Employee engagement helps SAS boost productivity

Building a brand by giving back

Just in case all that’s not motivating enough, SAS contributes to community organisations. SAS’s 'Data For Good' program is assisting organisations like Black Dog Institute to improve mental health awareness. SAS is also a long-standing supporter of Special Olympics Australia. Their support includes financial contributions and an active program of staff participation. This program gives staff the fulfilling feeling that comes with working for an organisation that’s helping save and transform lives.

Gregor says the company’s headquarters in Cary, North Carolina, is “particularly impressive”.

“It’s a sprawling campus with subsidised day care, medical centres, wellness centres, child care facilities and an authentic focus on work-life balance,” he says. “We don’t have the scale for that in Australia but some local offices do have sporting facilities.”

Best ways to increase productivity

At this point you’re probably asking two questions: why does SAS do all this and can such wide-ranging employee engagement strategies boost productivity at work? The answers are: Dr Jim Goodnight and yes, it would appear so.

“Dr Goodnight was an academic at North Carolina State University who quit to launch SAS in 1976,” explains Gregor. “Right from the start he believed people should always feel special about working at SAS. A well-known quote of his is, ‘95 per cent of a company’s assets drive out the front gate every night; the CEO must see to it that they return the following day.’”

As counter-intuitive as it might seem to many employers, showering staff with benefits appears to enhance employee productivity and drive business growth. Attempting to quantify the return on investment (ROI) of staff benefits is a notoriously difficult undertaking. However Dr Goodnight’s decision to establish SAS and focus on his people seems to have paid off. The business he founded has annual revenues in the billions.

“To take one example of increasing benefits improving the bottom line, six years ago we introduced policies that not only allowed mothers to take plenty of time off after giving birth but to up their hours at a pace they were comfortable with as their children grew older,” Gregor says. “Since then we’ve had a 100 per cent retention rate for all staff members who’ve given birth".

Hiring great employees

“We don’t have trouble either hiring good employees or retaining talented staff. The staff we have are happy, creative and productive. SAS always places highly on ‘Best Places to Work’ surveys [run by publications such as Fortune] both in Australia and around the world. When surveyed, 90 per cent of our Australian workforce and 100 per cent of our New Zealand workforce said SAS is a great place to work.”

SAS isn't resting on its laurels. It quizzes its workforce annually about what SAS should do next and incorporates this into its business planning process.

“It’s not solely about benefits but the gist of the survey is: ‘What should SAS look like in 12 months’ time?’” says Gregor. “The responses aren’t kept confidential by management; they’re broadcast throughout the organisation.

“At that point, departments put action plans in place to make sure SAS remains the kind of place our staff want to work at. So when business owners and managers ask about how to do what SAS does, my response is they should start by consulting with their staff about what they want the future to look like.”

Gregor, who’s worked for a range of organisations over the course of his career, believes the SAS approach is scalable. “One of my first jobs was working in distribution for PepsiCo with a different sort of workforce to the one at SAS,” he says.

“I’ll never forget a manager there telling me, ‘If you treat people with respect, show you trust them and share with them high quality information, that will be repaid in spades.’ That has since proven to be my experience.”