The leaders of the top small, midsize and large workplaces shared what makes them proud and provided advice for companies trying to improve their corporate culture. Answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.
Q: What are key components of your company’s culture and how has that changed over the years?
Keith Hicks, president, Baker Audio Visual: The key components that make up our company's culture are to provide the best customer service to our clients, as well as provide the most creative solutions for our clients and to provide the best environment for our team, encompassing respect and opportunity for success. We allow our team to take ownership of their role here and encourage them to develop their positions. We also make it a point to give back to our community and to others. In lieu of change, I would say that we have adapted. We have concentrated our focus on our clients' expectations with more emphasis on understanding their business goals and how we can assist them in achieving those goals with the use of technology. We also make it a point to gain the trust of our new team members and help them embrace our company's culture in order to fully integrate them as a member of the Baker family.
Warren Wick, senior vice president, enterprise sales, Salesforce: The company was founded back in 1999. We were pioneering the concept of cloud computing. We set out to really build a company and change how we worked with our customers and how customers in turn can work with their customers, this concept of being a customer platform and a customer company. We've grown incredibly fast. We really want to have a consistent culture regardless of where you are and have a very unique experience that's going to bring out the best of our employees. In certain areas, if you pull the shades down and you open them back up, the skyline may shift to New York City, or San Francisco, or London, but it's all going to have that same look and feel internally. It's to the point where you go (to the different offices), you know it's the exact same (free) snacks.
Michael M. Rogers, president, Dorsey Alston: I heard all these professors talk about the culture (in college) and it just seemed hokey and it didn't make sense. And then I got back here and unintentionally kind of stumbled into the culture. We had a bunch of agents joining us. So I go down to the office and say hello, and they're all scrambling trying to get their computers hooked up, and I was down on my knees, plugging in their computer under the desk. An agent that I had not met said, "I can't get my computer hooked up," and the agent whose desk I was under said, "Hold on to your britches. I'll send the IT guy over when he's finished." And then the manager came in and said, "I see you guys have met Michael," and she's like, "Yeah, he's almost finished hooking up my computer." He said, "Michael is the owner of the company," and her mouth dropped. I watched our IT guys set up their email a couple of times and I was like, that's not very complicated. So then I started setting it up. Now they're out on the street saying, "The president of our company has fixed my email." All of a sudden it added this extra layer of human touch and intimacy. All of a sudden we had the feeling of a start-up. Agents (both new and existing) were all smiles and excited about being there, and (asking), "What can we do to make Dorsey Alston better? "It was like, wow. This is the culture that I had heard about in business school.
Top Workplaces in Atlanta 2016
How do you receive feedback?
Wick: I think we are wide open in terms of feedback as a culture, meaning we solicit internal feedback. People (using the Salesforce1 internal app) have the ability to speak what's on their mind and have other people comment. Speeding those feedback loops (beyond a suggestion box or annual review) actually helps create not only a culture of innovation, but something where we can all benefit from the knowledge of our employees. It gives everybody a voice.
Rogers: We are very proactive in soliciting feedback from our agents. We have regular lunches with our agents, and the whole caveat of a free lunch is you've got to give me some feedback. I'll take a compliment, but I'm really looking for some kind of constructive feedback.
What makes you most proud of your workers?
Hicks: When they start stepping up on their own, taking the lead and completely buying into that doing the right thing is the only way. We have had staff that booked a flight out of town on Christmas day because they knew one of our clients had a serious service problem. No one told them to make that personally difficult decision, they knew what the right thing was and they did it.
Wick: Salesforce looks for people who genuinely want to improve the state of the world. During the hiring process, we look for resumes that reflect the efforts people have made to better their community or contribute to causes they care about. We believe if a candidate can bring that same passion for making the world a better place to Salesforce, they will be aligned with our mission and will fit in well.
What advice do you have for creating a great workplace?
Rogers: Listening. We started getting feedback (from a few agents) that our green signs were blending in with ivy and front yards in the spring. So we had our sign guy make up a mock-up of signs where he bolded the letters, he thickened the white border around it, and did some different iterations, and I tapped 10 agents to come give me feedback. They were shocked that they had made a passing comment that the signs were blending in and that I had taken action.
Hicks: Be 100 percent committed, embrace every small success and don't get discouraged. Be willing to be patient and give everything the appropriate amount of time.
Wick: Our best advice to leaders at other companies is to be intentional about culture. At Salesforce, our leadership team is as intentional about the kind of culture we want to create as it is about the products we build, sell and service.
What does volunteering do for employees and your company culture?
Wick: People feel really good about working here because of what we stand for. Our employees are our life blood, and how do we make sure that they are not only feeling good about the work that they do here, but that in their community, they're also feeling good about what Salesforce stands for and that they're a part of something that's certainly bigger than themselves?
Hicks: We offer several opportunities for our team to jump aboard various volunteer opportunities throughout the year. The best part about it is that we don't have to ask twice for participants. Everyone is ready, willing and able to lend a hand, which is a rewarding thing to see. We don't force participation in these types of events; our team just wants to be there.
How do you expect to grow your Atlanta workforce?
Rogers: My honest reaction is because of how selective we are, you know, our growth is starting to plateau to some degree. Most of the agents whose reputations we really wanted, they're either not going to move at this point or they've come over here.
Hicks: Our turnover rate has dropped significantly, which is allowing us to be more selective and "raise the bar" on hiring. We are putting more emphasis on determining if the applicant will fit into our company's culture. Our main local competitors are mostly national firms with an Atlanta branch office, so there can be more of a job security concern. We know that our benefits and company culture are very different than a large corporation that typically has a rigid quarterly, profit-first mentality.
Wick: It's something we actually don't break out or publicly disclose by market. What I can share is that Atlanta has been a great market for us, and it's one that we're going to continue to invest in (the company said they are hiring 50 people in Atlanta currently).
