This will likely be an ongoing series as time progresses, but here are a handful of thoughts on how to really WOW your employees (or potential employees). Some of these ideas were garnered from my personal thought and observations, some from former employers, and some from other sources including “A Field Guide to Developers“, Fog Creek, Opsware, and Google.
- Automatically “match” up to x% of an employee’s 401(k) – but deposit it (on a vesting schedule)Â regardless of whether the employee participates or not
- Maybe you pick where the money gets distributed (target retirement funds, for example), but do it
- Your employees will LOVE you (eventually)
- Increase your level of 401(k) match based on loyalty – the longer someone works for you, the better it should be
- Fully-fund some level of “good” health care coverage – regardless of whether the employee is single or married
- Let the employee choose to go higher out of their pocket if they want, but pick a “good” option for everyone at a bare minimum (maybe a 70/30 plan with a modest deductible)
- Competitive salary
- Offer your best on the first try
- Ironically, this is the least important item on the list – be competitive, but offering your best the first shot means the candidate can evaluate with no ambiguity
- Give good standard corporate paid holidays and vacation
- Minimum holidays (in the US) – 11-13.
- New Year’s Day
- President’s Day
- Good Friday
- Memorial Day
- Independence Day
- Labor Day
- Columbus Day
- Election Day
- Thanksgiving Day (and the day after)
- Christmas Eve (if a weekday)
- Christmas Day
- Day after Christmas (if a weekday)
- Minimum vacation
- 3 weeks
- 4 weeks is better
- Reward loyalty with better vacation accruals
- Minimum holidays (in the US) – 11-13.
- Great work space
- For appropriate jobs, offer up to 100% remote work
- For everyone, make sure you have full offices for your people
- Ample meeting rooms
- Great equipment
- There is no excuse to not give your employees the best equipment money can buy
- Great tools make the work better
- This does not mean you buy everything, you buy the best for what you need
- eg For tech folks, let them choose the workstation / laptop they want
- There is no excuse to not give your employees the best equipment money can buy
- In-office perks (ie, for folks who come into the office)
- Free drinks
- Free snacks
- Free meals
- Free childcare
- Education / personal development
- Cover related classes (or create appropriate classes) for your staff to improve their skills for the business
- Give everyone a book/tool allowance – and let them keep the books if they leave
- Certifications
- Pay for at least the first try of a work-related certification exam for appropriate employees
- Allow salary / compensation information to be “public” within the company
- Don’t bar employees from discussing how much they make
- Every compensation package may be on a per-person basis (raises, bonuses, etc), but it’s not a secret
- Put everything in writing
- All benefits need to be in writing – bonus structures, profit sharing, etc
If you’re going to make compensation public, then it should probably be wholly objective as well – kind of like http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090401/how-hard-could-it-be-employees-negotiate-pay-raises.html. Along with the formula being transparent, you can easily see what to do to increase your pay.
I have some other thoughts, but I’m also trying to test something, so I’ll be back…
Private offices – this really depends on what kind of work environment you have and/or want. If you want people to really hunker down and churn out code, private offices are great. On the other hand, in a company like mine, where there are teams and developers whose work can overlap, it makes sense to keep the workspace open and developers close together to encourage people to collaborate, ask questions in person, etc. It’s harder for people to get into “the zone”, but it’s a) easier to find suitable places to work, and b) gets people working together better. Cubicles are the classic attempt at this compromise, but I’m finding large tables with dividers that come up to about half-cubicle height work best.
Naturally, you’ll still need offices and maybe smaller conference rooms for private/sensitive discussions, people who are typically on phone calls, etc., but developers can easily be happy without private offices. And for the little bit of noise that is floating around, that’s nothing a good pair of headphones can’t solve (complimentary, of course).
Don’t mandate more stuff than is necessary. All the company laptops for my last job included Blackberry management/syncing/something software, even though a limited subset of employees had Blackberries. Limit software packages to the smallest applicable subgroup, and don’t put bloatware on employees machines.
Likewise, put as few requirements on what tools people use as possible. Obviously, some requirements are needed (e.g. the version control system is git, so all team members need that), but some are over the top (do all the Java developers *really* have to use NetBeans?). Let people pick what they know and love, and don’t try to ramrod “how I like my development setup” down everyone’s throats.
As for paid leave, another good policy is untracked leave, with the condition that you don’t abuse it, and that your work still gets done on time. Less hassle of keep track of vacation days, and less financial liability for the company (no vacation days accrue means no unused days to pay out at the end of employment). For employees, they’re never “out of vacation days” (useful for me, as I’m getting married and going on a honeymoon in the coming months).
I agree wholeheartedly – some things need to be standardized .. but otherwise let your workers help guide decisions related to tooling (and this applies not merely to software, but hardware (computers, injection molding units, etc))
I’ve found that every time I’ve been in an open office environment, it’s impossible to focus for more than a few minutes at a stretch: people on phones, conversations, etc make for highly distractive work.
For some work, a la my first job out of highschool, an open environment is absolutely necessary (manufacturing R&D work).
As objective as possible .. without being purely formulaic.
For example, I don’t think that mimicking the military pay grades is the best idea in the world. BUT .. knowing how you can improve is vital.
I’ve worked a few places that had “unlimited” sick days – those were great because no one abused the system. If you were sick, you stayed home. But most of the time we were still able to do most of our job even if we were hacking-up lungs.
I’ve also been in places that so highly monitored sick time that there was no point in ever calling-in.
Agreed, but if you’re going to make compensation transparent, then you’re also going to need to work extra hard to make sure no bias is creeping into the process. Having a rough formula can really help in this regard – you know the inputs that lead to higher pay, and the outputs are roughly consistent, so people feel confident that the system is fair overall. Not only can they verify that their pay is “correct”, they can also concretely see the type of impact certain actions have on their pay (and verify that as well).
Phone etiquette is a big concern for the open office setup. Not giving people phones if you don’t expect being on the phone to be a huge part of the job helps though. If you really need to be on the phone with a customer, or really anyone, you’ll need rooms available for people to go into, or they’re going to have to step outside (not a viable option depending on where you work).
I’m usually able to tune out enough of what’s going on by putting in headphones and turning on a podcast/music shuffle. Like I said, it really depends on the kind of work environment you have going on. If you have a lot of people that need to work closely, or you want to really encourage collaboration and working together, then you need to minimize anything that could possibly be an impediment, including having to physically leave your office.
Recently learned it is illegal for companies to ban discussion of salary and compensation data: http://www.twc.state.tx.us/news/efte/salary_discussions.html, http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode29/usc_sec_29_00000157—-000-.html, http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode29/usc_sec_29_00000158—-000-.html, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-get-raise-amit-agarwal?trk=pulse_spock-articles
Something I’ve seen / heard about the “untracked leave” thing is folks tend to take *less* time off because they don’t know what “don’t abuse it” actually means.
With 4 weeks off, you know how much you can take – there is a clear delineation. When it’s untracked, is 6 weeks too much? Ok? Not enough? Does it depend on the group you’re in? How long you take off at the same time? Your gender?
I’ve started to see guidance on what companies are looking for as an average annual leave (usually 20-25 days). There’s still plenty of room for discretion with your manager, but at least now people have an idea of “drastically over this triggers interest.”
Over the years, I’ve really come around from my original position to the whole “give them offices” idea.
I had an office when I was an intern at Sigma Xi.
It was fantastic.
Haven’t had one before or since (outside of my home office).
With the various Cubevilles and open plans I’ve been in and seen, I cannot praise the idea of a room with a door highly enough.
After so many years in open floor plans, I’d be cool with a cube. Never had an office that wasn’t in my house/apartment, but I bet that’d be nice…