This is How Rackspace Sets The Tech World's Gold Standard For Active Employee Engagement

Rackspace is much more than just your average tech company. That they actually grew out of a major customer service error may be one of the most important case studies in customer service excellence in decades!

The reason they have prominently gained dominance in the tech world is specifically for their commitment to employee engagement.

A main ingredient in their success has been the creation of the Racker Culture, where employees feel comfortable brainstorming and contributing unique ideas to further the company’s growth and radical commitment to creating the ultimate customer service experience.

 

Since 1998 Rackspace has provided and created hosting solutions for the web. They are now the global leaders when it comes to hybrid cloud computing. They have created OpenStack ® which is an open source cloud computing system.

 

Rackspace has acquired such start-ups as Cloudkick (a company known for its cloud monitoring software) as well as Anso Labs (the group most well known for the NASA Nebula labs).

They are truly experts in the realm of cloud computing and have reached new heights in providing outstanding customer service and opportunities for innovation in the workplace.

 

You may be surprised to find that many of the apps and websites you use daily are operated using Rackspace’s cloud computing technology.

 

A Fortune 100 Company - "The Open Cloud Company"

Rackspace’s motto as “The Open Cloud Company” suits it well because it is a tech company which produces cloud computing software and web hosting systems in such a way as to be open to new ideas, innovation and promote a strong sense of collaboration amongst employees.

In January 2014 Rackspace was named the top 29 Fortune 100 companies to work for, and they have made Fortune Magazine’s list six times in the past seven years. They are one of the best tech companies to work for because they give employees a chance for their voices to be heard.

Encouraging new ideas, coming up with new processes in cloud computing, and developing the company’s evolving culture are all at the cornerstone of their operations. They give employees the opportunity to express themselves, work flexible hours and not just go to work every day but to live a happy and enjoyable life each day.

This leading edge tech company has been expanding for many years now from their headquarters in San Antonio, Texas and they have recently opened new locations in San Francisco and Sydney, Australia. To Rackspace, their offices are so much more than just office spaces.

They consider their workspaces to be vibrant homes flowing with creativity, friendly and open communications, and above all, centers for innovation. Their workspaces are part of what makes their employees so dedicated to their company.

Employees are willing to go above and beyond expectations set for them and be fanatical about the work that Rackspace does and the customer service they provide.

 

A Typical Day at Rackspace

A typical day in the life of a Rackspace employee is anything but typical. They believe in allowing employees to express themselves creatively, follow their passion, let the conversations flow and work the flexible hours they wish.

Above all, Rackspace employees, known affectionately as “Rackers”, are expected to be excited about the work they do in web hosting and in providing top notch customer service. It is because of this freedom, and chance for creativity, that Rackspace has become number one amongst tech companies.

Working at Rackspace does not feel like going to work. It feels more like an extension of living out your wildest dreams. Going to work each day is like fulfilling your greatest ambitions.

The Human Connection

When employees interact with one another in their workspace there is no fear of being judged. Every idea that they share is crucial to the overall culture of the organization. Not just another cog in the system, each employee is valued for what they individually have to offer.

In order to be considered a true Racker, you must be passionate, strong-willed, dedicated, resilient and original. Even though they are a tech company, Rackers think of themselves first as humans beings who are servicing other human beings through the use of technology.

By building off of each others’ strengths, and not focusing on weaknesses, Rackers are able to develop teamwork skills unlike any other tech companies at the moment. Prominently displayed for all to see is a card which expresses to the organization the strengths of each individual employee as a reminder of their individualism.

 

A Distinctive Company Culture

The company culture at Rackspace is built on the idea that people are naturally inclined to support what they have helped to create. They believe that the Racker culture has been built by its own employees from the bottom up, instead of being mandated from the top down.

Having this bottom-up philosophy is also one of the reasons why Rackers feel comfortable in sharing new and innovative ideas. They are not being funneled into a certain line of thinking and are open to try new things based on doing what is right to meet the needs of customers.

At Rackspace, both customers and employees have the power to give feedback and impact new changes within the company.     They use conversations, videos, drawings and other tools to keep their culture alive. They are also encouraged to use top-down methods such as memos and email updates.

Keeping the Racker Culture Alive

 

At Rackspace they subscribe to the philosophy that if people truly believe in the culture that they have helped to create, they will want to sustain it.

They would like to be known as one of the world’s greatest service companies and liken themselves to other companies such as Lexus and the Ritz Carlton in terms of customer service.

Their core values include being committed to greatness, achieving results first, having passion for their work and having outstanding support for the company’s values and its employees.

They believe that sticking with their core values will get them through any challenge and will help them seek to gain the most out of every opportunity that comes their way.

In addition to all the ideological culture at Rackspace, there are practical benefits which make working there highly coveted.

As one of the top innovators of cloud technology, there are many benefits to joining the Rackspace team. The major one?

When you get in  there is no where to go but up. You aren’t joining just any company, but one that will see amazing growth potential, - personally and professionally.

One of the fastest growing companies around the world, Rackspace has customers totaling over 120000, with over 3500 employees to date and counting.

A company that has no plans of being a flash in the pan, their goals for the future are far reaching and all encompassing.
 

 

Why Not Work For The World's Greatest Tech Company?

 

If you are looking for a company to grow with, and one you can believe in, Rackspace is unlike any other  Believing that the key to their success is the health and happiness of their employees, they offer a generous benefits package that includes:

a) Employees enjoy a base salary plus the option to buy into the company. If one succeeds they all succeed. Profit sharing gives each employee a stake in success.

 

b) Four medical plan options to choose from, you need not worry about the health and safety of your family. Rackspace believes that healthy families translate into happy employees

 

c) Full dental benefits are enjoyed with the basic employee package

 

d) Not only does Rackspace care for their employees, they offer full benefits to their spouses and families. Taking care of the entire individual is their number one goal.

 

e) No need to worry about the future. The benefits package comes complete with a healthy life insurance policy to protect your loved ones.

 

f) Both short-term and long-term disability plans are part of what they offer

 

g) Retirement included, a 401k Plan includes contribution and profit sharing. There are over 400 participants with assets that total over 67 million dollars.

 

h) Rackspace believes that to work hard, you have to play hard. Paid vacation time is just one of the many perks offered.

 

i) Flexible working hours, you don’t need to adhere to the 9-5. Flex time and other scheduling opportunities are available.

 

j) Continuing education is available for those who want to further their studies. Rackspace University has refresher courses, training courses and other orientation programs.

The courses range from technology, business, to do it yourself. Believing that education is the key to a healthy growing corporation, Rackspace fosters the continual advancement of its employees through learning.

 

k) There is a free onsite fitness facility where you are able to blow off steam, escape the stressors of the day, or just stay at the top of your game.

 

In the end, the only thing that really matters for you the employee, is that Rackspace believes in caring for the individual through doing the small things that really count.

Not only being concerned about your health and well-being, they care about your happiness. From free sodas, to other promotions, the perks just never end.

 

If you want to join a company that cares about their employees in a way that most companies don’t anymore Rackspace is where you belong. You aren’t just someone who works there, you are part of the Rackspace family.

(Here's where you apply: Rackspace Dream Job)

Do you work at Rackspace? What's It Really Like to Work At the World's Most Amazing Tech Company? Leave A Comment and Let Our Readers Know:

 

Your Top 10 Most Powerful Strategies For Building Active Employee Engagement in 2015

 

The Extraordinary Cost of Employee Disengagement:

So, why do we need to increase employee engagement levels ASAP? According to the Gallup Organization’s 20+ year study on the matter, disengaged employees:

• Cost their organizations $3,400-$10,000 in wasted salary per year!
• Take more paid sick days
• Drain the effectiveness, quality rates and goal accomplishment levels of their otherwise engaged workmates
• More often miss deadlines
• Suffer sales under-performance
• Contagiously disengage internal and external customers, with higher customer complaint rates and service dissatisfaction reports.

In The United States:

• 33% of employees are Actively Engaged,
• 49% are Disengaged
• 18% are Actively Disengaged.
• The Productivity Losses associated with Employee Disengagement costs American businesses hundreds of billions of dollars per year.
• How much is employee disengagement costing your organization, department or team right now? How could that money be better spent?

Dysfunctional Employee Turn Over (people leaving their jobs due to Active Disengagement) - Back in 2006, the HR Daily Advisor reported that 89% of employers thought their people left for more money, while only 12% of employees actually did leave for that reason.

What tangible benefits will you experience through implementing proven employee engagement practices?

Well it turns out that engaged employees experience:

• 51% lower turnover
• 27% less absenteeism
• 18% more productivity
• 12% higher profitability

So how you can you begin to harness the value generating power and serious cost saving of Active employee engagement?

 What kind of strategies are world class organizations applying in order to support active engagement and reduce the high negative costs of active employee disengagement?

 The best solutions come from fully and clearly defined problems, challenges and opportunities. Let’s start by clearly defining what employee engagement really means:

Employee Engagement Defined - 5 Converging Definitions:

1. ‘Employees’ willingness and ability to contribute to company success.’ (Towers Perrin)
2. ‘Staff commitment and a sense of belonging to the organization.’ (Hewitt)
3. ‘Employees’ commitment to the organization and motivation to contribute to the organization’s success.’ (Mercer)
4. ‘Employees’ exertion of “discretionary effort”…going beyond meeting the minimum standards of the job.’ (Hay)
5. ‘Engagement represents the energy, effort, and initiative employees bring to their jobs’ (Harvard Business Review)

Active Employee Engagement is defined by 2 Critical Success Factors. These Include:

1. An Emotional Component made up of an employee’s high level of bonding, trust and internal commitment to the organization, directly through their personal and professional relationship to their manager or team leader.

 But active engagement is not just about a positive employee manager relationship or the high levels of job satisfaction that result from that relationship. The immense reservoir of motivation and work potential generated by the healthy employee-manager interface has to be strategically guided and channeled into concrete action steps and processess via:

 2. A Behavioral Component defined by the maximization of "discretionary effort "applied to meeting individual, team and organizational performance goals.

 Discretionary Effort means going above and beyond the bare minimum of work and effort as defined by an employee’s formal role description.  Through discretionary effort actively engaged employees also actually exceed average performance metrics. 

When employees are positively emotionally-bonded to managers in a way that systematically enables discretionary effort, employees are then primed to do more of the right kinds of work behaviors when these behaviors count the most.

And discretionary effort persists outside of supervision by the manager or team leader. Through discretionary effort generated by active employee engagement, the informal organization is brought into alignment with the informal organization. People start thinking, saying and doing less of what they need to stop doing and start thinking, doing and saying more what they need to start doing. 

 There’s no such thing as costly dysfunctional turnover for actively engaged employees. They stick around for the long haul and bring out the best in fellow employees in the process. And of course, they take far fewer sick days too. 

10 Employee Engagement Ideas That Get Serious Results:

Employee Engagement Idea #1: Concentrate High-Engagement Leadership At The Employee Management Interface

People don't leave organizations; they leave managers and team leaders. 

Fact: Employee surveys consistently show that the single most important factor in employee engagement is an employee’s relationship with his or her direct manager. (Victor Lipman) .

An increasing number of employees are leaving and planning to leave their current jobs despite tough economic conditions. Managers and team leaders need to become expert relationship builders and they need to learn now to nourish and sustain those relationships over time.

 Employees need to know that their managers actually care about them as human beings. Managers and team leaders  can build and maintain strong employee relationships at the employee/management interface by:

  Learning and Doing More Coaching. Without employee performance coaching there can be no sustained employee engagement. Coaching is all about helping employees to become more effective in their roles both strategically and culturally. 

Employee Coaching is all about active listening to elicit employee involvement with, commitment to and ownership of value-adding performance goals. It’s also about aligning and facilitating the attainment of each employee’s professional development and learning goals with the goals of the team and orgnaization. 

Employees need to know that they are working for their own goals as much as the organization’s when they come into work each day.


 Not only does effective coaching build strong relationship bonds at the employee/manager interface but it also gets serious bottom-line business results. This is because regularly coaching employees is a clear expression of:

Employee Engagement Idea #2: Live Your Organization’s Core Values

If your organization wide and team level core values are not compatible to creating a work environment that enables active employee engagement, - change or co-create new ones immediately!

Effective Organizations and Teams Value:

• Honesty,
• Respect,
• Fairness (very important)
• Collaborative/continuous learning and development
• Shared problem solving
• Constructive conflict management (vs conflict avoidance),
• Giving back to the community and
• Having serious fun in the process.

In high performing organizations, employees and frontline leaders regularly refer to and use their core value statements as a real time compass and positive shaper of both formal environment and work life behaviours. 

 For true leaders at every organizational level, the organization’s core values are the moral, ethical and even spiritual law of the land. High engagement employees thrive on being treated fairly and honestly. 

 This is in sharp contrast to the vast majority of managers and supervisors who simply don't bridge that critical gap between organizational values and their daily behavioral choices.  


Ask yourself:

• Without checking, can you list your organization's core values, - the ones that are most related to building vibrant trusting frontline leader/employee relationships?
• Do your employees know these core values and understand their importance?
• In a team brainstorming session, what values would you and your direct reports add to or change about that list?
• What concrete steps are you taking to "behaviorize" this values as a means of rewarding and recognizing your employees via formal and informal performance management processes? 

Employee Engagement Idea 3: Do Lots and Lots of Effective Employee Recognition

The strongest organizational science is clearly teaching us that employee recognition simultaneously builds and maintains healthy employee manager relationships and seriously increases bottom line performance.

 Doing effective employee recognition is all about implementing the 3 R’s of Employee Rewards and recognition. R here stands for the “Right” or correct way.

The 3 Rs of Effective Employee Recognition mean recognizing:

R1: The Right Kind of Behaviors – Role Behaviors proven to meet clearly stated performance goals. Examples of clearly defined and communicated performance goals include:

• Mastering a new work process or procedure,
• Demonstrating a core cultural value in relation to co-workers
• Meeting or exceeding work quality and quantity metrics
• Solving a problem or challenge in a way that creates value for the organization

R2. At the Right Times – It turns out that the best time to provided effective employee recognition is right when the employee is doing or completing a performance goal.

 R3. In The Right Ways - I strongly recommend that you read my short post on effective employee recognition. In it I outline a Radical New Approach to Employee Recognition, Proven To help increase Employee Engagement by 1000% Job Satisfaction by 300% and Measurable Work Productivity by 31%:



Employee Engagement Idea #4. Increase Your "Touchy Feeliness" Levels by 900%! 

Relationship building and relationship maintenance processes for active employee engagement are all about those “human factors” or the so called “intangibles” that organizational theorists and consultants have been talking about for the last 100 years.

We've all heard about these human factors but very few of us actually study and apply best practices in the lives of our own organizations.  Resultantly, we too often fail to align our daily actions with our core values.

 Actively engaged employees are fully aware and secure in the knowledge that their managers really know them and care about them as human beings. Employees thrive when managers and team leaders really understand and connect with them through the lenses of their personal values, goals and passions. Interestingly many of these interests and passions are universal.

 Aligning individual goals and organizational goals through shared values is one of the most important distinctions between real leadership and management as usual. Key questions here include:

• Do you or your team leaders really know what your employees are passionate about?
• Do you know what they most value in life?
• Do you know their most heartfelt career aspirations?
• What steps are you taking to acknowledge, validate and coach towards the realization of these personal goals values and interests? 

For example:

 Employee Engagement Idea #5 Take a genuine Interest in Employee Well-being 

The bottom line: A healthier happier employee is a more productive and engaged employee who sticks around for years and barely misses work.

When employee well-being is heightened this directly translates into increased employee engagement and performance. The world’s leading organizations are growing and sustaining employee well-being through integrated work-life balance and innovative employee assistance programs.

 These wellness and support initiatives provide everything from personal money management to professional counseling with relationship, parenting and stress management experts. They also provide employees with flex time planning and work from home options towards maximizing work life balance in an ever increasing world of stress and responsibility.

 Can you think of a better way to show genuine interest and concern at the employee manager interface than to help solve serious stress, parenting, marriage, family and money problems?

Employee Engagement Idea #6: Enable Workplace Giving

High performance organizations are reaping serious organizational health benefits by identifying and giving expression to the vast and growing number of employees that have a shared burning need to know that their work is making a positive difference in the world and to their fellow human beings.

An increasing number of employee engagement interventions are running employee driven community assistance, volunteering and go-green programs.

 
They often do this as a means of enabling the expression of a powerful shared core value on the part of their employees to give back to the community as a function of their work. 

The most effective workplace giving programs allow individual employee's and teams to define the why, the how and the when of giving back. They also provide solid tools and processes for formally meeting co-created community giving goals.

Employee Engagement Idea #7: Chanel Positive Relationship Energy into Performance Supporting Structures and Processes

Ok. So now you've got the lowdown on building strong positive relationships and organizational bonding at the employee management interface. But what do you do with all this new positive relationship energy and employee motivation to generate results driven organizational performance?

 Provide Coaching and Effective Employee Recognition to support behaviors that meet performance goals.  As I alluded to earlier, employees who love their jobs and their managers don’t necessarily become more engaged in their work. 

And it's not just financial compensation that counts. Effective employee recognition practices are just as critical when building high levels of active employee engagement.

 It’s essential that these more satisfied and motivated employees have clearly defined and whenever possible – co-created performance goals.

“SMART Goal: Setting” is a great example of the kind of goals your employees need in order to channel their positive feelings and motivation. Such goals need to be:

 A. Specific – Goals are objective, clearly stated and very specific.

 B. Measurable – The goal’s progress is measurable in terms of objective and easily share-able quantity quality and time measures.

 C. Attainable – It’s one that you can actually achieve and is realistic. High performing organizations don’t reward goals attainment that is outside of the control of employees or team members. They primarily define, recognize and reward goals that are within the complete control of a given employee’s control.

 D. Relevant – This is where the organizational performance dimension comes into play. Goals need to be clearly linked to meaningful business or positive organizational outcomes. Key questions here include:

• To what extend is this goal creating value?
• To what extend is it reducing costs or increasing product and service quality to internal and external customers?

 E. Time Bound – The question here becomes: When will the particular task, project or goal be completed? Not only does time-limiting a goal facilitate performance by reducing wasted time, but it enables for time based process and quality improvements as well.

 Setting time bound goals also enables managers to precision target their recognition and reward efforts on employee behaviors that approximate, meet and exceed clearly predefined expectations.

Employee Engagement Idea #8: Increase Employee Involvement 

This is one of those human factors based strategies that we've all heard about for years but that very few of us actually do consistently or correctly. Yet the bottom line is that increased employee involvement = increased employee engagement.

 This is because employees are more likely to strongly buy into and feel a motivation-enhancing sense of ownership for goals that they play a major role in creating. This is in stark contrast to working to realized someone else's creative potential. 

 Each employee is uniquely positioned in their day to day work lives to view and assess workflow and outcomes from their own unique role and location within the organizational system.

Actively engaged employees are regularly empowered to do real active problem solving.  High engagement managers and team leaders enable employees to share and harness opportunities and address challenges that they themselves might not have ever become aware of otherwise. 




Employee Engagement Idea #9: Harness the Incredible Power of Teamwork Whenever Possible:

 The great thing about real high performance teamwork and team-based organizational design is that it has all of the basic ingredients needed to maximize active employee engagement built right into them.

 For example, effective team building and team leadership practices enable a team or department to reach higher performance levels by creating an organizational mini culture, strategy, integrated roles and work processes.

Effective team leaders are by definition effective employee performance coaches who are also well versed in employee recognition. They know how to impart teaming skills to their followers. 

Team leaders know how to proactively manage conflict and are constantly clarifying roles, goals and facilitating the collaborative learning process. 

Real high performance teams actually distribute the leadership role among team members, taking on and relinquishing the leadership role based on the team's current performance goals and each team member's ability to take on that role.

 Sadly though, 90% or more of all team building interventions fail to translate into real teamwork. This is true in both in-house efforts and interventions lead by top ranking external consultants and trainers.

Employee Engagement Idea #10: Hire Based on Core Values and Leadership Skills First and For Optimal Work-Role Compatibility or Management Skills Second

The world’s leading high engagement organizations hire for  leadership potential as expressed in individual values that align with core organizational values. In fact you might argue that they see cultural compatibility as more important than work role competency. 

Hi engagement organizations know that having the demonstrated ability to live out core organizational values is just as or even more important than just having strong  knowledge, skills and abilities to do their work.

For example, high performance organizations will hire managers and team leaders who are trained and experienced employee coaches and team builders. They hire people who genuinely care about others and who have a demonstrated track record for building and maintaining key work relationships.

Underperforming, low-engagement organizations, on the other hand, continue to hire managers and team leaders primarily based on their “management” skills rather than their demonstrated capacity for “leadership” effectiveness. These are the organization's who are most likely to be hemorrhaging top talent.

These are the same managers who can’t tell you what their organization’s core values are or why each value is most critical in continuously guiding and shaping a real high-engagement organization through expert relationship building and maintenance. 

What are your organization's core values? What is the best example of when you consciously made a leadership decision today, that was in complete alignment with those values?  


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