Talent Management: January 2009 Archives

At GotVMail, we make an effort to provide free, healthy snacks (that taste good) for our employees in addition to providing a wide array of beverages. Having better choices on hand makes it harder to pig out on bad stuff. We've had dried fruit in the past, but nothing beats the real thing. There's no other time of year when this is more evident than around the holidays, when we receive tons of fruit baskets. We always put these in our GotVMail kitchen, and the fruit is gone within minutes. Since it's clear our people like fresh fruit, last year I started to look for a good way to provide this year round.

There aren't a lot of options for fresh fruit delivery, and here's why:

• Fruit basket companies: Either include lots of non-fruit items or offer very expensive "branded" fruit (for example, Harry & David offers their special fruit that somehow needs to be vastly more expensive than the same kind sold in the supermarket)
• Supermarket delivery: Lacks selection and quality
• Famers' market: Requires time we don't have, and selection isn't consistently varied

While reviewing the options, I finally found a company that specializes in fresh fruit delivery for offices, The FruitGuys. Every Tuesday each of our offices (Boston and Austin) get a delivery of fresh in season fruit. It's a no-frills deal--just fruit, straight up. This has become so popular that by Thursday on most weeks everything is gone or sitting on someone's desk in the final ripening stages. Besides having a lot of nutritional value, having the extra fruit around means our people can supplement their lunches (along with our $5 lunch subsidy) or have an extra snack. Anyway you slice it, it's a good idea.

I recently found California Fruit Company who seems to be offering a similar service but limited delivery area.

One of our goals at GotVMail was to create a world class work culture. In order to achieve that goal, we need to create an outstanding employment brand. What's an "employment brand"? Similar to any other brand name, an "employment brand" are the recognizable attributes a company projects to prospective and current employees. It's essentially what people think about your approach to finding the right talent, and how you treat that talent once they're a part of your company.

There are two very important imperatives to GotVMail's employment brand: treat every employee and prospective employee better than you would treat your best customer, and make things radically easy for your applicant, from the interview process to benefits. Important to note: "easy" doesn't mean "easy interviews." It means creating a situation where expectations about the position are clear from the outset, and that part of doing well in that job doesn't consist of guessing what your personal objectives are as an employee. For this post, I'm going to talk exclusively about the impact of treating every who enters your office with respect.

We may be a growing start-up, but whenever a prospective employee enters our Boston office, they're greeted and made to feel at home right away. Candidates shouldn't feel like they're interrupting the flow of business or putting anyone out by arriving for an interview. I'd never thought about how powerful a personal greeting could be to a prospective employee until I received a thank you note from a candidate who explained its impact: he felt valued and welcomed from the moment he stepped in because he received such a warm welcome from our staff. It affirmed my belief that it was very important for every candidate to be greeted and given a personal tour of our headquarters when they arrive for an interview.

A workplace shouldn't be an alienating environment, regardless of whether you're a current or prospective employee. Employees should feel as valued and worthy of attention as the vendors you do business with each day. This is a crucial tenet of our employment brand; we want people to know we want them!