How I use perks to attract and keep staff

Farhad Meher-Homji and Rishad Sukhia wanted to start a web development studio that caters to high-end clients. Since the pair launched BrightLabs in 2004, the company has opened two studios in Brisbane and Melbourne, has worked on over 350 projects for some major clients and boasts revenue of about $2 million.

But the pair faced a significant challenge when starting out – there are very few barriers to entry. How did they attract skilled staff to deliver them high-quality products?

Farhad says the answer was simple – offer your staff some incentives, and they’ll go the extra mile.

So how’s the business been going?

It’s been doing very well. We’re growing a lot, although the Queensland floods made February a quiet month. It’s usually quiet then anyway in January, but that extended to February. Then March became the best month we’ve ever heard, so it’s picked up a lot.

During the floods I wasn’t able to be at work for a time. That was very tense – the general manager was away on holidays as well. Thankfully we have a disaster plan in place, and we were able to do a lot of work out of the Melbourne office and it all went well. We know our plan works now.

Can you talk about when you started using perks to attract and keep staff?

The problem with the web industry is that there are very few barriers to entry. People have this approach and they try to do everything, but it’s not ultimately sustainable. To get into this business and be taken seriously we need to have very good quality staff to produce the output that a professional organisation can.

How did you start?

We were very selective with the staff process. It’s a three-stage process interview, with a test for everyone, and even for administrative staff we are very selective. We have a probationary period as well.

The skill level of the staff is important, but more so is the attitude. The staff in the industry are all very young – not just us, but in the entire industry – and the attitude among younger workers can be more of what they want for themselves. We want to attract and invest skills in our staff though, and focus on long-term.

Now some of our staff are some of the best programmers I’ve ever met. And one of our workers was actually poached by Facebook just recently.

Really? How did that happen?

It was a funny story, actually. He said, “Hey, I have a job offer with another company and I really have to take it”. And he said it was Facebook, and of course that’s a rare opportunity.

That must have been a shock!

We hardly ever lose staff, and usually they just want to go travelling or whatever. But Facebook is an excellent opportunity – and it really made us feel better about the type of staff we have. People look at web design and think it’s very easy, but having stories like this validates our staff.

So when did you start using these types of “perks” to attract your team?

It started pretty quickly when we started the company. We’ve tried to make the company a really great working environment, and we wanted to put money into staff perks. For example, two years ago we revamped a dedicated break room, so people can relax, have lunch. There is a poker table there, a PlayStation, and so on.

We have more typical things like afternoon drinks on Fridays and so on as well.

Which do you think is the one the staff like most?

I think everyone likes the gym membership a lot. It’s good for us too, because the healthier our staff are the better they work. We also give them the opportunity to access a pool of funds, rather than give a membership to a particular gym.

But one of the better ones is a recent one. We offer free breakfasts for staff who get there before a certain time, but we offer lunch now. I always thought it would attract fringe benefits tax, but if the lunch is fairly basic, you can get money to do that and it doesn’t have FBT.

Do you give it away for free?

We contemplated it being free, but we already have a lot of free stuff. So we said they can pay $2 every day, and we’ll provide them lunch. One day it’s sandwiches, another it might be a bunch of chickens, and so on. That has been great because it means people don’t become complacent, and it’s a great perception of value. They save a lot of money too.

I actually got the idea from Michael Fox at Shoes of Prey who does the same thing. We think it’s a really good idea.

There’s a view that too many perks can cause complacency. How do you deal with that?

That’s right. Staff have a probation period, and we need to see if they are suited to the company. We know pretty well how they will work. It wasn’t perfect at the start, but now further along we’ve done very, very well.

You also have a mentorship program?

We call it a specialisation. It’s not really where a team member specialises in something, but if anyone wants to come to us and say they’re interested in an idea, we say they’re allowed to go research it, and they come up with a white paper on that area covering a few key aspects. That’s under the headship of a manager or director, and they basically talk to them about what they’re doing.

Would you recommend other small businesses use some of these perks if they can?

I do recommend it. It’s a great way to get staff on board. It’s sometimes difficult, but the quality of people you can attract if you have good processes in place is great. We invest in it – it costs more up front, but saves you money later on.