Confero Winter 2015: Issue 9 | Page 24

9 1/2 Questions appreciative. LD: So now we’re able to give six [scholarships] a year. I know every year we keep raising the bar saying, “another $50,000 more, let’s get it up to half a million”. I think that’s what our new goal is, so we can keep awarding scholarships in her name. She really meant the world to us, and talk about embodying the culture. And we have so many Jane-isms it’s not even funny. Her favorite expression was, “help me, help you”. We do keep her memory alive every single month. So that’s another non-monetary thing. KS: We also have the Spouse-Of-The-Month award. Our most recent recipient was our audio engineer that also does a lot of our IT work, so he’s here some nights and weekends updating things on the server. So it’s something to give back to the spouse for their patience for when someone is away or when people travel. We’ve given it to some people that work on a golf tournament in South Carolina. We give them a gift certificate to 2Vine [restaurant] to show them appreciation for the time they take to be away from their family for a little bit. LD: I don’t think many leaders take the simple things like hand written notes, the thank you, the little tiny things that go so far. Every Friday I come in an hour early and the reason I do this is because its not a natural thing for me, I’m always on the move and onto the next thing … I know how important it is. If I go around this building, I can see my notes up on people’s bulletin board. It means something to them. It means something to them that I’m acknowledging them for going above and beyond. Its very important for leaders to do this … Every Friday I come in and write my 10 notes—I’ve been doing that for 15 years now maybe. It takes a little discipline, but it means so much to people by just saying a simple thank you. 6. How do you collect your data? LD: We do it by the Great Places to Work survey. So there are 52 questions in different categories: Trust, Camaraderie, Fairness, Pride, Respect, and Credibility. There are 50 questions where you rate us 1-5 and two others: “Why is this great place to work?” and “what could we do to make this a better place to work?” We get those surveys back verbatim so we can see exactly what they need and want. Karen and I sit and go over them. Karen always goes to the best and I always go to the worst. They’re not earth shattering things­ like “Can you make the parking lot bigger?” which we’re — working with the town to get another lane. The Great Place to Work survey is the thing we look at every year. We focus on three things and we work really hard all year long, and we convene a task force. The great thing about this survey is that it breaks it down by demographic group. That is very important because different demos rank us differently depending on the question. So we can attack every single thing in a very thoughtful meaningful way. Karen and I sit and we discuss the things we’re hearing and how we’re 22 18 | SUMMER 2013 | WINTER 2015 going to go about trying to raise the bar in that area. Training is a good example. One year we had a lousy score. It was by a specific demographic group, 25-34 years olds, ranked us horribly in training. Above 35 we scored a 100%. What we found out was their [25-34 y