The Secret Sauce Behind Engaged Employees
HotSchedules Friday, January 6, 2012 at 2:13PM 
I've always known HotSchedules was the Utopia of work places, but now, the rest of the world does too. Recently, HotSchedules was honored as an Austin-based Top Workplace by the Austin American Statesman. This follows our earlier award by the Austin Business Journal as a "Best Place to Work 2011."
Now, for those of you who don't know, the way you get to be one of these places isn't all that easy, and most of the work rests on the backs of your employees. What happens is that the publication invites someone in HR or Marketing to participate by completing a simple form. Once you do, the real fun begins.
First, you have to assign each employee to a department or group of departments, ensuring that no one department has too few people in it. Not enough people and your responses won't be viewable, so when you’re a smaller organization like ours, it’s important to ensure that you have enough people in each bucket.
Next, the entire employee base gets a pretty lengthy survey to complete. Companies have to have a certain percentage of completions to even qualify for the award, so it’s critical that they complete it. But we did great there, with almost 90% of our company responding to the survey. Actually, make that "surveys" since this was the second survey we had done for a Best/Top work place award.
Let's think about that for a minute. In all of Austin, there are lots of companies. Tons, no doubt the bulk, didn't even APPLY for these awards. They knew better. Then there are those who applied, but didn't qualify - either they couldn't mobilize their employees to respond to the survey or the employee responses weren't as glowing as upper management had hoped.
By contrast, 90% of HotSchedules employees were engaged enough to respond, and they responded in a way that ensured a win for the company. That's amazing!
Want to know the secret sauce? The WHY behind our great results? Here’s what I think:
1) HotSchedules’ management team is focused on maintaining its family-oriented culture of FUN.
2) HotSchedules is laser-focused on Service. With a capital S. That plays out in both our customer support team and how we treat each other around here, regardless of title.
3) HotSchedules builds something that really and truly helps people be more productive and efficient and that makes us all feel good about coming to work.
Sappy enough for you? I really believe it. I’m drinking the proverbial Kool-Aid. So sue me. I tell people all the time that this is the Happiest Place on Earth. I can't say that in an official capacity, or Disney might call and ask for their slogan back. But as "corporate" offices go, I have never experienced better.
I want to personally thank each and every employee who responded to those surveys. They really are important and we appreciate the extra time spent on them. You’re the best!
