Companies offer different corporate culture

While the job market may be in a slump, local companies with a different approach to corporate culture are thriving and hiring. They are focusing on the new generation that wants to enjoy their time at work and be seen for what they can offer, not just what they can do in an average work day.

That individuality is an intrinsic part of the corporate culture of one locally based international company.

"We have a whole culture book for our employees and what our culture means to them," said Rachael Brown, training manager at Zappos. "It's pretty different from everyone else. You come in and can actually be yourself, be a part of everything, instead of the typical place where you come in and put in your time and as soon as you leave, you check out."

The corporate culture at Zappos is more a lifestyle, she said. They maintain that culture with an extensive interview process to retain their core values as a company.

"Probably you are going to hate it at Zappos if you are not going to socialize at work," she said. "If you just want to go to a job and leave you are not going to be happy here."

As an individual within Zappos, each employee is expected to involve themselves with more than their specific position and possibly get involved with all of the companies that have merged with Zappos. Each employee is encouraged to speak up and contribute to the company's overall goals.

Not every one is looking for this type of job, but Brown has found that the interactive corporate culture is attracting more than the Y generation, which almost expects a more loose and diverse 9-to-5 job.

"People are looking for more in this era," she said. "We have a slightly younger demographic, but we also have people right out of high school and people who have retired and returned to the workforce."

The top 10 core values for Zappos are to deliver excellent service; embrace and drive change; create fun and "a little weirdness"; be adventurous, creative and open-minded; pursue growth and learning; build open and honest relationships with communication; build a positive team and family spirit; do more with less; be passionate and determined; and be humble.

"Each of us is part of the company and it's up to each and every one of us to make our company thrive," she said. "You are an owner when you work at Zappos. You need to treat the place like it's your company. We've found that works."

And it does. Zappos is one of the fastest growing companies in the country.

"We talk about it with our new hires, that every single one of us is responsible for our culture," she said. "We try to keep everything as organic as possible."

The company's core values resonate with the employees' own core values.

"They are looking for something where they can do more than just put in time and leave," she said. "You get to be yourself where you work every day, and that is part of our success. It's different, I guess, from how (corporations) did it in the past, but it works."

Zappos is focused on its future and continues to update its opportunities for employees while maintaining its core values.

"I think people want to be part of something and part of something that stands for something, and we stand for happiness," she said. "We are trying to achieve something greater than ourselves."

Customers are attracted to that and employees are attracted to that as well, she said.

"Even the way our core values were created, they were created by our employees," Brown said.

Each employee sent a list of what they thought the core values should be. The process took a year, Brown said, adding that it was worth the time and effort to be a different type of company for a new generation.

"Things are really different and people want to be a part of something that is bigger than themselves," she said. "Years ago, we were thinking of a campus, like Google has for its employees, and we realized we want to include the community."

With that in mind, the company will be moving from Henderson to a downtown location next year.

"We are more excited about our downtown move than anyone. We want to interact with the community, and we are going to get a better perspective by being downtown. It's part of our motto: Do more always."

They consider themselves intraprenurial rather than the classic entrepreneurial.

"Those are the people that are attracted to Zappos and that is who we want to attract," Brown said. "We are really trying to make an innovative workplace. It's not rocket science; you just have to invest in the idea and your employees."

But entrepreneurship is what drives Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh. He has invested his own money into revitalizing Las Vegas' core through the Downtown Project. The project launched this year with a $50 million fund for tech startups willing to base their operations in the center of Las Vegas.

Currently, there are seven startups in the Downtown Project's Vegas Tech Fund portfolio. Additional investment money is allocated toward real estate, residential development, education and small businesses.

Downtown redevelopment can only be a boon for Staci Linklater and James Reza, who moved their Globe Salon to the Soho Lofts in 2008. Business started out strong, but a few months later, the economy crashed.

The pair stuck it out and now are ready to reap the rewards of the positive vibe that downtown is putting forth.
Like Zappos, Globe Salon also approaches its workplace atmosphere a little differently than the usual.

"In most environments you can assume that work comes before play," said Reza, the salon's general manager. "Doing so means attracting and retaining the right employees, as well as letting employees know from the start what is expected of them."

Reza sees Globe Salon's culture as one of creative professionalism.

"Unlike most salons, we do not rent our chairs, we employ professionals," he said. "For us, it's a very delicate balance to strike between the professional and technical expectations we have for our team and the freedom valued by the creative people we employ. We have to hold ourselves and our creative team accountable in order to best serve our guests. We take our guests on time, for instance, rather than running late. But meshing creativity and an appointment clock is not easy.

"For that reason, we clearly delineate what our expectations are for working on the salon floor, while providing flexibility in many other areas. An example of this would be that, because our quality-of-service expectations are so high, we only require our creative team to work 32 hours per week to be considered 'full time' for our purposes."

Reza said the salon has an extensive hiring process.

"We are very careful when we hire, and we communicate openly and regularly with each other," he said. "Over the past (almost) 12 years, we have fostered a workplace where our team is not only given the training, tools and support to become successful, but they also become part of a family that shares many of the same workplace goals. We also make it very clear that change and improvement can come from any source. Management never behaves as if they know everything, and we have implemented many great ideas that came from the team."

Taking care to check in with its employees and understanding how much an integral part of the company employees are has made Globe Salon a downtown success story.

"We encourage each other to teach and share knowledge regardless of their level of experience, as everyone has something valuable to contribute," Reza said. "Our salon director holds weekly one-on-one lunches, where a team member and she leave the salon to have a nice lunch, discuss performance, share ideas, and cultivate new ones.

"We have impromptu three-minute 'pow-wows' when we need to communicate new information very quickly. All this keeps us from subjecting our team to nonproductive meetings that just turn into venting sessions. We hold productive, interactive quarterly meetings instead."

The salon, which has received national attention, combines professional standards and creativity to forge a team of salon professionals who all hold each other accountable to Globe Salon's hard-earned standards.

"We work together all day, and we are each a part of a larger overall success that buoys each of us to greater success," he said. "So much of our industry is stuck in a world of the isolated hyper-individuals working alongside people they do not know, don't like and want nothing to do with. Not us. It's a delicate balance, but we actually all like each other and enjoy working together as a team. And when something goes wrong, we are human beings, after all, and we fix it."

The industry also calls for a different approach to the workings of a salon in the current economic and cultural landscape.

"Ours is a creative profession and creative individuals like to express themselves," he said. "As far as appearance, we trust our team to represent themselves well and to uphold the reputation of the salon they work for. We hire well and set parameters of appearance expectations. Beyond that, if a person cannot present themselves on a daily basis at least as well as they did at their interview, they won't last long. We can be at once creative and professional, and that's what we expect."

In other areas, individuality plays a role, Reza said.

"Some hairdressers attract younger, more cutting-edge guests from the nightlife industry, others attract more conservative executives," he said. "Also, some possess natural skill sets that push them toward developing expertise in one area over another. That is just the nature of our industry. Some are excellent communicators, some are extremely detailed haircutters. We try to help each develop and express their individual skills to help both themselves and their team become better."

Maintaining a flexible environment is key to the salon's continued success.

"Beyond the parameters of appearance and expectations of salon floor performance, Globe Salon is as flexible as we can be, given that our appointments are often scheduled 12 weeks in advance," Reza said. "We provide paid time off called flextime. We shy away from calling it 'vacation time' because once someone has reached six months of employment, they are able to start using available paid time off for whatever they like.

"As we only require 32 hours of work per week once someone graduates to a salon chair full time, some of our team works five partial days one week, four full days the next. Our team can, given enough notice, alter their appointment schedule to their liking (given the approval of the salon director), as long as they are working the 32 hours per week minimum."

The team also is allowed flexibility for life's challenges. Recently, Samantha O'Brien, a Globe Salon employee, climbed Mount Kilimanjaro on a fundraising expedition for children with AIDS.

"Through a variety of efforts, including creative scheduling, we were able to give her the time she needed to make the trip, with as little disruption to our guests as possible," Reza said. "Of course, this is also helped by the fact that we work as a team, and our guests are encouraged to get acquainted with more than one stylist so in the event one is unavailable, they are comfortable with a backup."

The salon currently is taking applications at globesalon.com on its staff page. The salons look for personality, passion and professionalism as well as a willingness to commit to a real-world training process that Globe Salon calls "cosmetology grad school," which lasts six to 12 months after earning a cosmetology license.

"Our five-step hiring process is pretty good at weeding out those who would not be successful in our environment and rewarding those who would," he said. "We are always screening qualified, licensed professionals; even if we are not actively recruiting, we will find a way to make room for the right person.

"That said, we just graduated our latest creative team assistant, who is now transitioning to a chair. We are screening candidates now for that position and hope to have someone in place for the very busy fall season."