Portfolio

EXCERPT FROM

It’s Personal: The Benchmark Story, by Kathi Ann Brown

Chapter 1: Culture with a Capital C—Why Benchmark Values Matter

Late in 2001, Benchmark made a critical decision: to set up a program to define, establish and nurture a strong corporate culture. The investment was highly unusual, particularly for a company that was just four years old, and frequently struggling to make payroll.

“Sometime in 2001, I sat back and said, ‘OK, how do I not repeat the mistakes of companies that aren’t in the industry any more?’, says Benchmark founder Tom Grape. “The answer was getting the culture right by investing win. Period. Because not creating a viable organization is exactly what brought everybody else down.”

“When we started out, we really didn’t have any culture,” says one longtime Benchmark associate. “In the early days, we used to say we were ‘the employer of choice’ in the industry. Well, we all laughed, because we didn’t even have a Human Resources department, no processes for promotion. Of course, some people wanted to work for us simply because they loved Tom or knew in the core of the organization. That’s OD, organizational development. It’s values. It’s training. It’s who we hire. It’s building a culture. It’s being a strong organization with low turnover. If we can win at the organization game, we someone else who was working here. Then we invested in organizational development—OD—and that set the wheel in motion to provide those systems and processes.”

“Six years ago, we had no cultural identity to speak of,” says Jill Haselman, who joined the company in November 2001 to head up the new initiative. “Not good. Not bad. It just didn’t exist because the company was so new. Benchmark had tried once or twice to establish core values, but that’s a harder exercise than most people think it is, so it never really stuck. We also didn’t have a human resources infrastructure. We didn’t even have a job application! We didn’t have an employee handbook. No standards. No practices. No manuals. Nothing.”

The lack of basic infrastructure wasn’t surprising—especially not to founder Tom Grape. In the four years since launching the company in 1997, Grape and the Benchmark team had worked at breakneck speed to find or build a dozen communities, secure millions of dollars of financial support, close deals and keep a dozen other balls in the air.

“The company was very entrepreneurial—people just did what they needed to get the job done,” notes one Benchmark associate.

“At first, we had a dozen communities doing things a dozen different ways,” says Haselman.

“As we grew, it became even more complicated. Add to that the fact that we were acquiring communities that already had their own cultures, their own ways of doing things. It was challenging, to say the least.”

It soon became clear that if Benchmark was going to succeed, not merely survive, the company needed to develop an organization that would knit together all Benchmark communities into a single team. Not merely in terms of standards and practices, but on a deeper level.

“What differentiates us from our competitors is the people who work for us, particularly the associates who are direct care givers,” says one Benchmark associate. “Our business is all about caring for people. We can have the smartest folks at the home office who know to select locations, know how to build the buildings, and know how to acquire them, but unless you get people who know how to operate the communities, know how to service the senior population and their needs, and can do it compassionately, you’re going to fail.”

“In our industry, a lot of folks turn over within the first six months on the job,” notes another executive. “If they don’t feel the connection, if they don’t get involved, they tend to move on. So our culture and mentoring programs help to bring new associates into community life quickly. Most people come to work each day wanting to do the best jobs for their residents. And that’s what all of our cultural programs are designed to support. If we can take care of our associates, inspire them and support them, they can focus on what they really came to do: take care of the residents. It’s not surprising that we’re starting to see a strong connection between high associate satisfaction and high resident satisfaction in all of our surveys.”

Defining a set of values for Benchmark was a critical first step in the process of creating a company culture. A brainstorming session yielded the eight central principles of the “It’s PERSONAL ” statement that now constitute the company values. A statement of purpose also evolved (p.11).

“When I first came on board, we had the typical one-paragraph or mission statement, but we did not have the values that we have today,” notes an associate. “The little we had really didn’t speak to where the company was going or what the company wanted to become. Now, today, all eight of the Benchmark values speak to us, I think, at various times. They all speak to aspects of Benchmark that we want to make sure we continue to keep up on the front burner.”

The next step was to create ways to spread the culture throughout the organization, to reach every associate in all Benchmark communities. Dozens of initiatives, large and small, have been rolled out since 2002.

“Our values are woven into everything we do,” says Haselman. “They’re the basis of every recognition program. They’re at the heart of every training program. We use them in quizzes, tests, games. The values are key to our talent reviews, our culture audits. That’s highly unique to most organizations. A lot of companies have ‘values’ but often no one can either tell you what they are or how they’re integrated into the daily life of the organization.”

Benchmark University, the company’s in-house education program, is one of the most powerful instruments for teaching values. A general orientation program introduces new associates to the company, to the industry, and to what Benchmark expects of everyone in the company. Other courses, like Breakthrough and the Leadership Institute, invite participants to think deeply and personally about how to “live the values” every day on the job. Associates learn quickly that job performance is important, but living up to the company’s values is as much or more so.

“We’ll take an associate who lives our values but who might not be performing well and restart them either in a different job or a different area, so they can be successful,” says one executive director. “On the other hand, if we have someone who is performing very well, but is horrible with the values, we’ll pull them out of here, because it’s just not a fit for our organization.”

“My greatest positive challenge is to find individuals out there that truly live our values,” says one executive whose job involves recruiting for Benchmark. “I can have 50 resumes that absolutely have all the skill sets we’re looking for, but from a values perspective they won’t all be the right fit.”

“We’ve been careful, I think, to create a platform of core values that everyone knows about and knows that they’re measured by,” says Haselman. “We’re absolutely crystal clear and explicit about what our values are, what it means to ‘live them,’ what the consequences are for not living them.” Since their unveiling in June 2002, the eight “It’s PERSONAL ” values have percolated throughout the company’s staff and operations.

“I thought the values started to make a real difference when you heard frontline associates start to refer to them,” says one executive. “That’s when you knew you’d really gotten somewhere. Living them sometimes is difficult, of course. But the very fact that people started actually talking about them and doing them and using them as ways to address issues means they’re working.”

“Having the eight values makes it easier to make decisions, because when you have to make a decision that’s tough, you simply refer to them,” says one executive director. “If what you’re thinking about doing doesn’t align with them, you come up with a different decision.”

“Whenever I introduce new associates to the company, the first thing I tell them is to just live the values. If you live Benchmark’s values every day, you’re going to be fine. You’ll have no worries and you’ll be an incredible associate. If you’re truly living every single one of those eight values, you’re going to be a superstar.”