Benefits are attractive and may keep employees on board longer. However, a company that is around for the long term is more attractive than a company that exists for a couple of years with massive amounts of benefits. The first five items below are pretty standard, easy-to-implement items to consider in designing your company’s benefit package. Items six through ten are advanced benefits that a startup should probably not implement right away, but should aim to implement in the long run.
Work Hours:This makes a HUGE difference. Our office hours are 9:00 a.m.–5:30 p.m. People feel less guilty about leaving when they’re supposed to leave. They also feel like they’re going above and beyond just by staying thirty additional minutes, instead of having to stick around until midnight just to show how hard-working they are.
Federal Holidays:This is an easy way to boost morale. Besides, if they have friends who aren’t working because of the holiday, it demotivates them. Additionally, the federal government tends to do the closest Friday or Monday to the actual date giving people a three-day holiday. At Practice Makes Perfect, we take it a step further; we give people the days between Christmas and New Year’s off too.
Unlimited Vacation: This one is a bit tricky because research shows that people tend to take fewer days off when they have an unlimited vacation policy than when they don’t. To combat that, we have two compulsory days off that every employee must preplan with their manager at the beginning of the quarter (not including federal holidays). We’ve been doing this for over a year now and haven’t had a single case of abuse.
Work from Home: We give our managers full discretion over this. I’ll admit, this is one of the perks that I’ve struggled to fully embrace, because I like to see the people I’m working with. But working from home might be ideal for some people, based on their situations.
Work Essentials: These things seem pretty basic, but we provide a monthly stipend for professional development, transportation, gym, and phone.
Total Health-Care Package:We cover the entire health insurance premium for our staff members and their families, including dental and vision. We also provide life and disability insurance.
As we continue to think about our new benefit corporation designation, we want to continue pushing the envelope of being a company that puts its people first. Here’s what we’re hoping to meaningfully incorporate over the next few years:
Comprehensive Family Leave Policy:We want our expecting parents to feel supported and encouraged.
Tuition Reimbursement:Though our compensation and benefits are pretty comprehensive, we want to continue to support our team members’ personal growth and development.
Home Purchase Assistance Program:We want our team members to have the opportunity to fulfill the American Dream, and understand that the down payment can sometimes be a huge barrier to home ownership. We plan on providing team members with up to 20 percent of their initial down payment for their first home in the form of a forgivable loan that is paid down with service for our company.
Employee Stock Ownership Program:A little more than 50 percent of our full-time team members have stock in the company. We’d love to formalize a program and get to a point where 100 percent of the people who work with us have the opportunity to own a piece of the company they are committed to building.
Full disclaimer: these perks are expensive. Instead of phasing them all in at once, you can add them in gradually. I think the startup industry could benefit greatly if we started to think about our longer-term impacts instead of our short-term profits to please an investor. There isn’t anything revolutionary in here that companies can’t do to put their people first.
Chapter Thirty
Accountability
“Accountability is the glue that ties commitment to result.”
—Bob Proctor
One of the toughest balances to achieve within an organization is between building a culture that gives people space while maintaining an environment of accountability. The line between managing and micromanaging is very fine and in some cases blurry. If you want your business to operate with a level of flexibility (which is best; otherwise, you may stifle creativity), ensure that controls are in place so that work gets done.
Create Annual GoalsEvery year, we set three to five goals that everyone in the entire company rallies behind. We ask ourselves the following question: If we looked back at the end of the year and this is all that we accomplished, would we be satisfied? At the end of the year, those are the only goals that matter.
Develop Quarterly ObjectivesEvery department leader sets objectives that stem from the annual goals we set for the company. Each department will also set department-wide objectives. The objectives are then assigned to managers within the department who are responsible for delegating and project managing throughout the course of the quarter. The managers are accountable for the objectives, and their teams are responsible for delivering on them.
In an effort to document our journey and increase transparency, I also write a quarterly letter in which I reflect on the things that went well and the things that didn’t go as planned throughout the quarter. It also allows me to solicit help and anticipate what we have ahead of us for the following quarter.
Focus on Monthly TargetsEvery month, we update a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) dashboard that is managed by the executive team. Once it is populated, we reflect on it with the company leadership team, and then I put together an email to the entire company that includes the dashboard and comments on how we are doing toward our annual goals. This creates an incredible amount of accountability and transparency within the organization. Everyone has access to this document, and they can easily see how we are managing our expenses, how much revenue we’re bringing in, and what our company’s burn rate is in that given moment. The executive team then holds a monthly town hall for people to bring up any questions or concerns they may have.
Have Weekly EmailsToward the end of every week, we ask everyone in the organization to send a brief email to his or her manager. The email has three sections: challenges, successes, and a third section for anything the manager or company should start/stop/continue. They are meant to be short and sweet, with the purpose of really shedding light on key items.
Do Daily Check-insEvery morning at 9:05 a.m. we have a group huddle. Everyone present in the office forms a circle and comes prepared to share the most significant thing that happened the day before, the most important thing (just one) that they will accomplish that day, and whether or not they foresee anything slowing them down. This usually takes us between seven and ten minutes. It also provides an opportunity to share any important company-wide announcements as they come up, instead of trying to create a meeting with a long agenda or sending a handful of emails.
Chapter Thirty-one
Leading Through a Crisis
“I do not pray for a lighter load, but for a stronger back.”
—Philips Brooks
Every decision we make says something about who we are and what we value. But what do you do when all the options you must choose between make you sick to your stomach? Is there really such a thing as a lesser of two evils?
I found myself in that very position halfway through the first week of our programs one summer at Practice Makes Perfect. In the weeks leading up to the first day of our programs, our team had enrolled kids to fill 96 percent of the potential seats we had across the city. On day one, only about 70 percent of the kids showed up. To make matters worse, the attrition was concentrated across 20 percent of our sites, meaning there were classes where my team expected fifty students and only ten were present on the first day.
Our team tried not to panic. Again, it was just the first day of the program. Maybe they would show up tomorrow. Instead of spending time reflecting on why this could be, we spent the first day making calls to the kids who did not show up. By the end of the day, we knew we were
in a bad place. The kids who had not shown up were not going to show up. What we didn’t realize was that many of our parents were indifferent to what programs their kids were enrolled in and simply signed them up for multiple programs that ran at the same time. Many of our families had signed up for the programs in March and April, and with very little contact from us leading up to the first day of the program, they decided on another set of plans.
We bill our schools on a per class basis. While we share in the responsibility of making sure the kids are enrolled in the programs, we take full ownership over the heavy lifting that involves hiring, onboarding, and training the staff. We delivered on our part. However, something didn’t feel right about billing a school for two classes’ worth of kids when they only had half of a class’s worth of kids show up. To make matters worse, it cost us $25,000 per day to keep everyone on payroll during the summer. We were employing over 300 people across New York City. This was when things got tricky.
By the end of the day on Tuesday, we realized there was no way to bring the enrollment levels up at some of our partner schools, which put us in one of the toughest places we’ve ever been in. Do we bill our partners the full cost of the programs even though their programs were not completely enrolled? Do we refund their money and break our promise to our staff by laying them off?
We considered every possibility, including imagining new services we could provide to the schools to ameliorate the situation, but I couldn’t stomach the idea of a bait-and-switch. If the schools decided they wanted to repurpose the funds for other services we could offer, then that would be fine. But I couldn’t force them into ancillary services.
By day three, we realized there was no straightforward way out of this position. Everyone was on edge, and a decision had to be made quickly if we were going to alleviate any small part of this catastrophe.
What I didn’t recognize while I was in college was that the same skill set I was using to choose between two good decisions was the same skill set I would need to rely on when I had to choose between two tough decisions. Again, I needed to understand my values and allow my values to drive my decisions.
I couldn’t get over how hypocritical I would be if we kept all the staff and didn’t credit or refund the schools their money. But laying off some of the seasonal help would betray the trust we had built with these individuals. Both decisions felt incredibly wrong. I learned what it felt like to have to lead in times of making tough decisions.
I made the decision that aligned most with my values. I told the team we were going to move forward with layoffs that would affect up to 10 percent of our seasonal staff. The message would be communicated before the end of the week, and I would personally deliver the news to those who were affected, and later update the entire organization. We would return almost a quarter million dollars, making us a company that I could at least be proud of when I was speaking to our school partners.
My business development manager and I reached out to our impacted partners and shared the news. Most of our partners were grateful and impressed that we would act in such a way. But there was one that was not so happy that we were going to break our promises to our seasonal staff. While it was unexpected, it reminded me that we have a responsibility to the tax payers who ultimately fund our schools.
Our teammates on the recruitment team were tasked with identifying the seasonal staff who would be least impacted by the layoffs (i.e., people who hadn’t moved out of state, didn’t communicate financial hardship, and weren’t dependent on this experience to get their next job). We chose to ignore teaching ability because we believed if you were selected out of a pool of 1,200 applicants, you were equally qualified to help us execute on our mission. A few other people on our team were tasked with finding alternative placements at other organizations for the people who were being laid off, creating opportunities for them to volunteer with our team or with other nonprofit partners, and thinking through how we might give them preferential treatment for future internships if they were willing to trust us again. The process was far from perfect, but, in hindsight, I am incredibly proud of how our team handled the situation.
That Friday, morale was at an all-time low. Some people cried. Others made it clear they never wanted to see my guts again. I couldn’t blame them. This was a breakdown in execution. Ultimately, I was responsible. People had committed themselves to our organization because of the vision I had laid out, and I let them down.
It took weeks before morale within our entire company returned to where it was right before the summer. Despite the ugly that came with the start of summer 2017, there were a lot of bright spots, including the growth our kids made and how satisfied many of our partners were. Since then, we’ve continued to think through safeguards, including a cash reserve to absorb such a loss without ever having to lay off another seasonal employee again and an added program guarantee that all of our classes will have a minimum of fifteen students in them. Like with all of our guarantees, we will offer participants the program the following year for half the price if we fail to deliver. This brings us one step closer to reducing the risk associated with partnering with us, to try something new, and to being a true partner who only succeeds when our partners succeed.
Hopefully, we’ll never find ourselves choosing between these two poor decisions again. While we may have lost some credibility with our seasonal staff in the short run, we hope that we’ve modeled how all companies should act in the education space to responsibly use tax-payer dollars, regardless of nonprofit or for-profit legal structure. Unfortunately, we can’t eliminate the possibility of having to choose between two equally bad decisions in the future. Next time, however, I’ll be far more prepared because of my deeper understanding of why I set out to do this work and the clarity I have around my values that are at the core of how I operate.
Conclusion
The most important thing is having the humility to learn from your mistakes. No one is perfect. No business is perfect. And no business was built in a perfect set of conditions. Commit yourself to the mindset you need to navigate it all. So much of success or failure in business is being able to see the tools and mobilizing the resources you need in that moment to continue moving forward.
Why I Would Choose the Startup Road All Over Again
Being an entrepreneur means assuming a lot of responsibility. There are definitely more positives than negatives that make this job worthwhile. If I had the chance to go back to day one, I would make the same decision all over again to start Practice Makes Perfect.
You get to pick your team.As an entrepreneur, you can’t build a startup on your own. Eventually, you will require other people, which means you have the opportunity to pick your team. Surrounding yourself with people you like is probably the most important piece of workplace satisfaction. This has been incredibly meaningful for me, because I have built my closest friendships post-graduation with the people I work with.
You get to build something.
This part of the job was not very material to me a year ago. We had a name and an empty Dropbox. A year later, we have over a thousand files, a structure, a team, and a brand. There is an incredible amount of satisfaction that comes from knowing that your hard work and time has amounted to something tangible.
You own the relationships.
Unless you take on a job as a relationship manager, you will be stuck doing work for people you will probably never meet or get to interact with. For some people that is fine. For me, I love meeting and interacting with people. I enjoy hearing about their stories and their journeys. This makes the work you are engaged in that much more meaningful.
You dictate the culture.
Here is your chance to decide how people feel when they come to work. What are the things you want people to think about when they hear about your company? This is your opportunity to create that atmosphere. For me, culture is on the top of my mind daily. We want to make sure t
he smart people who have joined our team continue to find meaning, purpose, and a place within our organization.
You learn a lot about yourself.
I can't overstate how important this has been for me. Yes, your twenties are supposed to be a time when you make the most transformative changes to your identity. But I think being transformative is second to running a company. If you are open to feedback and the ideas of others, you will learn a lot about who you are. I can’t imagine how I lived my life not fully understanding some of the things I know about myself today.
You never really want to stop working.There will be days where you will be tired, but there will always be so much you want to do to make yourself, your team, and your company that much better. That is a never-ending reward.
There is something special about taking on a job that has no defined path: you get to chart the course and make it happen.
About The Author
Karim is CEO of Practice Makes Perfect, a company that partners with schools to help narrow the achievement gap. He received over a quarter million dollars in scholarships to make his education possible. Karim founded PMP at 18. He is an author, a TED Fellow, and an Echoing Green Fellow.
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