Case in Point: Teach for America – Education
Many of us are familiar with the work of Teach for America, an education innovator that enlists, develops, and mobilizes some of our nation's most promising leaders in the push to overcome education inequality. But we are perhaps less familiar with their impressive work internally as well.
Long story short, their HR team is doing some things right. Their benefits rival those of corporate behemoths, including perks like eight weeks of paid parental leave, childcare reimbursement during business travel, and 150 hours per year of training.
And get this: 94 percent of their employees report that they feel they carry a lot of responsibility in the organization, and 80 percent say their leaders allow them autonomy to meet challenges without always peering over their shoulders (Barnes, 2014). It is especially remarkable given the industry: ever-elusive and exhausting education reform.
In fact, Rebecca Thompson Boyle, former executive director of Teach for America, acknowledges, “Keeping culture exceptionally strong is challenging when your work is centered around issues of social justice. While staff passion and motivation are unarguable, the work is physically and emotionally exhausting and never fully done.”
She explains, “Culture is at the core of everything we do. If we do not have a strong, aligned, and passionate team that holds each other accountable to high expectations and commitment to integrity, we will be unable to best serve our teachers, students, and communities.”
Case in Point: Reynolds Farm Equipment – Agriculture
Owner and president Gary Reynolds inherited Reynolds Farm Equipment from his father, the original founder, and it epitomizes the sort of homegrown investment we esteem. In the community, they are widely recognized for their philanthropic contributions, alongside job growth and agricultural support.
In 2015, Reynolds received the Lifetime Achievement Award from his town (Annual Business Excellence Awards in Carmel, 2015). And as a company, they strive to maintain high benchmarks of progress, growth, and honesty, saying, “Anything less would be inconsistent with our mission to our customers and to each other.” In a volatile, high-turnover industry, Reynolds stands out by cultivating a strong culture and reaps the resulting personnel stability, which, as Gary says, “has had a huge impact on the profitability of our company, even in tough economic environments” (Annual Business Excellence Awards, 2015).
Case in Point: Mainstreet – Real Estate / Health Care
CEO and founder Zeke Turner left a job as a Wall Street investment banker at the age of 25 to return home to his native Indiana (Mainstreet). He founded Mainstreet in 2002 with a bold mission and initial capital of just $10,000, and now he has propelled the company into becoming the nation's largest developer of transitional care properties.
Skill, savvy, innovation, luck – all sure secrets to their success. But unique among their competitors, they also boast a remarkably flexible, family-friendly culture. And they are not just saying it; bringing children to work is actually encouraged. Turner happens to have seven of his own. They offer unlimited paid time off to all employees, under the rationale that employees can manage their own lives and should be able to see their family members stress- and guilt-free.
Turner says, “Most companies get the employee relationship backward. They fear you'll leave at any moment, so they end up making you feel trapped. I try to create an environment where they can thrive and feel they belong, that they're not just a replaceable cog” (Smith, 2016). All of this culminated in Mainstreet being named Best Place to Work, among a host of other workplace accolades (Smith, 2016).
Case in Point: Everlane – Fashion
Taken from Everlane's career page, this call exemplifies Everlane's unique cultural style as a new apparel company: “Dear rule breakers, questioners, straight-A students who skipped class: We want you” (Factories). Everlane is a new apparel company that is rocking the fashion industry with an emphasis on radical transparency, top-tier strategy, and innovative processes. They sell quality pieces that on their own would be appreciated, but they also feature each of their factories on their website, where consumers can learn about the employees and production (Factories).
Over the 2015 holidays, they had a pay-what-you-choose sale, in which customers could choose a price point ranging from covering pure cost of production to supporting long-term growth (Kahn, 2015). They tout the merits of knowing your factories, knowing your costs, and always asking why, and they tap into the transparency, sustainability, and responsibility ethic deeply ingrained in younger generations. After studying computer engineering and economics, their CEO left a job in venture capital to found the company at age 25. They attract employees from Google, Goldman Sachs, J. Crew, American Apparel, Yelp, and the like. Everlane is a quintessential example of talented people taking proven models and disrupting an industry. From 2013 to 2014, their sales grew 200 percent (Ransom, 2014).
Dig Deeper
In the end, culture is not about having the coolest gadgets or the best free snacks, nor is it solely a HR problem. It is about engaging your employees and creating the optimal conditions for them to thrive. It may look different at each organization, but done right, engagement renders tremendous business results.
Part II
The Workplace of Now
Chapter 5
Workplaces without Borders: (Or, Why the War for Talent Has Gone Global)
There is a good reason why culture and engagement are part of our everyday vocabulary, but our grandparents' generation probably never spoke of them during their careers. They talked of things like loyalty, dependability, and opportunity, all of which are still part of the culture equation, but in varying degrees than in the past. The workplace of now differs greatly from the workplace of just 20 years ago. It was a different time and place. Society valued different things. People behaved in different ways.
For one thing, our increasingly globalized and freelance economy means that talent is now borderless. Consider the movement of people.
● In 1990, the world had 154 million international migrants (generally defined as people who reside in a country in which they were not born) (Engaging and Integration a Global Workforce, 2015, 13).
● In 2000, we had 173 million international migrants (244 Million International Migrants Living Abroad Worldwide, 2016).
● As of 2015, that number had grown to 244 million (244 Million International Migrants, 2016).
And about half of those international migrants reside in only 10 countries. The United States alone houses 20 percent of international migrants, followed by Russia, Germany, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom.
Let's frame it another way. In 1990, all of us in the world put together took 400 million trips abroad annually, including all business, touring, studying, and everything else (Exploding Digital Flows in a Deeply Connected World, 2016). In 2016, we have nearly tripled that to more than 1.1 billion.
Or consider the growth of emerging economies. In 2015, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (the BRICS countries) claimed 30 percent of global gross domestic product (BRICS, 2015). Toss in the other developing economies, and together they accounted for 42 percent of world merchandise trade and for 35 percent of trade in world commercial services (Engaging and Integration a Global Workforce, 2015, 8).
What's more, the World Economic Forum's latest 2016
