Astonish Them with Kindness

In 2017, a Kronite named Adam used our internal collaboration platform to contact fellow Kronites with an important request. A month earlier, his 15-year-old-nephew Sullivan had been diagnosed with leukemia. To cheer up his nephew, Sullivan’s mother thought that it might be nice if he received postcards from all 50 U.S. states. Adam wrote asking his fellow Kronites for help. Would his colleagues, located throughout the country and the world, be willing to send a postcard to Sullivan?

The answer was a resounding yes. Within minutes, Kronites in states such as California, Illinois, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Texas, and Wisconsin wrote back promising to send postcards, as did employees in countries such as Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Of the 9,000 postcards Sullivan received, many were from Kronites. The outpouring was so great that it prompted our chief people officer to chime in with a comment on our culture of caring. “I’m not at all surprised to hear that Kronites from around the globe rallied to your cause,” he said to Adam. “Kronos is a special place exactly because of the huge hearts of the fantastic people who work here. It’s been my experience that Kronites take care of each other in good times and in trying times. Especially when it comes to taking care of family members in need.”

I deeply appreciate Kronites’ eagerness to take care of one another. Kronites often cite a sense of feeling cared for—of feeling part of a family—when describing why they love to work here. And as they observe, warmth and compassion are evident in the course of daily work, not just at times of crisis. “I never [before] worked for a company . . . where people will bend over backward to help you succeed,” one Kronite said. As another told us, “I feel like I’m a member of a giant family. Kronites appreciate each other not only for what we can achieve but for who we are as people. Kronites encourage one another to be the best they can be. We help each other learn and grow. That is what makes Kronos truly unique.” A third Kronite who left the company, worked elsewhere, and then returned to Kronos (a not uncommon phenomenon we discuss in Chapter 10) related that the experience had left him even more aware of Kronos’s unique culture. “I didn’t realize how much I missed my Kronos family. Yes, family.”

Every organization has its share of good, caring people who help their colleagues. But you don’t often find a strong, cohesive culture of caring. What’s noteworthy about Adam’s request and the response it elicited is precisely how unremarkable they are at Kronos. In the 2017 Great Place to Work Trust Index Survey, 92 percent of Kronites polled agreed with the statement that “people care about each other here.”¹ And for good reason: our employees around the world respond with kindness all the time, usually without being asked. When one of our employees was deployed to Kuwait, his colleagues regularly sent care packages to remind him that he was in his team’s thoughts and prayers. Another Kronite had a son with congenital heart problems requiring frequent trips to the emergency room. Whenever these last-minute emergencies arose, the team pulled together to cover their fellow Kronite so this parent could focus on what mattered most: family. Quite often, a Kronite will learn of a colleague’s personal setbacks and inform other employees, who spontaneously contribute money, write letters of support, or offer some other form of assistance. Even employees who don’t know the affected Kronite routinely step up.

Although our company has always sought to treat employees well, we’ve worked hard in recent years to embed strong values of caring and compassion into our organization. Through formal policies and communications, we’ve articulated our expectation that Kronites not only perform well on the job, but also treat one another with kindness and respect. We’ve consciously set a strong example of caring for employees to follow, implementing a range of policies that care for “the whole person.” As I’ll describe in this chapter, we’ve mobilized company resources to care for employees in times of crisis, to an extent that astonishes Kronites and sets the company apart in their eyes as a uniquely wonderful place to work.

Caring and compassion might sound much too “soft” to represent a business tactic. Isn’t that just a bunch of human resources talk? I would counter that cultivating a spirit of kindness at work is fundamental to maximizing your business success. As we’ve seen, when a culture of caring takes root, and when it’s placed on near-equal footing with raw performance, loyalty, commitment, and engagement skyrocket. But I don’t need data to prove the business value of caring—it’s common sense. Would you rather work in a culture where people tear one another down, or where they show kindness and lift one another up? Would you be more inclined to treat customers well if your colleagues ignored or disrespected you, or if they actively valued you? And from an organizational standpoint, is it easier and more productive to show people kindness, or to treat them indifferently or callously? Would you rather lead a team of people who collaborate and challenge one another because they’ve built up trust through acts of caring and kindness, or a team of people who are afraid to speak their minds because of gossip and backstabbing?

Creating a workplace where people feel inspired to achieve excellence is simpler than people think. You don’t need to dangle rewards or rely on a punitive “up or out” system. Mobilize altruism as a lever, inspiring your people to treat others with dignity and respect. Creating a company that’s not just another workplace but a true family or team might be one of the best long-term moves you can make to improve your bottom line. Altruism certainly helped us to reach a billion dollars. Today, it’s taking us even further.

NOT JUST A COMPANY—A HOME

One of the most important steps you can take to cultivate norms of caring is to articulate firm expectations about behavior at every turn. At new employee orientations, we communicate our caring ethos through a visual communications tool called Kronos Home. In 2015, we decided that we needed a simple but inspiring way to articulate what it means to be a Kronite. After reviewing employee engagement surveys, focus groups, and general feedback about why Kronites love the company, we developed Kronos Home. The foundation for the home was the concepts of trust and transparency. The rest of the home visual consists of four quadrants, “care for our families,” “care for our communities,” “care for our customers,” and “care for each other.”

We present “care for each other” to new employees as a signature value of the Kronos workspace—every bit as important as the other three elements (discussed in other chapters). As we explain, our emphasis on caring is reflected in numerous employee benefits the company offers, including wellness programming, a student loan repayment assistance offering, an open time off policy, pet insurance benefit, and many others. But mostly, we focus on creating a corporate environment where we simultaneously care for one another and produce great
results.

We know it’s not enough for new Kronites to hear about caring in the abstract—they also need to experience it. Even before Kronites’ first days on the job, their managers and team members often welcome them with small acts of kindness. One new Kronite remarked during the interview process that he had a new baby. Our team sent a bouquet of flowers with a note of congratulations to his family. Another described a sick loved one. Once again, we sent a small gift. In another instance, a hiring manager invited a new Kronite to have lunch with her a week before her start date. Starting a new job can be stressful as well as exciting, so Kronites try to make the experience as positive as possible, making a statement in the process about our culture and values. They reinforce the message on Kronites’ first days of work, introducing themselves, decorating the new Kronite’s workspace, writing individual notes of welcome, inviting new Kronites to yoga classes or lunchtime basketball games, and offering other personal gestures of friendship and camaraderie.

Such gestures are small, but as new Kronites have told us, they make a big difference. “The culture is amazing,” one new Kronite said. “I like working for a company that truly values its employees and shows it.” Another expressed happiness at having “a manager and team who really cares, not just about your work life but your personal life.” In the eyes of new Kronites, expressions of caring sharply distinguish the company from others they’ve worked for. In the words of a new Kronite: “It is refreshing to work for a company that not only puts its customers first but does so because employees are valued in such a way that they are actually happy.”

To encourage employees to treat others compassionately, you must create incentives that reinforce the behavior as a regular operating norm. Our bonus program, for which all Kronites are eligible, rewards Kronites for behaving well toward their colleagues in the course of their daily work. Put differently, it rewards how work gets done, not just the achievement of performance goals. Specifically, in calculating a Kronite’s job performance, we allocate 40 percent of the score to reflect how well a Kronite displayed our core values of character, competence, and collaboration. Did the Kronite motivate others to excel? Did he or she treat others fairly and respectfully? Did he or she work to gain others’ trust? Did he or she give others credit for their accomplishments? Our core values don’t explicitly say “treat Kronites like family,” but that’s implicit. Kronite salary increases are directly tied to how they embody our culture of caring while “working inspired” to drive results.

And when Kronites don’t behave in ways that reflect our values, we are forced to levy negative consequences. In the interests of “winning,” many companies will tolerate employees who behave like jerks so long as they’re high performers. Not us. In recruiting new hires, we try to hire people who seem to treat others respectfully, as we believe that culture fit is just as important as role fit, if not more important. We coach hiring managers how to evaluate prospective employees’ communication style, interpersonal skills, values, and work habits, determining whether they are commensurate with our culture. On a job-seeker website, one Kronos candidate recently wrote, “I was very surprised by how many of the questions were directed toward culture and fit. It is important to Kronos to put the right people in the right seats, and not just fill the seats.”

Sometimes we err, hiring people whose behavior doesn’t fit with our culture. In these instances, we let the people go—and don’t think twice about it, even if they are high performers. Any short-term gain we might accrue by virtue of having high-performing employees like these is more than offset by the damage these individuals would inflict on our company culture. By acting decisively, we send a message: treating other Kronites well is paramount.

Kronites notice when we penalize bad behavior and when we maintain benefits and other policies that care for employees. But what might make the strongest impression of all is how we step up in times of crisis. I’ve described how individual Kronites help their colleagues endure challenging times. The organization does the same. Many companies have formal policies that pay out certain benefits when accident, death, or illness strike a family. These benefits are typically based on the employee’s tenure with the company. We take a more informal approach. Because we don’t create formulas for people and the situations they’re going through, they feel like individuals. Every case is different, and our policy is to treat them that way.

When something bad happens to a Kronite, fellow employees are moved to action. They alert their managers, and in this way the news quickly makes it to our human resources team, which determines what an individual Kronite needs to face the crisis at hand. We then decide what help to offer, without a lengthy decision-making process. If an employee is in trouble and we can help, we do, and swiftly.

One day in the summer of 2017, a Kronite named Lisa lost her house to a catastrophic fire. Her family was OK, but they had nowhere to go. That afternoon, one of Lisa’s colleagues paid her a visit, saying that she had a donation from the company to give her. This colleague gave Lisa a check for $5,000, enough to pay for a hotel, clothing, food, and other short-term needs. We also sent her a computer to use, since hers had been destroyed in the fire. “When I saw what they had for me, I was completely blown away,” Lisa said. “They had that money in my hands before the insurance company did.”

Unfortunately, the fire wasn’t the end of Lisa’s travails that year. About a month later, her father passed away after a prolonged illness. In the obituary, Lisa’s family announced that well-wishers could make donations to the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (MSPCA), since her father had always loved animals. Soon after, Lisa received a card from the MSPCA informing her that Kronos had made a donation in her father’s name. She was blown away all over again. “[The help I received] was just constant,” she said. She further noted that “during a year of crisis, I never met with any kind of disdain or jealousy that I was getting special treatment. My coworkers all stepped up to do whatever they could. It was just complete support all the way up the chain.”

In another instance, a Kronite whom I’ll call Michael was diagnosed with a terminal illness. At many companies, managers and colleagues might express sympathy and arrange for more time off. We did that—and more. On his own initiative, Michael’s manager reached out to colleagues to collect funds so that Michael’s family could travel to Disney World together. Employees, including many who didn’t know Michael, rushed to donate. Days after we learned of Michael’s diagnosis, we surprised him and his family with a check for more than $9,000. Again, this specific response isn’t mandated by a formal policy in our employee handbook. But it exemplifies our individualized approach to employee care.

A skeptic might hear me talk about a caring culture and say, “Yes, but hasn’t Kronos laid people off in the past? How do you reconcile that with the culture?” It’s not easy. Let me be clear: we absolutely hate to let Kronites go, and we do everything possible to avoid doing so. Still, we recognize that downsizing in some areas of our business in line with shifting demand is sometimes necessary to keep the larger organization healthy. When we do have to let people go, we do it in accordance with our values, often offering severance packages and other benefits that go beyond what other companies typically give.

To date, I don’t believe that layoffs have significantly damaged Kronos’s brand with our employees. When many companies downsize, employees often leave embittered, taking the layoff personally. While I’m sure that some ex-Kronites feel this way, I’m struck by the number of ex-Kronites who reapply to work at our company after being laid off. When we let go several dozen employees in 2017 due to changes in specific parts of our business, many of these Kronites reapplied for new positions on our website almost immediately. As a Kronite commented, “When people here are let go, they . . . understand it was a business decision, and yet they still want to be a part of this culture.” Letting people go will never be pleasant, but it doesn’t have to contaminate a culture. We’re not by any means a perfect company, but we do what we can to care for employees, especially in difficult times. It helps, too, that we’ve laid a foundation of trust and transparency, and that I and other leaders have been overcommunicating all along.

CARING AND COMPASSION STARTS WITH YOU

So far, I’ve examined steps an organization can take to inject altruism into the culture. But leaders also have a strong role to play. Showing compassion to our employees reflects my personal values and upbringing, and in particular, the example set by my parents. When I was a kid, a woman named Jean who worked for us as a housekeeper fell on hard times. Since she had no place to live, my mother took her in, and Jean wound up living with us for a number of years, sharing a room with my sister, Alice. On another occasion, my uncle, a building inspector, fell off a ladder and broke his leg. We took him in, too, as my roomie! Alice and I never thought that it was odd to share our home with adults who needed help. It was just what our family did to assist and show compassion to a person in need.

But these actions were only the beginning of my parents’ efforts in caring for others. My sister remembers how our father took her with him to visit a man struggling with alcoholism in our town. They gave him some support and encouragement, and their presence made his life a little easier. I remember my parents’ strong support of an organization called the AHRC that helped individuals with intellectual and other developmental disabilities. Our family didn’t have children or relatives with these issues. My parents heard about the organization at a Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) meeting where the founder spoke, and it struck them as a worthy cause in need of support. For decades, my father proudly served on the organization’s board, my mother shared her legal knowledge and time as an attorney, and my parents donated seed money to help build a medical clinic to serve that community. Whether it was one person struggling or an organization in need, my parents helped.

Growing up in this environment, I never thought of rendering aid as a choice, much less something particularly worthy of recognition. It was just something you did. If someone needed help, you helped him or her. Today, I apply that thinking to my role as CEO of Kronos. If employees need help, and there’s a way that Kronos can offer support, we’re going to do that. And if there’s a way that I personally can become involved, I’m going to do that, too. I take great satisfaction in lending a hand. But I also know that modeling such generosity through my personal conduct does a great deal to infuse a kind, giving ethos throughout the organization.

What can you as a leader or manager do to put caring on the agenda? For starters, communicate. When I hear that a Kronite has suffered a medical setback or other misfortune, even Kronites whom I don’t know personally, I will often send a personal note, sometimes following up with other notes over an extended time period. This doesn’t take me long to do, but it’s not pro forma either—I really give thought to each note. When I later see Kronites in the office, I check in face-to-face to see how they are. I look for other ways to help, too. Because I have served on the board of several hospitals, I’m sometimes in a position to help Kronites secure referrals to expert medical care if necessary. Kronites routinely tell our human resources team how much of a difference this kind of personal involvement makes.

Small gestures often mean the most. When I saw an employee in the hallway whom I knew was going through a difficult divorce, I gave her a hug, asking how she was doing. On another occasion, I spent a half hour in my office with another Kronite talking about a personal situation. “It just makes you cry,” one of the Kronites said. “It really does.” She understood my behavior as typifying the entire Kronos culture, which was so much more compassionate and focused on her well-being than any of her previous work environments. “When I went to another organization, they cared about me getting the job done. They cared about my skill set and what I could contribute. They didn’t care about me as a person. That’s what I find here. Kronos cares about me.”

Like other positive behaviors, caring is contagious. Over the past several years, many other people managers have more firmly embraced caring behaviors. One Kronite, Kim, lost her husband just a few months after returning from maternity leave. Her boss was, in her words, “amazing,” offering advice and assistance to help her stabilize her family life. When Kim requested to take a day or two off to be with a visiting family member, her boss insisted she take a week. “It’s not just my boss that did that,” she said. “I’ve seen other people go through some tragedies. I just know it’s the culture. The loyalty and appreciation I have? You could never get this anywhere [else].”

INSPIRE THEM TO BE THEIR BEST

In 2003, when I was still serving as COO, a Kronite named Dave who also served as a reservist in the military received word that his unit was being deployed to Iraq. Not in a month. Not in a week. The next day. Members of our leadership team were taken aback. We were proud to have a member of the armed forces in our midst, but we also were concerned for Dave’s safety.

Dave wasn’t an isolated case. During the years after the catastrophic events of September 11, 2001, several other Kronites were also deployed. In each case, we delivered the same message: “Don’t worry about your job. It will be waiting for you when you return.” Somewhere along the line, I can’t remember when exactly, we realized that at a time when hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers were deployed overseas, including many reservists who hadn’t anticipated being mobilized, just safeguarding these soldiers’ jobs wouldn’t be enough. During the period of their deployment, they’d receive military pay that was less than their Kronos salaries. How would their families manage? And was it fair that these Kronites would be penalized economically for their service?

We decided that it wasn’t, so for several years, we did what to our knowledge few other companies do: on a case-by-case basis—when we were aware of a hardship—we paid the Kronites a supplemental amount to help them during their deployment to minimize this hardship. We didn’t publicize this practice. That wasn’t why we were doing it. We were doing it because we felt it was the right thing to do, and because it was consistent with our goal of building a strong, caring culture.

Dave served in Iraq for a year, returning in early 2004. He was a combat engineer, doing the dangerous work of disarming improvised explosive devices. When he returned from his deployment, he learned that he’d been promoted and given a raise in his absence. As he recalled, he received an e-mail from us every month while he was away, just checking in, asking how he and his family were doing and whether they needed anything. When he returned, we sent him and his family on a weekend getaway so that he and his family could have a chance to be together and reconnect.

Reflecting back on his deployment, Dave can’t emphasize enough what it meant to have Kronos behind him. “We had enough to worry about without worrying about our jobs back home. You’ve got to keep your mind on what you’re doing over there. A lot of soldiers were getting the cold shoulder from their employers. If a soldier is worried about his or her job and supporting their family upon return, he or she is more likely to make a mistake and that is not a good situation for anyone. I never had to deal with that.”

It makes me proud as a leader to hear that Dave didn’t have to worry about his job. And I know it makes other Kronites just as proud to be part of an organization which, while hardly perfect, is striving constantly to promote every employee’s welfare. But these Kronites don’t just feel proud. They also contribute more each day on the job. They come to work inspired. As Dave said, “When you feel the support in this company, it makes you want to stay up late at night or get up early in the morning just to make sure that customers are getting taken care of.”

As I mentioned earlier, we conducted focus groups of Kronites in which we asked them about our culture, including our ethic of caring. During one of these conversations, a Kronite broke down in tears. “Gosh,” she said, “this is so embarrassing.” Collecting herself, she managed to get a few more words out. “It means a lot to me to work here. I’ve never worked at a company that’s inspired me to be the way that I am as a manager, and just as a person.” This woman is the very picture of an engaged, loyal, dedicated employee, simply because her employer goes to considerable lengths to take care of her.

As a leader or manager, what more could you want?