How do you define a good place to work? Fair compensation, benefits and certain intangible elements tend to top the list for local businesses.
While compensation and benefits are often dictated by financial markets and bottom lines, the intangibles rest in control of an organization’s leadership.
Laura Lehan, principal consultant at Peak Consulting in Sheridan, began her corporate career at Patagonia Sportswear, a company often recognized for its workplace culture, low turnover rates and flexible work schedules. When Lehan worked for the company, she managed a human resources office and carried out employee relations and cultural assessment for more than 500 retail and corporate staff.
During her time both in corporate America and in small-town USA, Lehan said she would point to a few things that separated good companies to work for from great companies. Those factors include helping employees understand they make a difference; communication of a clear mission and expectations; showing employees management cares about them; and the ability to make hard decisions while communicating compassionately and respectfully.
Several area residents echoed those sentiments, stating that most times, the intangible benefits of a workplace outweigh the tangible.
Stuart McRae, city administrator in Sheridan, noted intangibles make the biggest difference in helping employees feel comfortable in their workplace.
“Pay and benefits are nice, but I’ve heard of more places where employees are happier with lower incomes in one setting rather than a higher income in a toxic leadership environment,” McRae said. “I believe defining a workplace as a good place to work has much more to do with the leadership at the workplace than any other factor. How leaders treat and work with subordinates can span many of the tangible gaps that exist in various workplaces.”
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Jeff Garrelts, controller and principal at Craftco welding and machine shop and co-owner of Cottonwood Kitchen + Home, said you cannot have one without the other, though.
“Pay and benefits alone will not retain a team, and a great place to work with wages that are not competitive to the marketplace won’t either,” he said.
But most agreed all other things equal, employees will choose a workplace environment where they feel supported and valued. They also agreed that hiring well and good leadership sit at the center of a company’s ability to create a positive workplace.
A 2015 Gallup study, “The State of the American Manager,” found that 50% of Americans have left a job to “get away from their manager at some point in their career.”
In many cases, the reasons stem from a lack of training for managers and leaders within an organization.
Lehan said many times an employee who shows stand-out skills in the organization moves up the ranks. Just because that employee may have technical skills that make him or her capable of additional responsibility, that doesn’t always translate to good leadership, she said.
Gallup also found that 70% of the variance in team-level engagement is based on the manager — employee perceptions of the manager, the manager’s level of engagement and the manager’s talents.
Lehan said a company can have the best performance management system in place, but the person in the manager’s seat matters. You can have the best employee experience strategy, but those who have the best experiences have the best bosses.
“We know the power of a good coach,” Lehan said. “When our children join sports teams, we know intuitively that the coach is everything when it comes to our child's experience, enjoyment, performance and positivity. And yet, when we go to work, we forget all of that.
“People experience teams,” she added. “Those aspects of an organization traditionally associated with the executive level — brand, culture, values — are experienced by employees primarily through the relationship with their manager. Leaders envision culture, but managers bring that culture to life.”
Lehan pointed to several organizations in Sheridan County who seem to be “doing it right,” all for various reasons. They include Tom Balding Bits & Spurs, WWC Engineering, city of Sheridan and Sheridan County Chamber of Commerce. Both Tom Balding Bits & Spurs and WWC Engineering have also been recognized as nominees or winners in the Sheridan County Chamber of Commerce’s Awards of Excellence.
Dixie Johnson, CEO of the Sheridan County Chamber of Commerce, said many businesses stand out in Sheridan County, but highlighted Range (formerly ACT), Harker Mellinger, Bighorn Design Studio, Kennon, Landon’s Greenhouse, Nursery and Landscaping, Frontier Asset Management, PO News and Flagstaff Cafe, Wyoming Roofing and WWC Engineering.
While millennials often get pinned with a renewed focus on company culture, work-life balance and flexibility, WWC Engineering President and CEO Brady Lewis said those values likely existed before younger generations entered the workforce.
“I think good culture has always been an ingredient for successful businesses,” Lewis said, adding that work-life balance may be more recognized and understood now than it used to be.
McRae said he doesn’t think work-life balance is a generational idea, but rather one millennials have figured out more. Earlier generations, he said, worked hard looking forward to the day they could enjoy life.
“Every generation does some things better than the previous generation(s) and some things worse,” McRae said. “In this case, the younger generation has recognized, partially because the traditional workplace has changed so radically, that they don’t want to dedicate a lot of work to a company that may turn around and release them simply because of the bottom line.
“The experience of my generation is pretty rare these days and millennials are much more likely to seize the day and find their own fulfillment along the way rather than wait for something that may not come to fruition,” McRae added.
In the end, while many including Gallup have tried to quantify what makes somewhere a great place to work, business leaders in Sheridan County said the idea is more complex than that.
“I think it’s really about the right fit,” Garrelts said. “Some people fit in at places where others won’t and visa-versa.
“Find a place to work that fits your style, your passions, your skills and employers need to do the same,” he said. “Find those that fit your needs, not just the skills but also the cultural traits that are needed at your organization.”
In the end, though, a lot of the analysis relies on perception and preference.
“How do you ‘quantify’ feelings?” Lewis said. “How do you quantify the intangible? How do you quantify sense of worth, purpose and connection? I’m not sure you can.”
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Dynamics: Intangibles contribute to employee happiness | Destination - The Sheridan Press
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