How Creating Engaging Workplaces Is Going To Change Your Business

HR.com Live! Podcast with guest Andy Guttman on creating engaging workplaces

Have you worked in a company where you had the privilege of actually having a work/life balance? How about getting UNLIMITED and PAID time off?

As members of an organization, these things have always been an elusive pursuit. This topic has always been near and dear to my heart probably because it remains an issue, and it still is to this day.

This week, I had the opportunity to talk to Andy Guttman who is the President of Farbman Group, and is someone who cares about people, processes, community, and is committed to the corporate vision of operating with ethics and integrity. Though he is a busy guy managing more than 25 million rentable square feet of commercial real estate and his 200+ employees, we had the chance to sit down and talk about this hot topic.

Here are some of the highlights of our conversation:

This topic of work life balance is a hot topic today pretty much among all folks including the millennials. I'm just curious, how do you see companies catering to this need that we have today?
I think that in today’s society, now more than ever, it’s important to have that flexibility if you want to maintain employees. With unemployment so very low you’ve gotta keep your employees happy and what I’ve always found is productivity versus watching the hours that someone works is so much more important. It’s about getting the job done and it always should have been about getting the job done and getting it done right as opposed to having to face time, having to be at a certain location, having to be there for certain hours.

Today we have to be more cognizant of the needs of our people, have to be respectful of the varying things that they have to do or want to do.

You see more of that push or that drive with millennials demand an acknowledgement of what I do, however I get it done, doesn't matter, it’s that I get results. Do you find that that’s like a stronger issue with the younger folks we have?
It's huge with millennials. I hate to put an entire people in a category but there's some truth to that with every generation. Millennials, they work differently in a lot of respects. When people go home at night, a millennial is just getting started, or they're coming back to work after they've had dinner and they work differently.

Sometimes they want a quiet area to work; sometimes they want to be able to work from the coffee shop, so you have to consider supplying that. I used to say that millennials want all the little games and the cool things that free their mind and make them creative thinkers. They want the ability to play a game of ping pong in the middle of the day, destress, and then go back to work. 

You are catering somewhat to this current generation, but I think everyone wants that, everyone wants the ability to go to their kid’s soccer game and then get their work done rather than getting it done in advance.

Maybe those of us who are a little bit older always wanted that but didn’t quite feel that it was appropriate to articulate and today it’s an ok thing. When it comes to unlimited paid time off and the perk that it can be in recruiting and retaining talent as it encourages work-life balance, what does unlimited paid time off mean? What strategies do you recommend to effectively roll out an unlimited paid time off policy as well as maintain it? 
Unlimited PTO can be unnerving for the employer and the employee both. It took us a while to roll out unlimited PTO, and we wanted to be very cautious of it to make sure we rolled it out ok. So it took a while to get people comfortable with the fact that it is really a benefit to them, but you have to put some real restrictions around it. I hate to use the word restrictions, but there has to be structure. For us, we had to say, you have unlimited PTO, but everyone in our organization has a backup employee so that when you’re off, they watch over your portfolio and your work. You have to make sure that your backup employee isn’t on PTO at the same time that you are.” 

You really do have to pay attention to it and make sure you’re taking the time off because the intention of it is so good you know you can, as long as you get the work done, take the time off that you need and enjoy life. It’s such a trust-based concept. The employer is trusting the employee to not abuse it, the employee is trusting the employer that they’re sincere. Yet they have to work together to make sure that people are actually using it for the intention. 

We look at the other end of the population in our workforce today, what trends are you seeing when it comes to our seniors?
We’re seeing a lot of seniors that are now coming back to work, may have retired, may just want to work a little less, or may want to just be part of the group that’s counted in working. We’ve had great success in bringing the senior population back to the workforce, and we have a great strategic coach here at Farbman, a guy named John Anderson who recently wrote a book, Replacing Retirement. He believes that people don’t necessarily need to retire but want to retire. They want to be able to do more in life, like the travelling that they want to do, but they’d like to be able to come back and keep their minds active and stay in the industry that they’re in.

We think that’s gonna be a continuing trend where full retirement is a thing of yesterday, because if people aren’t active doing something their minds slow down. I really do think that affects their retirement anyway, where in some cases I think it can shorten your life if you’re not active and you’re not keeping your mind sharp.

I’m curious, when you look across our workforce as a whole, what do you find is a common theme that everybody is hungry for?
Today, employees are hungry for a lot of things. Continued education is a big part of it, so in Farbman Group we offer Farbman University which allows for class work throughout the year. We usually offer 40-50 classes, of which our employees are required to attend four of those classes every year in a variety of areas.

It could be completely related to what we do for a living here at Farbman. They could take courses on how to handle their own personal finances. It’s a variety of things that people really want, but today’s workforce is really looking for an employer that’s looking out for them and trying to look out for what’s best for them above and beyond all else.

One other area I’d love to get your insights on has to do with Employee Reviews, what trends are you seeing in it? When it comes to leveraging, what are you seeing to maximize employee review or the process that you recommend, what is that like?
We’ve replaced it with a monthly review with the employees, but a little less formal and a little less threatening. So we’ve made it into a thing where the supervisor says not only what the employee can do better but what the supervisor can do better to help them with their role. That’s a really important tool because we always think that if an employee’s not doing well, it’s our job as leaders to make sure that they improve. Our goal is never to fire them, but it’s to find ways to improve what they’re doing and make them into the employees we want them to be, and that’s the challenge. We find that the review itself is antiquated and doesn’t really work in today’s world.

I would love to know what you are learning. What’s the book that is on your shelf, that I need on my shelf, that HR professionals at large would love to know? What is Andy Guttman reading?
Oh wow! That is a very good question! I’ve always got some books that I’m reading at any given time. Right now, I just finished the book I keep talking about, Replacing Retirement, which I think is a fantastic book, and it’s obviously top of mind for me. Any of the books by Patrick Lencioni like The FIVE Dysfunctions of a TEAM is really one of the best for HR people to read. But any of the Lencioni books are fantastic, and I’m hoping in a month or two you’re going to be reading a book by Andy Guttman called, Putting Others First: A Servant Leader Story.

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	Dr. Heidi Scott, Chief Learning Officer, HR.com
	Andy Guttman, President, Farbman Group