If you’re looking for Sheryl O’Loughlin right after lunch, don’t go to her office. Odds are, O’Loughlin, Clif Bar Inc.’s CEO is sharing
time with employees at the gym. She’s not working up an appetite for one of the company’s energy bars or drinks; it’s part of an
open schedule at the company. To motivate people, O’Loughlin gives them options to energize themselves. From the climbing
wall in the office to allowing employees to do charity work on company time, O’Loughlin wants people to have freedom in their
daily schedules. That commitment to people has motivated the bottom line, too, as the 180-employee company has passed $150
million in revenue. Smart Business spoke with O’Loughlin about how giving employees a cause can keep a company energized
and healthy.
Give employees flexibility. I go around the
company all the time and see what makes
people feel excited to come to work, and a
lot of people use the word freedom. What
they mean by freedom is, ‘I am free to go
workout whenever I want during the day.
You trust me. I am free to go do my charity
hours on a day that might be in the middle
of the week when there’s a bunch of meetings going on because it’s part of the bottom line for our company.’
They live the life that they want to live,
and that gives you so much more energy
and you feel like you have more of a purpose. That’s part of the reason our turnover
is so low. It’s not like people are here
searching for the next thing; they can fulfill
their life goals here.
Live your philosophies. We make ourselves a
different kind of company. We use the
word ‘sustainability’ to talk about our
business, brand, community, people and
planet, and we promote that this sustainability is our bottom line. Those are the
five bottom lines, and we measure those,
and people’s bonuses are based on those.
Part of it in the real big picture is that people here feel real connected to what we’re
doing in terms of our sustainability, and we
promote that. People are so immersed in
their work, they’re so excited about it, and
they feel a sense of ownership to it. And
that’s catchy; it’s contagious.
We get together every Thursday in a company meeting and let the employees actually run the meeting — and people get up and
talk about the things they’re doing here and
what they’re excited about. That energy is
easy to catch and it resonates around the
company.
Help employees with their passion. It’s important to support the community, and we do
things like have employees participate in
our volunteer program on company time
and let people contribute to causes in the
community that they’re passionate about.
They choose which programs to participate in, and our employees own that program.
It’s very cool, and people are very proud
of it. And people come to work every day
to be connected to that. What we do in the
community helps people to feel more connected to our brand, but it also fits in when
we talk about sustaining our people.
One of the things we really focus on is the
question of what really helps people to feel
energized when they come to work. That’s
where you get the energy; people are doing
it because they’re passionate about it. It’s
more than just a job, and you can start to
feel that energy throughout the company.
Verbalize your culture, and find the right people. We hired 51 new people this year, and we
were real nervous about it because we
wondered if the culture was going to
change and we were going to lose what we
had.
It actually got better, and the energy
level got higher, and that starts with the
company’s aspirations acting like some
kind a filter, because people are attracted to this company because they are
attracted to our aspirations.
There was a time when we weren’t as
articulate in what we believed in; it was more in our gut than vocalized, and the
result of that was we weren’t necessarily
making the right choices with bringing
people on. But that was a great learning
experience because it gave us a chance
to realize we have to better articulate
who we are and that’s important to send
out a magnet to the right people.
By spending time with people, having a
dialogue and figuring out what points
connect them to our company and what
points don’t, it’s helped me to better verbalize things in a way people understand. Now we’re to that point where we
can verbalize our company dream and
our vision.
Humanize management. As a company with
a lot of dialogue, it’s important to be very
clear on how a decision is going to be
made.
We try to be clear on who is going to
make the decision and what role the
input is going to play in that. We want
people to see that their input is heard
and they’re a part of that.
We may decide, for example, to not
introduce a product someone has been
working very hard on. It’s so important
for that person to understand why that
decision is made. With a lot of companies, there’s a black hole that things
sometimes fall into.
Having grown up as a smaller company, we want to keep that human connection alive because it’s so crucial for people to feel important. People need to
understand. So we work on being transparent and letting people know what our
decisions are and why they are that way.
And that also means telling them what
decisions they can just absolutely take
and run with in their job. People will
bring their passion and energy if they are
excited about what you’re doing. If people don’t understand that passion, then
they’re not going to be excited about
their job.
HOW TO REACH: Clif Bar Inc., www.clifbar.com or (800) 254-3227