usually results in a more expensive resolution. As co-founder Horst Schulze sees it: "The average business traveler will spend well over $100,000 on lodging during their lifetime. I'm more than willing to risk $2,000 to keep them coming back to our brand."

Increase resourcefulness, motivation, and accountability through profit sharing

Through their profit sharing program, Southwest has directly connected the well-being of their employees to the well-being of the company. As each employee's profit sharing account grows with their tenure, their concern for the health and longevity of the company grows as well.

Staff become more resourceful, more motivated to step up and assume ownership, and more aware of how their decisions affect the bottom line:

• When looking to maximize speed and minimize fuel burn rate, pilots request more direct headings and altitudes and learn shortcuts in and out of airpots, as well as, which runways can be safely taxied to on a single engine.
• When 800 new computers were needed, employees bought them in parts and put them together in an assembly line cutting costs by 50%.
• Even when Southwest ticket agents let other airlines borrow office supplies, they will go so far as to follow the borrower until the item is returned.

In 2020, Southwest shared $667 million through their profit sharing program, which equated to more than 6 weeks of pay for each employee or roughly 12% of their salary.

Perform culture audits, and then do them again, and again

Throughout the year, Starbucks will continually perform culture audits to measure the cultural health of their company. This 10 question anonymous survey is sent to staff asking questions like:

• What makes you proud to work here?
• How does Starbucks support your professional development?
• Is risk-taking encouraged? What happens when you fail?
• How do you as a manager (or how does your manager) support and motivate your team?
• What are some of the ways the company celebrates success?
• What role do company values play in hiring and performance reviews?
• What's one thing you would change about the company if you could?

Get out there and find inspiration from other businesses

It is a common practice at Starbucks to send staff out on reconnaissance missions to see how other businesses operate—not just coffee shops but any service business. Armed with notebooks, they observe and document everything: what they see, hear, taste, smell, and feel. They later brainstorm ideas on how to enhance the Starbucks Experience.

As former CEO Howard Schultz says: "When people can see things, feel things, interact with things, that is then when their minds actually begin to shift."

Hire partners, not employees

Starbucks employees are called partners because that's what they are: part-owners.

Howard Schultz wanted to create a company that shared its success with all employees. This lead Starbucks to provide full health-care benefits for full- and part-time employees, free college tuition, and stock options through the Bean Stock program. All of which are sacred to the company and will never be taken away, even when pressured by Wall Street during the Great Recession.

Schultz felt that if employees were directly tied to the company's success, they would be empowered to have the same attitude, morale, and spirit as the CEO. This sense of belonging increased employee retention, cut training and recruiting costs, and improved the customer experience as customers saw the same face greet them each day.

“In a store or restaurant, the customer’s experience is vital: One bad encounter, and you’ve lost a customer for life. If the fate of your business is in the hands of a twenty-year-old part-time worker who goes to college or pursues acting on the side, can you afford to treat him or her as expendable?”-Howard Schultz

Create a workforce of generalists

Creating personal connections with each customer takes a lot of emotional energy. To help keep employees fresh and alert, Trader Joe's trains their entire staff to do every job in the store including running demo stations, cleaning bathrooms, ordering for each department, stocking, opening, closing, and even going to the bank. This allows managers to rotate employees out of highly interactive positions, like cashier and greeter, after only a couple of hours. In fact, greeters are rotated to another position after only one hour.

Promote from within

In order to keep a strong culture, Trader Joe's is very strict about promoting from within. Over 75% of Trader Joe's supervisors started as crew members and 100% of store managers and regional vice presidents are promoted from lower positions in the company. Many of the office employees also began their career in a Trader Joe's store.

CEO Dan Bane even limits store growth based on the amount of talent they are able to select from within the company. "We won't open a store just because we can, we want to open a store that's run by the right kind of people doing the right kind of things." To train rising talent, Trader Joe's University, a two-day developmental course, was created to offer management, leadership, and communication skills to staff.

Stay fast and loose by eliminating committees and avoiding bureaucracy

Part of the Trader Joe's buying strategy, which they refer to as Intensive Buying, focuses on making quick decisions to beat out their competition by gaining exclusive rights to products. As founder Joe Coulombe explains: "We don't take more than 24 hours to make a buying decision, even if it is over a $1 million purchase." This results in Trader Joe's leaving all buying decisions in the hands of their buyers and not bureaucratic committees, as they are seen as "a waste of time, and (Trader Joe's is) action oriented."

If there is a project that needs cross organizational collaboration, a skunkworks team is formed. These teams fall outside of the existing organizational structure and are made up of staff whose sole task is to focus on solving the problem at hand. When the project is complete, the group is dissolved and the team members are dispersed back into the company structure. As Joe describes it: "I wanted to instill this feeling of transience, to keep the organization loose."

Pay a high starting salary and give raises often

Understanding that "stores with more, better-paid staff have higher sales per square foot and per employee than stores that try to cut customer service costs," Trader Joe's founder Joe Coulombe made it a practice to:

• Pay both full-time and part-time employees well. To Trader Joe's "a distinction between full-time and part-time is a false dichotomy, when it comes to productivity." So no matter the role, crew members are paid competitively. Full-time employees earn over the median family income of the store's region. Hourly workers earn well above minimum wage.
• Give raises twice per year. Every August and February staff are reviewed and given feedback by fellow crew members, mates, and captains of the store. Based on their performances, they can receive raises that are equivalent to a 7% increase each year.
• Give generous bonuses to store managers. Bonuses don't have a limit and have exceeded 70% of their base pay. Managers, in fact, have the ability to make more than executives if their store does well. As Joe Coulombe sees it: "Unless a bonus system promises, and delivers, big rewards, it should be abandoned."

In an industry where the average turnover rate is close to 50%, these higher salaries have made it easy for Trader Joe's to attract quality workers and keep their turnover rate to less than 10%.  

Take care of your employees during the worst of times

Besides benefits like health insurance, never expiring paid time off, and retirement plans for full- and part-timers, Trader Joe's also ensures that their crew are taken care of in times of disaster.

• When wildfires in California left one store badly damaged, rather than lay people off, Trader Joe's continued to pay staff for any shifts missed. This was not just for weeks but for the entire 13 months that it took to rebuild the store.
• During the early months of COVID when everyone was panic buying, Trader Joe's experienced a surge in sales. They took that extra money and put it towards a bonus pool that gave employees an extra $2 an hour. Even as sales eventually slowed to levels a little below normal, they changed the concept into 'thank you' pay where employees kept that extra $2 an hour for every 4th hour worked.

As Jon Basalone, president of stores, says: “We've been around for over 50 years, and we've never had layoffs. We stay true to what we know works for Trader Joe's and our crew members.”

Align your job titles with your brand's personality

As "traders on the culinary seas," Trader Joe's continues their always present nautical theme by using sailor terms for job titles:

• Crew Members do a little of everything from running the register to stocking shelves. Within this group are also Helmsemen, aka greeters, and Native Bearers, aka box boys.
• Merchants, like Crew Members, do a little of everything but are leaders in setting examples of Wow customer experiences.
• Mates are assistant store leaders.
• Captains are the store leaders. They dictate the strategy and develop their Crew.
• Office Crew Members are made up of everyone else behind-the-scenes.

Empower staff through rewards, recognition, and engagement programs

Just telling Umpqua staff they are empowered to make decisions was not enough to create an empowered culture. Staff wanted assurance that it was safe for them to make decisions independently and that their work would be appreciated. Former CEO Ray Davis began introducing new incentive programs to reward good judgment and to signify that management trusts and believes in their associates.

• Brag Box recognitions: On Umpqua's intranet, associates can submit a story of how a team member went above and beyond to solve a customer's problem. Each month, Brags are selected, and those associates receive $50 and special recognition on the company's intranet.
• Spirit of Excellence Awards: Every month, associates are selected by their peers to receive $100, a plaque, and an extra day of paid vacation for doing extraordinary things for both customers and other associates.
• Team Recognition Fund: Every store and department has a special fund that associates can freely access to send team members something special, like gift cards, flowers, and a free dinner at a local restaurant.
• Team Awards: The President's Club recognizes the team or department that they feel is best living up to the company's standards in the most professional way.
• Culture Champion Awards: Each participating department's executive chooses a winner based on that department's criteria of cultural excellence.
• World's Greatest Bank University certification programs: When completing a certification program within the Umpqua training department, associates are recognized with an announcement on the company's intranet, a certificate of achievement, a graduation ceremony, and a recognition luncheon.
• Recognition cards: On the first of every month, Ray Davis would send out about 250 cards to associates celebrating their anniversary, letting them know how much he appreciates them, their work, and their dedication to customer service.
• Years of service awards: On landmark anniversaries, staff are presented with a gift box that includes a personalized plaque and gift catalog that associates can use to select a gift for themselves.
• Return on Quality (ROQ) crystal trophy: Each month, the department and store with the highest ROQ scores are awarded the highly coveted traveling crystal trophy.
• Celebration of Excellence: This yearly black tie event is like the Academy Awards. There is a master of ceremonies and a live band. Gold statues are presented to associates for their individual and team accomplishments.
• Annual Chairman's and President's Award: Presented at the Celebration of Excellence, these awards go to associates who exemplify Umpqua's core values. Winners receive seven days for two in Hawaii, $1,500 in spending cash, and a week's paid time off.

Inspire staff by sharing WOW stories

Umpqua added a WOW! blog on their intranet for associates to inspire colleagues with stories of how they went above and beyond for customers. Stories were organized into seven "superpower" categories:

• MegaEar: Listening for and fulfilling even the faintest customer needs
• Unbeatable Heart: Displays of care and compassion that shine through no matter what
• Bankability: Helping customers with banking and protecting them from fraud
• Hooray Holler: Loudly and proudly celebrating the great things others do
• Presents of Mind: Thinking of a personalized gift that makes someone's day
• Helping Hand: Jumping in to assist or rescue someone
• Dr. Umpqua: Prescribing the perfect products and services to serve a customer's financial needs.

View WOW story examples.

Start every day with a motivational moment

At the beginning of each day, every Umpqua team is required to set aside a few minutes to recharge their batteries and have some fun. These motivational moments can be spent doing anything except talking about operations and are meant to encourage staff to think differently, keep an open mind, and work together. A few examples of motivational moments at Umpqua include:

• Thinking outside the box: Ask your team to cross out six letters from this thread of letters so that the remaining letters spell a familiar English word: BSAINXLEATNTEARS
• Simon Says: Play a fast-paced game of Simon Says. If everyone succeeds, praise your team's ability to stay focused. Otherwise, remind them of the importance of staying focused and that you want everyone to remain standing.
• Moving forward: Have everyone sit on chairs with wheels and ask them to roll backward several feet and then forward. Make the point that it is always more challenging to move forward, but moving forward is the only way to "continually grow and experience new and exciting things."
• What's on your back?: Tape a blank piece of paper to each person's back and have everyone write one positive quality about that person. In the end, everyone walks away with a list of compliments from their team members.
• The power of communication: Using small LEGO kits, have two team members stand back to back—one with the pieces and the other with the instructions. See if the person with the pieces can assemble the kit by only listening to the instructions.
• Getting to know you: Have each team member write down an unknown personal fact about themselves. Collect the responses and read them aloud to see if the team can guess which goes with which person.
• Quality check: Have your team look at your work area as a whole through the eyes of a customer and discuss how a customer would perceive it.
• Culture word search: Create a word search with words that embody your company's culture.
• Play it loud: Play an upbeat song and have everyone stand up and dance or do a few aerobic exercises.
• Who are you? Using this list of roles, have your team write down the name of the person who embodies each role. Afterward, discuss how it is essential that "all team members assume most of the roles on the list at one time or another."
• Build a castle: Tell the following story: "Three bricklayers were asked what they were doing. The first replied, "I'm laying bricks." The second said, "I'm earning a living." But the third said, "I'm building a castle." Then go around and "ask each team member for a brief phrase that personally describes how they contribute to building a great company."
• First impressions: Have each team member draw a doodle on a piece of paper using a pencil with an eraser. Then, have them erase their drawings. Comment how every action, no matter how insignificant, leaves an impression and can never be completely taken back.

Create a club of cultural ambassadors

To keep a pulse on the company's culture, former CEO Ray Davis created the President's Club, whose members are cultural ambassadors for Umpqua Bank. Besides acting as cultural role models, members are responsible for recognizing teams for doing a great job and providing Ray with unfiltered constructive feedback on how to improve the organization's culture.

Each month, the club meets for dinner with Umpqua executives, where Ray discloses what's going on from the leadership's perspective, and members talk about how new initiatives are being received and the overall morale of the staff.

To be a club member, associates must first be nominated by their peers and then receive at least a 75% approval rating from club members. Only one or two members are admitted each quarter, and once initiated, members receive company stock, special name tags, and other perks. Associates can be a club members for up to ten years and then be eligible to join the President's Club Advisory Council.

Ask your employees to define your culture then publish their responses

Remember highschool yearbooks? Well, Zappos has something just like that. Every year, Zappos creates the Zappos Culture Book, an uncensored tell-all that includes how each employee personally defines the company culture. Employees email the CEO short essays of 100-500 words answering these questions:

• What is the Zappos culture?
• What's different about it compared to other company cultures?
• What do you like about our culture?

All unedited responses—yes, the good and the bad—are included along with highlights and photos from the year. It's their very own time capsule to see how their strengths and weaknesses have evolved over time. The book is then shared, not only with employees, but with literally anyone interested in the Zappos culture. Go ahead and buy your own copy on Amazon.

Create ways for employees to reward employees

It feels good to be recognized, especially by your peers, so Zappos devised ways for employees to recognize each other. Recognition doesn't have to be for extravagant gestures, Zapponians are recognized for opening doors, remembering birthdays, and sometimes for just always having a smile on their face through several types of programs:

• The Zollar Program: Zappos has its very own currency that can be redeemed for Zappos branded swag at the company store. Employees recognize someone with Zollars by filling out the person's name online and saying how they were WOW'd.
• Master of WOW Parking: Win a covered parking spot for a week right near the office entrance. Zapponians nominate each other for this coveted spot by submitting a brief story of WOW to the Zappos Concierge (ZCON) team.
• $50 Coworker Bonus Program: Each Zappos employee can give one $50 bonus per calendar month to any other Zapponian. Employees print out these certificates and deliver them to co-workers in fun ways, usually with an explosion of glitter.
• Hero Award: Based on that month's Coworker Bonus submissions, a panel chooses a 'Hero of the Month' and three 'Sidekicks.' Heroes receive a $250 Zappos gift card or an experience of their choosing (e.g. jumping off of the Stratosphere tower), a reserved parking spot, a Zappos Hero cape, and a Hero pin. Sidekicks receive their own parking spot as well, a $50 Zappos gift card, and sidekick cape. No pin unfortunately.

Measure employee happiness in 5 seconds

It might not literally take 5 seconds, but the Zappos Five Second Happiness Survey comes close. Every month Zappos employees are surveyed to measure their happiness levels. Zapponians answer these five questions with a response of either 'definitely,' 'sometimes,' or 'not at all,' along with an option to leave comments:

1. I believe that the company genuinely has a higher purpose beyond just profits.
2. My role in the Zappos Family has real purpose—it is more than just a job.
3. I feel that I am in control of my career path and that I am progressing in my personal and professional development within the Zappos family.
4. I consider my co-workers to be like my family and friends.
5. I am very happy in my job.

The survey is anonymous but anyone who chooses to sign their name is personally responded to by the Zappos leadership team. With an average response rate of 60 to 85%, results are calculated within a week. All scores and comments (good and bad) are shared with the entire company. Included in the report, Zapponians are updated on any changes that came about as a result of past surveys.

Spend money on happiness, not on high salaries

Salaries at Zappos tend to be more towards the median level of competitive salaries, hovering around the 75th percentile. As Donavan Roberson, Zappos Insights Culture Evangelist, explains: “We invest that 25 percent difference into activities that build our culture. Some might say that we are taking a hit in salary, but we are building a culture dedicated to the happiness of our people. When a person’s life comes to an end, that person doesn’t look back and think, ‘Okay, how much money did I make per year?’ The person is thinking, ‘How was my life; how was my every day; how much did I enjoy my job; what did I accomplish; what did I learn?’ These are the things that are much more important to people than salary.”

Share WOW stories by soliciting customer feedback

As part of the Sharing Great Calls program at Zappos, team members are encouraged to let their leaders know when they have made a strong personal connection with customers. The leader will then email or call the customer directly to receive additional feedback on the experience.

Zappos receives over 100 Sharing Great Calls examples every week and posts them on the company intranet and also uses them for quality feedback and training purposes.

And in case you're not sure how to approach a customer for feedback, the Zappos message sounds something like this:

"Our Team Member said what a great time she had talking to you! We want to give our Team Members an extra pat on the back, so I have a huge favor to ask of you. It will not take much of your time, but it will help us enormously. Please tell us about the service you received and any points of feedback regarding the conversation you had with our Team Member. "

Reward punctuality and perfect attendance

Zappos created the Panda program in order to combat unscheduled absenteeism and also to reward call center staff who have perfect attendance with additional time off. The program works like this:

• Employees receive one point for every day they miss or come in late.
• At the end of a predetermined period, employees with zero points are given a certain number of paid hours off.
• The hours are accrued over time and can be used as entire vacation days.
• Employees can use their vacation days without affecting their score.

Provide benefits of convenience

To cut down on the amount of errands and tasks their employees have to do on the weekend, Zappos brings in outside service providers to help. Employees drop off their car keys or dry cleaning at the front desk in the morning and by the time they are done with work their clothes are clean and their cars have had an oil change. Employees pay a discounted rate for these services, making the cost to Zappos little to nothing.