"I'm lucky enough to have a pretty good memory," he adds.
TPC's Connor doesn't need a good memory -- she simply consults her extensive notes about employees' peeves and preferences. Connor's entry about consultant Phil Mayrose, for example, reveals that he loves college football, oldies music, and -- above all else -- golf. "Loves to try different courses. Send him out with either his wife, teammates, or a friend and he's in heaven," reads Connor's Mayrose entry. Last year she used that information to reward the hardworking Mayrose with a weekend getaway at a dude ranch that included several rounds of golf.
Connor doesn't focus exclusively on rewards. She also wants to understand employees' personal lives so that she can help when things spin out of balance. Her comments about one employee read more like a page torn from a therapist's notebook than something from a human-resources file: "During stressful periods [she] loses confidence in her ability as a mom, housekeeper, sister, daughter, friend, and aunt," Connor observes. "Ideas during high-stress times: lawn-mowing service, housekeeping, hot meals, day away with her son."
"My experience in managing people is, they're all different."
Connor's dedicated chronicling of employees' passions manifests the philosophy of TPC's founder and CEO, Steven Lassig, whose own ballooning workload makes it impossible for him to keep up with every member of his fast-growing staff. Back when TPC was just starting up, hiring someone was a little like making a new friend, says Lassig. "I used to take not only the people we were hiring but also their spouse or significant other to dinner," says the CEO. "We'd talk about families, hobbies, kids."
Lassig no longer has the time even to meet every new hire, so he schedules informal lunches several times a month with groups of no more than six employees, just to chat. "Eventually, everyone attends," says Lassig. "It helps me get to know them and gives me ideas on how to reward them when they do something well."
OH, GO AHEAD. ASK
People are complex assemblages of buttons just waiting to be pushed. From that premise rises the performance-recognition philosophy of Marc Albin, CEO of $12-million high-tech-staffing consulting company Albin Engineering Services Inc., in Sunnyvale, Calif. Albin believes that different employees don't just want different rewards; they also want to be rewarded for different things, depending on what personal qualities and talents they are most proud of. To identify which parts of individual employees' egos need scratching, Albin takes an unconventional approach: he asks them.
"My experience in managing people is, they're all different," says Albin. "Some people want to be recognized for their cheerful attitude and their ability to spread their cheerful attitude. Some want to be recognized for the quality of their work, some for the quantity of their work. Some like to be recognized individually; others want to be recognized in groups." Consequently, at the end of each employee-orientation session Albin E-mails his new hires and asks them how and in what form they prefer their strokes. "It helps me understand what they think of themselves and their abilities, and I make a mental note to pay special attention to them when they're working in that particular arena," he says. "No one has ever said, 'Just recognize me for anything I do well."
"You can tell people your door is open all you want, and they'll still think, 'No, he's the CEO. He's too busy."
At TPC employees are consulted about more substantive things -- including their own compensation. The employee-owned staffing company -- whose products are, in essence, its people -- opens its books to its staff, sharing financial information down to the CEO's salary. Individuals know both their target and actual margins for each assignment. Once a year Connor asks the company's programmers for hire to research the market value for their skill sets and experience, and then to use that information, together with knowledge of their own margins, to propose annual raises. (Connor uses the same method when determining compensation for sales, recruitment, and office-support staff, although information on margins, in those cases, does not apply.) She accepts their numbers without question 95% of the time, she says, and occasionally assents to a larger-than-warranted increase if an employee's personal circumstances recommend it.
"It's silly for me to slide a piece of paper across the table saying, 'This is what you're worth this year,' without any input from them," says Connor. "If there's a year that they have to be a little less fair to the corporation because of something that's going on in their lives -- a sickness in the family, for example -- I don't have any issue with that because I know these people are committed to the TPC family. And if they take a little more this year, next year when the new bill rate [for their services] comes in, they'll choose to take slightly less."
TPC has gone so far as to solicit input into company culture. In 1999, Lassig staged a contest he called "Programmers' Paradise," which invited employees to describe their ideal work environment. First prize, for the best answer, was $5,000; second and third prizes were a couple of PCs. Many of the suggestions Lassig received migrated into company policy: for example, performance awards can be monetary or -- if an employee chooses -- in the form of free housecleaning services or airline tickets. When TPC raises the rate at which an employee is billed out, the employee can choose additional vacation days in lieu of a raise. To keep those ideas flowing, TPC eschews traditional end-of-year performance reviews and instead asks employees to fill out extensive surveys on how they feel the company is doing and how their work lives can be improved. "We ask if the organization is serving their needs and if not, why not," says Lassig. "Instead of us reviewing them, it's them reviewing us."
