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How do you ensure that your benefits are really resonating for your workforce, so they're incentivized to continue to deliver excellent service? As Finelite – a 2010 finalist for Winning Workplaces' Top Small Company Workplaces award – shared in their application, 4 employee engagement-driven keys work for them:
- Experiment
- Listen to results
- Make continuous improvements
- Avoid becoming rigid
As we noted in our award profile on Finelite, during the current downturn the 20-year-old, California-based firm avoided layoffs while generating record shareholder dividends – and still were able to pay employee bonuses near target levels. Their answer to our application question asking for info on benefits not asked as part of our checklist of common package offerings sheds light on how the keys mentioned above played out in helping them achieve these outcomes:
Finelite strives to find ways to address the high cost of living in the San Francisco Bay Area and the congestion on our roadways. When gas prices skyrocketed in 2008, our hourly workers voted to change to a 4-day, 10-hour-a-day work plan. Half of our hourly employees worked Monday to Thursday, while the other half worked Tuesday to Friday. The goal was to reduce commute time and fuel costs, while limiting daycare needs to four days a week. In practice, the challenges surrounding daycare and adjusting schedules within families were greater than anticipated. Hourly workers also indicated that they missed the benefits of working as one team instead of two. As a result, in November 2009, our hourly employees voted to return to a 5-day, 8-hour-a-day workweek. Here is the bottom line: Experiment. Listen to results. Make continuous improvements. Avoid becoming rigid.
One more thing: In this case I mention these 4 keys as pertaining to benefits-oriented people practices, but you'll find them helpful in general when it comes to making your staff engagement activities more successful for your workers and for your organization.
Do you have uncommon or original homegrown benefits that have helped keep your business humming during the downturn? Tell us about it, and enter for your chance to be featured in Inc. Magazine this June!
