Making employees feel good works well
One commonality shared by all of the companies that top Hearst Connecticut Media’s list of top workplaces among mid-sized companies is the ability to make employees feel like what they do matters, not only the companies, but to customers as well, according to executives with these businesses.
“How we treat them is how they will treat our customers,” said Mark Curtis, chief executive officer of Splash Car Wash, the Milford-based company that operates 27 locations in Connecticut, Vermont and New York. “My partners and I know most of our workers by name and we’ve helped people deal with unique circumstances.”
The company also rents out Quassy Amusement Park every year for a company picnic. Workers and their families get into the park for free, Curtis said, “and they can do all the rides for free.”
“We also provide them with dinner,” he said of the amusement park outing.
HAI Group, a specialty insurer in Cheshire that serves housing authorities and related organizations, uses its headquarters for employee engagement activities.
Those activities include food truck Fridays. a community garden, which has not been in use during the pandemic and yoga classes, according to Ed Malaspina, the company’s chief executive officer.
Everyone got a yoga mat for their house,” Malaspina said, along with fresh-baked cookies and holiday baskets. “For 12 weeks, we all had a
yoga class together.”
Outings to Yard Goats baseball games in Hartford are also common, he said.
Jason Perillo, chief marketing officer for The High Watch Recovery Center, said the Kent-based substance abuse facility’s philosophy is “doing the little things that show employees they are appreciated.” The center employs 170 people and offers clients treatment through 78 inpatient residential beds and sober living beds at three facilities in Kent and one in Canaan.
“We do everything we can to make our employees lives happy and healthy,” Perillo said. “Lunches are free for all employees. We also do it by offering opportunities to socialize outside of work.”
During the early stages of the pandemic, he said High Watch officials “took great steps to keep our guests and employees safe.”
“We spent $1 million during the early days between the amount of testing we did and the temporary facilities set up,” Perillo said. “We made an investment in keeping our employees safe and healthy.”
Employees at High Watch Recovery Center “find that there is an intrinsic value in the work we do here” he said.
“Folks who come here to work know that they are going to be doing good for others,” Perillo said. “It’s not easy work: You have to be emotionally invested and are staff is. And we are sensitive to that emotional investment.”
For some clients at High Watch Recovery Center, part of the treatment process is teaching them a marketable skill
Perillo said the center operates a cafe in Kent called Wilson’s whose workers are High Watch clients who are in recovery as well as alumni of the facility. The cafe is named after Bill Wilson, who founded Alcoholics Anonymous as well as the High Watch Recovery Center.
“Our guests are only with us for a limited time,” he said. “We give them the tools to be successful after they leave us. We wouldn’t be successful in what we do if we weren’t doing what it takes to give them every chance to be successful.”
Curtis said Splash Car Wash officials hire new employees based on the attitude they exhibit during the interview process.
“You want to start with somebody who has a pleasant disposition and train them so the can do their job properly,” he said. “People at work don’t want to work with somebody who is nasty , who doesn’t want do the job. We have incredibily low turnover in a busines that's know for turnover.”
Curtis said some of his employees have been with the company for nearly three decades.
“We have guys who have gone from working as a car vacuumer to general manager,” he said.
HAI Group was among the first offices to close down at the start of the pandemic, and was back in the office on June 1 of this year.
“All the precautionary measures that we took have proved to be effective,” Malaspina said. He was in the office every workday without fail throughout the pandemic.
With regular sessions for the entire company to gather online and ask questions, Malaspina said “we actually found a way to get even more employee engagement and productivity.”
If it sounds like a holiday resort, that last word, productivity, was very much part of the equation. Malaspina said 2020 ended up as one of the best years in the company’s history for reasons not related to COVID-19, at least not directly.
“We actually grew and created new products and services,” he said, including an umbrella insurance product for customers – who are, as a mutually owned company, the owners of HAI.
The current model has HAI employees in the office for three days a week, rotating – with about one-third of all employees working remotely on a given day.
“At a personal level, I would like everyone back here together,” Malaspina said, “but I do think there’s a significant number of employees who do find better life balance through working remotely and I respect that.”