SAS Canada’s pragmatic approach keeps company healthy, turnover low
Having endured bad experiences in the workforce in the early 1970s, James Goodnight was determined not to treat his employees the same way when he founded SAS Institute in Raleigh, N.C., in 1976. Employee-friendly perks included Friday breakfast treats, Wednesday M&Ms, fresh fruit on Mondays, break rooms stocked with complimentary drinks and snacks, a companywide winter party and numerous family activities throughout the year.
Goodnight’s desire for an employee-centric workplace meant a rich culture focused on taking care of employees.
That legacy continues today at the business analytics software and services company, according to Cameron Dow, Toronto-based vice-president of marketing for SAS Canada and Latin America. Not in a paternal sense but in a way that shows the company — which has 11,000 employees worldwide, with about 250 in Canada — cares about employees’ lives, families and work-life balance, he says.
“As SAS grew and started operations in different countries, that same ethic applied in local operations,” he says. “The fact we’ve been able to accomplish (being named a top employer) around the world says a lot about how that culture has transcended what you would normally see only at headquarters.”
For the company to be successful in the marketplace — by having happy customers — it needs to have happy employees. While that philosophy may seem overly simplistic and cheesy, says Dow, it’s part of a long-term strategy to make sure SAS is one of the best places to work.
“We’re a people business and all our intellectual capital basically walks out the door everyday,” he says. “It’s important they come back everyday and feel motivated.”
Companies do not pay enough attention to the business benefit of corporate culture, he says. When you factor in the cost for lost productivity, recruitment, training, ramp-up and lost business, “there’s a real, valid business reason to be doing it and it’s too bad more companies don’t take that point of view,” says Dow.
Perks help with the cause
Contributing to that positive culture are a wide range of benefits and perks at SAS Canada. There is an extensive health plan and the company provides an employee assistance plan, a wellness allowance and family-friendly benefits such as maternity top-up payments and a 35-hour workweek.
Other perks include tuition subsidies, a profit-sharing plan and a retirement savings plan with company contributions. Performance excellence and years of service are recognized with gift certificates, box seat concert passes, soccer tickets and restaurant dinners.
“There’s a lot of lip service paid to corporate culture and benefiting employees and creating a positive work environment but, from a SAS point of view, we’re fairly pragmatic in the things we do to make sure corporate culture is conducive to our employees,” says Dow.
SAS has a high-trust work environment, so employees have the option of working from home if they need to. Everyone is accountable for getting the job done, with the attitude work is something you do, not someplace you go, says Dow.
Another intangible that contributes to corporate culture is community outreach. In Toronto, the company “adopted” schools near the headquarters and provides them with IT equipment and fundraising efforts. Employees are also encouraged to volunteer with four paid days off each year.
Despite the downturn, SAS has not cut benefits, social events or charitable efforts.
“We just don’t do that because it’s strategically too important to us to mess with that,” says Dow.
Sustainability is also important. SAS Canada has a LEED-certified building in Toronto (meaning it achieved a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design rating) and several of the company’s buildings around the world have the same certification. It has also installed a solar farm at its SAS campus, so it is a net contributor to the grid as opposed to a consumer, says Dow. However, these initiatives are not done for cost savings.
“You don’t save any money by doing this so if people think it’s a way to cut costs over time, that’s not really the case, you’re actually spending more,” he says, but these kinds of initiatives are appreciated by employees.
Designed with feedback from employees, the head office also features an on-site fitness facility and employee lounge, free beverages and healthy snacks, personal closets and individual temperature controls at each workstation and a nap room and religious observance room.
High engagement, low turnover
The company enjoys high engagement and has a turnover rate of about two per cent – when the standard for the IT industry is 22 per cent. If customers keep seeing the same people at SAS year after year, that gives them confidence in the company, says Dow. In 2009, the company saw its software sales grow 13 per cent.
“Anyone who survived 2008 and 2009, given what’s gone on in the economy, and been successful, that speaks to me a lot about the strength of the culture in the organizations,” he says.
But it was tough to attain those kinds of results, says Dow.
“If you don’t have a strong corporate culture and employee orientation, I’m sure there’d be people looking to go elsewhere.”
SAS Canada is adding 10 to 15 per cent to its workforce in 2010 and the culture is something that can be touted in the attraction and recruitment strategies, he says. It’s a very high-stress industry and people get burned out, so higher pay isn’t always the answer.
“A lot of people who come to SAS are looking for a saner, more humane place to work in a very inhumane, insane industry and that’s what SAS provides,” says Dow. “In exchange for that, we get high-level performance, we attract high-quality employees and those employees stay with us for a long time, which reduces our cost overall.”
The role of HR
HR is heavily involved in all the elements that go into corporate culture, from the benefits program and community outreach to making sure the right people are hired. But it’s not like HR “takes care of corporate culture” and the task can be outsourced to a specific department, says Dow. Each leader has to demonstrate the ethics and values that make up that company culture, otherwise they undermine HR’s efforts.
“Definitely it’s HR at the centre of helping to define the strategy and managing all the execution pieces but it’s really the senior management team that gets to lead by example.”
On the same note, if the leader of an organization does not believe in the importance of corporate culture, it will be hard to make it happen, says Dow.
“Unless the CEO of the company, senior management team, is convinced there is business value in doing this, then it’s just not going to happen,” he says. “You’ve got to come at it from the business perspective, not, ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be nice if we had this corporate culture and be really nice to our employees?’ That’s just not going to fly. You have to build this business case.”
