Massive Income

The Leadership Engine (3)

St. Louis brokerage firm Edward Jones, for example, sends each of its professionals through 132 hours of training every year. Edward Jones was ranked number one on the 2002 Fortune list of “Best Companies to Work for.”^[6] That level of investment in professional development is not unusual among companies that excel at BD. The Container Store, number two on Fortune’s 2002 list, has 162 professional training hours annually and ranks very high on “respect” (94% of employees surveyed feel they make a difference).^[7] SAS Institute has a free onsite medical clinic. The Finova Group in Phoenix sponsors free on-site massages. Timberland provides pet insurance, and Autodesk, in San Rafael, California, allows dogs at work. Qualcomm has three fitness centers, tennis courts, a swimming pool, and a sand volleyball court. NIKE has an extensive running track around its Oregon campus and encourages employees to use its athletic facilities anytime.

Other perks among companies cited as “best places to work” include executive coaching and career counseling, mentoring programs, tuition reimbursement, paid and unpaid educational sabbaticals, work-life balance programs (such as flextime and telecommuting), paid community volunteering, onsite day care, contributions to education funds for newborns or adopted children, free trips, onsite manicures and haircuts, relaxed dress codes, college scholarships, free breakfast or snacks, free eye exams, personal computer discount purchase programs, company-owned vacation campsites, flu shots, wellness centers, health screenings or exams, stock options, bonus plans, 401k matching, profit sharing programs, earned family leave, and so on. AMGEN has an annual chili cook-off, which, as chili lovers, we think is especially appealing.^[8]

In the late 1990s, at the height of what McKinsey & Company described as the War for Talent, a number of companies were compelled to offer more perks (including cars and signing bonuses) to attract and retain talented employees. However, Southwest Airlines has been able to attract and retain talented people for decades while paying them less than they could earn at rival airlines (for more on how they have done this, see Chapter 10). Exceptional companies do not use perks as bribes. Instead, they create environments that employees will find compelling, rewarding, and motivating. After all, if you behave like a mercenary and create a mercenary culture, you will have mercenaries working for you. If you treat employees generously and fairly, they will be more inclined to treat your customers very well. The perks we cited above may no longer exist in the form they did several years ago—or they may be more generous. Perks come and go as the economy permits and as employees’ needs and desires change. What’s important is the underlying philosophy of the company toward its employees and its customers, and that philosophy is shaped largely by the company’s leaders and their observable behaviors, not just their pep talks. Enlightened leaders behave in ways that behaviorally differentiate them from other business leaders. Through their values, decisions, and actions, they shape the culture and create the processes that can result in BD.